Please may I interrupt whatever you are doing with this announcement:
Everybody in our house is potty trained, y’all!!!
Can I just please express how proud I am of our kids for learning how to use a toilet?
Can I just tell you how good it feels to walk through the grocery store and merely glance down the diaper aisle with a somewhat bittersweet smile, realizing we can skip that aisle now?
Take for a moment to appreciate one of the most beautiful sounds ever: pee splashing in the toilet while my husband and I are chatting after dinner, meaning our three year old son has gone potty all by himself with no help at all. It is music to our ears!
Please give me just a moment to share the joy we felt this week when, after my husband painted the bathrooms, the little potties magically disappeared leaving only big toilets, and nobody batted an eye.
- For those of you still on the potty train, here is my message: You will be off the train one day. There is hope. Your child will not go to college in diapers. I know it is hard some days to imagine that day, to change that diaper, to clean up that one-more accident. It may feel very frustrating. It may seem like all your efforts to get that child to go potty are in vain. It may feel like one step forward, two steps back, which is a very inefficient way to work.
- Here is my advice: take it easy. Go with the flow. Keep your diapers and undies and wipes supply handy at all times. Stay calm and just wipe those bottoms, change those clothes, and encourage them with a “It’s ok! No big deal! We’ll do better next time!”
With our kids, I think our own value as parents was making them curious about going potty, being role models for them, encouraging them, but following their lead. When we finally realized that they were going to learn when they were going to learn, and that very little we did was going to move it along faster, we just gave in to the process and it was much easier.
Patience. Encouragement. Leading by example.
We’ve all heard heard of parents who potty train in a week, and parents who claim they never had their child in diapers because they were potty trained almost at birth. Wow, kudos to them, but if that ain’t your style, don’t stress!
We’ve all heard of grandparents guilting parents or their grandchildren because they are still in diapers at insert-arbitrary-age-that-they-think-they-shouldn’t-be-in-diapers-anymore, and know adults who remember adults shaming them when they were kids, making them feel stupid or embarrassed about accidents. To guilt and shame I say – Not cool! Who needs it? Find your own groove!
I will totally admit that, as former Potty Train passengers, we had our share of stress and maybe some yelling about potty-ing. But we learned lessons from our daughter, the dear first born, that there is no need for the anxiety, the pressure, the stress. There will be enough stress in life. I wish we would have focused on enjoying the ride a little more. After all, this is one train you can’t get back on.
(And remember, they didn’t invent adult diapers for nothing! Life comes full circle. Who knows when our kids will have to wipe our bottoms!)
About Mary Beth Cox
