Potty training: it’s complicated
by CJ
In many societies, once you’re older than five (+5), it is no longer polite to speak publicly about your toilet habits. I’m a very prudish individual so this taboo suits me well.
However, I am also the mother of a child under five (-5). Poppy is in the witching zone between total diaper coverage and full-on toilet use. The only thing to get her from one side to the other is mature encouragement from people like me.
The problem is — people like me hate talking about toilets. Even writing that word makes me feel dirty.
Toilet. Ugh.
Anyway.
I’m in a confusing situation. Though it’s taboo to discuss scatological matters, it’s imperative that Poppy’s relationship with lavatories is so straightforward that she learns to use them without developing a toilet complex that’ll take years of expensive psychotherapy to undo.
My toddler may think that she’s under pressure but I think you’ll agree, I’m the one to pity.
Thus, I bought a book to help me. It’s called Potty and though it’s aimed at children, I found it very useful. In bold pictures it shows me how to encourage my toddler to watch other creatures using the potty.
Now, whenever I spot our dog doing her business, I drag Poppy to the window to bear witness. Aping the tone of the Potty book, I give an upbeat commentary about poop, pee and lavatories.
My Potty book also shows how good parents exhibit delight at the triumphs of their potty-training child. Life imitates art as Walter and I whoop around the house when Poppy leaves something in her potty.
But conflict arises when Poppy wants to see what her parents do when they’re alone with their thoughts in the bathroom. There’s nothing in the Potty book to help me with this.
“I want to watch,” cries Poppy, kicking the door open with one small, determined foot.
“What are you doing?” asks she, waiting for upbeat commentary about poop, pee and lavatories.
If we don’t wish to pay the fees of her pricy psychotherapist, we must tell her.
Now, there’s the breeziness of the potty trainer, and then there’s the discrete silence of one observing the toilet taboo. Walter doesn’t mind toggling between these two worlds but I find the incongruity hard to process.
Thus, when a traumatizing potty incident occurred last week, I got stuck between +5 and -5 language. Here’s what happened:
Poppy didn’t make it to the potty on time.
Something happened.
I tripped over it.
I had to be calm and breezy.
But I didn’t feel calm and breezy. I was horrified.
A week later, Poppy continues to talk about the incident in a chipper, matter-of-fact tone.
I keep having flashbacks.
But I can’t discuss it because I’m +5 and so are you which means that we must both observe discrete silence.
Motherhood is very hard.
Incidentally, Walter claims that I’m lying about the incident because you can’t trip over it. He tells me that you can slip in it, you can step into it, but it’s simply not possible to trip over it.
Except that I did.
Or maybe it was language I tripped over.
Talking about potty training is very complicated. Why did nobody warn me?
[Photo credits: Andrej Troha/Stock Xchng; Potty by Leslie Patricelli]
Love it!!! Takes me back about 60 years when one of your blogger watchers
went to the bathroom with his grandmother and explained the difference between mommy’s and daddy’s actions in the bathroom!!!
Hilarious. I’d love to have seen said grandmother’s face (or maybe mommy and daddy’s faces would have been even funnier)!
Hilarious! A friend of ours reported that her twins used to accompany her to the loo with great interest and ask “Was it a number one or a number two?” and then if it was the latter they’d chorus “Well done Mummy!” and she would be forced to wear a sticker all day! Be grateful you haven’t reached that stage yet.
But two is a good age to get started – I still remember a boy at my nursery school who used to shout out aged four: “Mrs Slawski can you wipe my bottom.” He sometimes appears on TV and to this day that’s all I can think of when I see him.
He he he. Thank you for helping me to laugh out loud about this delicate matter. I’ve read about the virtue of awarding stickers but I consider myself duly warned …
Poppy seems to be very open about her training habits, which is great. She needs to see you use the potty whether you want her to or not. She doesn’t need to see her daddy because that’s a whole different ball game. I don’t like the word toilet either. There’s plenty of other words – wee, peepee, peeps, poo, poop, use the bathroom. How about the lu? We used potty. Pee in the potty, poop in the potty. The important thing is patience and I guess actually saying the word. hehe. Good luck.
Vonnie, something tells me that you’re gaining wry amusement from my discomfort. Are you in cahoots with Walter? And I agree that Poppy is very open about her habits. Just don’t tell her about this blog post else she’ll be ruined for life!
I’m sad you left out the signature quote from this incident, which I recall as: “Gah, I tripped over poop!”
Cj – I’m laughing with you not at you. Hehee. And also remembering the trials and tribulations of potty training. It’s not for the faint of heart. Yes, you can trip over poop, but think of it this way, it’s a lot easier to clean up when it rolls around like that, eh?
My ickiest memory is when my daughter woke up from her nap. I thought she was just babbling happily waiting for me to come get her, but when I did, I found that her poopy diaper had become the material for finger painting — all over her crib, the wall and herself. I didn’t praise her for going poopy that day. Eeeooo.
There is a potty waiting for Poppy when she visits. Decided to get it “just in case”
It is, often, a complicated and perplexing experience…for both parent and child. And many a parent has a funny (usually not at the time) tale to relate. Your hilarious account reminds me of someone near and dear, just a bit younger than Poppy who was in the mid-stage of potty training. Just as I was about to cheer his success on/in the potty, he jumped up, ran into the living room and deposited “it” in the corner. I suppose I should have still been happy that at least it was in a corner where no one would trip over “it.”
I guess I’ll leave potty training to my husband. He doesn’t care about that 5+ taboo- in fact he’s fascinated by the subject and if I didn’t stop him (by telling him that if you’ve been married less than 2 years getting a divorce is really easy in Germany) he’d regale me every morning with a detailed description of his bathroom achievements…
It is so difficult to remain calm.
My daughter is just recently potty trained. She was naked in the kitchen (don’t ask) and had a little accident on the floor. Being the capable child that she is, she attempted to clean up this accident with a wash cloth. Needless to say, my husband screamed upon discovering her ‘cleaning’ the floor.
To encourage bodily functions is a truly thankless task.
Hang in there!
This reminds me of two things. The first is that potty training a toddler and a puppy have very similar themes. The dog trainer told me I have to throw a party every time Lefty squats outside. Have you tried giving Poppy dehydrated liver treats every time she pees or poops in the appropriate place? It’s not working 100% for us, but worth a shot. The second is that when I worked at a summer camp for disabled children there were a lot of accidents. The American staff were all very up front about it but the British staff had a very hard time with the matter of fact vocabulary required of these situations. When a counselor would tell them that one of their campers had had an accident they would ask, “Was it in the front bits or the back bits?” You would have fit right in. Smiley face.
It’s funny that the taboo in adult society is not only transgressed during this stage of raising children, but that the adult’s language is infantilized in the process (“potty” not “toilet,” “poop” not “shit,” “pee” not “piss”). Though there’s a childishness to vulgarity as well, perhaps the reason vulgarity is always scatological or sexual is because it’s an attempt, however jejune, to distance oneself from the infantilized vocabulary of the scatological and sexual that one is introduced to these concepts with. In other words, don’t be surprised if Poppy starts dropping f-bombs
It may be because I’m drinking a strong cup of coffee while reading this, but it seems to make imminent sense. I wonder – if we stripped our language of infantalized language, then perhaps our children wouldn’t indulge in endless toilet jokes once they become tweens? JS — maybe you can start the experiment with your kids and then report back? I’d hate to start dropping f-bombs around my toddler if there weren’t a sound scientific rationale for doing so.
Done, and done.