A Fight for the Right to Potty

As you may have surmised from the title of this post, we are knee-deep in potty-training here at Chez Witmer. (Knee-deep? Up to our elbows? Neither seems right, and each seems gross.)

I'd purchased a potty for Benjamin months ago because I was at Target, saw one and knew he'd need one eventually. He showed little to no interest in the thing, except for a receptacle for his cars and trucks and as an occasional plastic helmet. He used it for its intended purpose exactly two times — and both, I think, happened because of sheer accidental good timing on our part.

The plastic frog potty. Sure, he looks happy enough ...Last month we went on vacation to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina, and I packed the little plastic frog potty to take with us. I wasn't sure why, but I suppose I didn't want to be caught off guard by a sudden interest in Big-Boy Toileting. When we got to our condo and unloaded our stuff, I told Scott to just leave it in the van, and that's where it stayed the entire trip.

But that evening at the condo, I took Benjamin into the bathroom with me to do my Big-Girl Toileting while Scott was in and out unloading the van. My son has seen me in the bathroom and in various states of undress a lot, and he usually just points to a random body part and asks, "Mommy, what's THAT?"

But on this night, he announced that he too would like to use the potty. The plastic frog potty was still in the car, so I pulled off his shorts and diaper and sat him on the real potty. And he peed! Then he peed again the next day, and the next, and the day after that, until he was going fairly regularly the entire vacation week. I was stunned, and he was so proud of himself. It was fun, a novelty, a new accomplishment. Once he started doing it, he was excited and determined to do it again. We'd plop him down, and he'd stare at his little wee-wee, concentrated and focused, until a teeny spurt of pee started to come out.

I had never pushed the potty before, so I was thrilled to see Benjamin taking the initiative. For one, I was anxious to banish diapers. But also, I'd been a little worried about when the timing would be right. Everyone said that I'd "know" when he was ready, but would I? Would it be obvious? What if I missed the signs, and the magic portal to The World of No Diapers closed for another few months (or years!)?

Turns out, for us, it was obvious. You can't get more obvious than a 2-year-old asking you to use the potty.

I could see progress when we got home, but we kept him in diapers anyway because he'd never really told us when he needed to go. He was still waking up from naps and bedtime with wet diapers. I'd bought some underwear for him to just sort of practice wearing, but I didn't think he was ready to go Full Underpants.

Until Last Friday, when one of his teachers at daycare asked me one morning during the drop-off, "Why don't you send him to school in underwear?"

"Um, I don't know," I stammered. "I guess I didn't think he was ready for that."

"He's ready," she said. "It's not a big deal if he has accidents. Just send extra clothes."

This woman knows much better than I do, I thought. Who knows how many kids she's potty-trained over the years? So last weekend we worked on it. At first he was excited to wear underwear, but then he started to resist using the potty altogether. It wasn't fun for him anymore. It was now something he had to do—and do a lot—and, more importantly, it was interrupting his play time. I was worried that having an accident would make him upset and less confident, so I found myself pushing him to go more frequently than I probably should have, which only made him resist more.

On Monday, he had a play day at my parents' house with his cousin Maia, who recently completed her potty-training quickly, easily and with minimal accidents. No accidents. Success!

On Tuesday morning, right before we were getting ready to leave the house to go to Storytime at the library, he stood right next to me in the living room and took a huge dump in his underwear not 30 seconds after I'd asked him if he needed to use the potty.

But he managed to make it through Storytime, a meeting with a client (mine, not his), and a trip to the grocery store without an accident, which I'm chalking up as a victory. But what concerns me is that he can use the potty, but he's putting up a fight nearly every time I put him on it.

Yesterday wasn't great, either. He had two accidents at his school, including one of the aforementioned giant morning poops, and his teachers said he wasn't happy to use the potty. And he followed those up by two more accidents at home.

I don't care that he has accidents. It's not particularly fun cleaning up after them, but neither are diapers. It really just comes down to tossing a few extra clothes in the laundry. Big deal. What I do not like is that he hasn't figured out yet and accepted that we've started to go down this road and that This. Is. Happening.

Am I doing the right thing? Should I pull back and let it go for a while? Is this just toddler resistance, and should I stand my ground? Will he eventually just accept his lot and acquiesce?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again and again: Just when I thought I knew what I was doing as a parent, I realize I don't.

P Is for Potty

Months and months ago — much sooner than necessary — I bought a little potty for Benjamin. It was on sale at Target and I knew he'd need one eventually, so I thought, "What the heck?" and bought it.

I've dreaded even thinking about potty-training. As much as I would love to live in a world free of diapers and the contents of said diapers, I'm not looking forward to Benjamin being old enough and big enough to go to the bathroom mostly on his own. For me, the potty is a symbol that my little baby isn't a baby at all anymore. If he can pee and poop by himself and won't need me to change him, that means he'll soon be able to pour himself a cup of milk and put his clothes on and take them off and read himself a story. And what will he need me for??

The other reason I've been dreading it is because that means the amount of potty talk will also increase. We already talk about that sort of business far too much in our house, in my opinion. Sometimes I long to live in a 1950s sitcom, like in the movie "Pleasantville," where everything was nice and clean and orderly and where even the sound of a flushing toilet was taboo. But I do not live on a 1950s TV set. I live in my house, with a husband, a toddler and a dog. There's a lot of poop talk.

And could the genius who invented the words "poop" and "pee-pee" have made them any more fun to say for an almost 19-month-old? I mean, really. Those words are practically begging to be repeated over and over and over again.

Last night while I was making dinner, Benjamin announced that he had to poop. (This is achieved by grunting and saying the word "poop" several times.) Scott dashed upstairs to fetch his potty to bring down to the living room (I'm not sure why), and with a combination of love and disgust, I overheard him from the kitchen pulling down Benjamin's pants, removing his diaper and then "teaching" him how to, well, go.

The exchange went a little something like this:

Scott: OK, now your diaper's off, so you can sit down on the potty.

Benjamin: Potty! Sit! Potty!

S: That's right. We sit on the potty. No, no, don't get up. Sit down on the potty.

B: Potty! Potty!

S: OK, now push your pee-pee down in so you can pee in the potty.

B: Pee-pee! My pee-pee!

S: That's right. That's your pee-pee. Do you have to poop?

B: Yes! Poop!

S: OK. You sit on the potty and then you go like this _________ [long, painful-sounding grunting noise follows].

B: [makes long, painful-sounding grunting noise just like Daddy]

S: Good! You have to push out the poop. Try it again. [grunts again]

B: [grunts again]

And it went on like this for a few more minutes. At this point, I was thoroughly amused and skeeved out, which I know I will need to get over. Had Benjamin produced the goods right there in the living room, I would have been insanely proud and this post would have been pretty different and mildly braggy. But there was no poop. There was never any poop.

OK, OK. I'm not being totally honest.

Yes, the grunt call-and-response did, in fact, go on for a few more minutes, but I failed to mention that I joined in.

After a couple minutes with Daddy, Benjamin appeared to be done, so Scott pulled up his pants, sans diaper. Ben came running into the kitchen to see what I was doing, and while I was peeling the carrots, he looked up at me and said, "Mommy, poop!"

So I put down the carrot and the peeler, and I did what every good mother does: I pulled down my son's pants, I sat his little bum on his potty, and I proceeded to make grunting noises to try to get him to poop.

For anyone who is reading this who does not have children, let me say again that there is no dignity in parenthood. Not to slight dads in any way, but this is particularly true of motherhood. All sense of modesty and human decency are chucked out the window during labor. (You'd like to shave my private area to prep me for surgery while a dozen people stand around and watch and take notes? Sure! By all means!) And don't even get me started on the unsexiness that is breastfeeding and pumping (at least for me). I'm not convinced that you ever really get that dignity back — not entirely, anyway.

But the lack of dignity and self-respect turns out to be very useful when you have children. It allows you to pretend tap-dance with abandon (my personal favorite tactic to make B laugh hysterically) and sing inane kids' songs and use silly voices when reading stories. It's all par for the course, and I'd be skeptical of any parents who weren't willing to make fools of themselves on a daily basis for their kids. Acting like a kid in order to connect with my kid is one of the best parts of parenting. And like the poop talk, there's much more of it to come.