Potty-Training Predicaments

Potty Training Predicaments



“Your “child” is not potty trained?” People pose this question periodically. My “child,” Sam, is almost three and has positively no interest in the potty. He is perfectly happy parading around announcing to the world when he has pooped and or peed. Any mention of the potty prompts my precious son to cling desperately to me and whimper, “I don’t wanna potty,” all the while, pushing his head as far into my shoulder as humanly possible. How can I force my poopy, pouting, petulant child to potty after a particularly tearful display like that? So I bow my head and say quietly that we are letting our precious children pinpoint the proper time for a potty-training program. This reply is met with a dead stare from people. They can’t believe that we will potty train when the children feel it proper. Letting our children dictate the time for potty-training poses quite a predicament for most people.

As I go through my day, thoughts of potty-training permeate my brain, pushing all other ideas, problems, and activities to mere pinpricks in my mind, rendering them useless and puny. I start to second guess my previous ideas of potty-training as an activity prompted only by the ponderings of my precocious children, and not by the persistence and promotion of particular parents. Why is potty-training, or lack thereof in my case with my children, such a peculiar pill for me to swallow? Was it possible that I was promoting personal potty-training upon my poor precious children because my potty training possibly posed problems that played a major role in the childhood phobia about potties that I still remember to this day? Would people possibly understand the present problem of parents pondering the proper procedure to potty train without foisting a plethora of potty phobias on their children? For those persnickety potty training parents parading proudly about, pontificating on their perfectly potty trained prizes, thinking about the personal private potty training predicaments of other parents that might have proven to be a predominant factor in determining potty training postures fort their own children might prove to be a positive step.

As for me potty training brings up memories. Whether or not memories might be the catalyst that renders me, according to past potty-training experts, unable to properly potty train, they are real and they are an important part of my life. As a child I was very independent, always wanting to do things for myself. At about the age of three, I was working on potty training. My mother was quite helpful in promoting independence in our family. The more we did on our own the better she thought it was. On the day I announced to my mother that I wanted to use the potty on my own, without the potty seat. She was very impressed but cautious. She warned me that I might not be big enough to use the potty without the seat. Filled with the desire to potty solo, I chose not to heed her advice, and off I trotted to the potty ready to partake in adult potty privileges.

Climbing on the toilet was not a problem for me; it couldn’t have been because it doesn’t stick out in my memory. I couldn’t sit on the toilet because I was too small, Mom was right. I had to put my hands on each side of the toilet seat to keep me up. As I did what I was supposed to, I felt a sense of pride. I had peed on the potty all by myself, with no potty seat. What an accomplishment! Cleaning myself up, I had to make sure to keep one hand on the side of the toilet to stay “afloat”. I was doing so well, batting a thousand if I do say so myself. Getting off the toilet started the trouble. My mistake was taking both hands off the toilet. As I did so, gravity took hold and into the toilet I plopped. Mommy! I screamed. I fell in!!!

My mother, grandmother, and brother all ran into the bathroom and stopped. There I was in all my glory, in the toilet. All you could see, I was told later, were my hands and feet, and they were moving a mile a minute, trying to catch hold, so I wouldn’t fall down the toilet. Thinking they were going to rescue me, I felt much better when they came in; it was when they started laughing that I started feeling angry. I needed to be rescued so the toilet monsters wouldn’t get me and all I heard was my mother and grandmother laughing and my brother shouting, “Flush her! Flush her!” I was finally fished out of the toilet, given a bath, and told that maybe I should use the potty seat for a while longer. Saddened and disillusioned, I crept to my room to wallow in self pity at my failure to potty with pride, and to be thankful that the potty monsters stayed below the potty.

To this day I can’t think about that bathroom without seeing a huge toilet. The rest of the bathroom fixtures are in their proper scale, but the toilet stands out as a huge receptacle, ready to swallow anything that gets in its way.
As people go through life pondering on the predicaments of persons presently in potty-training mode, instead of pointing out the problems they feel the potty-training parents possess, perhaps time could be more perfectly spent partaking in their own trip down pottyville and remember any potty-training problems they might have encountered themselves.

It is so easy for parents to prance about praising their precious, perfect children and pontificating on problems they perceive to be prevalent in others. For some parents feel it their prerogative to pounce on these perceptions as it presents a perfect opportunity for them to puff up their own ego, and feel they are precise in their potty-training program.