How would you ever get a kid off this thing?
Yep. You guessed it. Toilet training or, in the politically correct language of today, toilet learning. My youngest son just took his first b.m. on the real toilet. The bane of my existence, the intermediary potty chair, is now a thing of the past. Oh, how I loathe that thing. In the often surreal world of parenting, saying good-bye to the potty chair is on par with winning the lottery or spiritual enlightenment (both of which would be nice). I feel lighter, as if a load’s been lifted, or, er – flushed, as it were.
My oldest son didn’t use a potty chair. When he was born, I read Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Hygiene by Ingrid Bauer, a book about elimination communication. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it’s: “…a practice in which a caregiver uses timing, signals, cues, and intuition to address an infant’s need to eliminate waste. Caregivers try to recognize and respond to babies’ bodily needs and enable them to urinate and defecate in an appropriate place (e.g. a toilet).” This definition is straight from Wikipedia – don’t worry, I can confirm the accuracy of it because I read the book, remember?
So, like many first-time mothers, I had high aspirations – a diaper-free baby. I confess, I didn’t try too hard to catch the wet ones, but I definitely wanted to get him pooping on the potty. And I did it! Not because of the book, though, but because the poor Big Guy suffered from constipation. Although, according to the strict definition of constipation, he wasn’t really, he just didn’t go very often. Before he was even six months old, he could go two whole weeks without a b.m. However you want to define it, we had a problem. Suffice it to say that when the Big Guy had to finally go, it was pretty obvious and I had plenty of time to get him on the toilet. I barely changed any poop diapers at all.
Then the Little Guy came. It’s as if all the diapers that I would have changed with the Big Guy had accumulated in the ether and I got to change them on the Little Guy. Occasionally, I thought about elimination communication but with two little guys to take care of, quite frankly, I didn’t have the presence of mind nor the patience required for intuiting b.m. signals.
However, I had read other baby books that stress how important it is to not make a “yuck” face when changing diapers lest your precious baby interpret the “yuck” face to mean that he is yucky, not just the poop. Let’s try not to damage their self-esteem right from the get-go. Okay, check. I got that. So, I whistled, sang, and smiled my way through thousands of HazMat worthy diaper changes.
Then, when it was time, I encouraged him to get on the regular toilet with the special potty ring over the top. Nope. Not happening. I cajoled, begged and pleaded, to no avail. Mind you, I didn’t resort to bribery. It’s against my personal policy to offer anyone an M&M to do bodily functions. Let’s all take a moment to envision just where we end up with that.
Anyway, it got so that he wasn’t wearing diapers at all anymore but when he had to have a b.m., he would come and ask for one, “Can I get a diaper? I have to poo.” Um. Okay. After a while, I told him to get the diaper himself. And he did. He’d just bring it to me and say, “Can you put this on me? I have to go.” Now, of course it didn’t get to where he was actually putting on his own diaper. I promise. I broke down and got the dreaded potty chair. What does the potty chair do? For the Little Guy, it gave him confidence. For me, it was just a great big bowl of ka-ka. Turns out, the best elimination communication is when your kid says, “I have to go to the bathroom, Mom. I’ll be back in a while.”
The State of Motherhood 