October 9, 2005
what I don’t understand is how you keep the baby from falling in
As you all know, we are in the throes of potty camp at our house. The current program goes like this: when Charlie is at home and awake, he wears Big Boy Underwear. At nap time and bed time, and any time we leave the house, he wears a diaper. After a full week, it’s going well; Charlie is having more successes and fewer accidents, and he seems to feel good about the whole thing. This morning, while he was getting dressed (a thirty minute process that involves taking EVERY SINGLE item of clothing out of his dresser, holding each piece up, and rejecting all of them for various reasons only he can understand), he said, ‘I have to go potty!’ and raced off to the bathroom. I got him settled on the big potty (we use the seat that fits on the big toilet; no potty chairs for us) and went to get a clean hand towel from my bathroom. When I returned, Charlie had peed. There was extensive naked dancing and hugging and high-fiving, and when we finally got around to hand washing,he said, ‘I sat on the potty and you went out of the bathroom and when you came back I had gone pee pee and you were proud of me!’ And that’s pretty much how it happened.
This afternoon, as we were basking in the glow of the light at the end of the potty training tunnel (I can see it! I truly can!), I read an article in the New York Times on potty training your infant. And I thought, great, NOW I hear about this. I will be the first to admit that we waited too long with Charlie; he has been talking since he was 18 months old and was probably ready to start the whole potty thing last winter. But we were sidetracked by various things with Henry and chose, for better or worse, to deal with those first. So here we are now.
But as interesting as I find the idea of early potty training, and as much as I wish we were through this particular parenting ordeal, I just don’t buy this. It strikes me as one more form of attachment parenting, one more way to compel women to subjugate themselves to their children in order to prove that they are Good Mommies. I can’t imagine how you leave a potty-training eight-month-old with a sitter. Or how you ever leave the house. Or what your day is like when you are nursing on demand AND pottying on cue. And forget going back to work. Or going out to lunch. Or reading the paper. Or . . . having any sort of life apart from the baby. Because apparently the REALLY Good Mommies don’t do any of that.
This week of potty camp has, at times, made me want to poke myself in the head with a sharp object, but that moment of dancing and celebrating in the bathroom this morning made it all worthwhile. Because, yes, potty training is about not buying or changing any more diapers, but it is so much more about Charlie feeling good about himself. And I think he does, because he is able to understand this as an accomplishment. And that makes me feel like maybe I’m not a terrible mother after all.
At least for a little while.
Posted by Susan @ 7:53 pm • Uncategorized
RSS feed for comments on this post.
TrackBack URI
October 9th, 2005 at 8:15 pm, Misfit Hausfrau Says:
I so admire you for feeling so proud of Charlie. Ella is 100% there with peeing, but refuses to poo. She has absolutely no intention of pooing, even though we have promised her 10 M&Ms, tv watching (she hasn’t watched tv in over a week), a pretty dress to wear, and calls from Gramma, Daddy and Busia. While I certainly do celebrate’s Ella’s peeing I get so angry about the other stuff. And that is so wrong.
October 9th, 2005 at 9:21 pm, M&Co. Says:
Yeah for potty training success. We need to celebrate. Maybe after bankruptcy reform gets finished kicking my ass we can go have some coffee.
October 9th, 2005 at 10:55 pm, adria Says:
I read this same article, and I cannot believe parents are doing this! I could not imagine trying to master potty training at 6 months or even 12 months because there was so much other stuff going on, like communication and motion!
Charlie deserves a chip with his high five! I took the same approach when we trained Daria - underwear in the house, pull-up out of the house.
October 10th, 2005 at 5:10 am, Misfit Hausfrau Says:
I forgot to mention that the same article was in the Cincinnati papers yesterday. Corey and I read it with great interest and then we laughed HARD.
October 10th, 2005 at 6:45 am, Mary P. Says:
Potty-training kids that young… I had a client who was Chinese, who expected that I would do this with her 6 month old, because that’s what you do with babies, right?
My reponse was, that’s what you do if there’s only one precious baby in a household of five adults (her home), but that I wasn’t about to hold myself hostage to a baby’s bowels, thanks, in my home where the ratio was completely reversed! (That was my internal response; outwardly I was much more tactful, of course.)
I like your point, too, about the satisfaction a 3-year-old takes in mastering this skill.
Children don’t even have control over the requisite muscles prior to 18 months - 12 for a VERY advanced baby. So who are we training here?
I don’t like it: it’s entirely about the parent - getting rid of messy, costly diapers, and having another way to “out-parent” the rest of us. Too bad parenting success is guaged on how they turn out as ADULTS, not whether they were out of diapers at 3 months or 3 years…
(Oh, and that Chinese baby? Wasn’t entirely out of diapers, even at home - even after a four-month summer break at home - until he was comfortably over two. Which means over two years of effort on the part of the adults, whereas my way takes, oh, about three weeks.)
October 10th, 2005 at 6:56 am, Candace Says:
It’s a crock. I don’t care who gets mad, who gets offended. It’s a total crock of you-know-what.
It’s being a slave to “elimination cues” and you know what? I think it’s disgusting to hold a bowl under your baby’s butt while you’re nursing.
October 10th, 2005 at 8:28 am, MamaChristy Says:
Good for Charlie that he’s making progress! I am a big supporter of “do what’s right for your family and forget what everybody else says.” Putting off training Charlie until Henry was in a better place was right for your family. It may have made things a little harder on the potty training front, but as far as stress level on your family, it was less (yeah, I know that there is no way to know that this is really true, but you can believe it if it makes you feel better.).
It doesn’t make sense for my family to co-sleep, stop breast-feeding on his first birthday (though I think by the time he’s 16 months old we will be completely done) or potty train before he can walk. Those thinks work for other people, but not for me/us. How ever you chose to raise your kids - since you aren’t force-feeding Henry salt and vinegar chips or any other form of torture - is right.
October 10th, 2005 at 8:56 am, Heather Says:
I’ve read about elimination training before. Actually, the first time I ever heard about this was while reading Jan Wong’s “Red China Blues” (Mary will bet the Globe and Mail/Canadiana reference) That sort of satisfied all my previous questions about How did they get by without diapers? Or cloth? Elimination training makes as much sense to me as living in a menstrual hut once a month. Its just not the way our culture is deeply coded. I am a one woman show here - and despite how much I rail against how our culture organizes us…by putting moms at a clear disadvantage - I am not about to make my situation all the more isolating and lonely. Its another way to weaken my role IMHO.
And the flipside of elimination training is that you need to retrain your child to go when they really need to go - not when mom gives the cue.
And waaaay to go Charlie!! Aidan is three and no where near ready by my standards. And when he is - there will be much celebrating. I am prematurely celebrating freedom from almost 8 years of bondage and slavery to diapers. We’ll get to celebrating his achievements later…
October 10th, 2005 at 11:51 am, ieatcrayonz Says:
“I imagine it’s going to come out in sexual ways.”
WTF did that NYT interviewee mean by that?
Why did you make me read that article? Here I thought I had all the time in the world before I have to think about potty training. So now I’m supposed to start trying it at 18 months?
October 10th, 2005 at 1:54 pm, Anne www.tinykingdom.typepad.com Says:
I read that article also. My boys are past that now but I cannot imagine how this would have worked when everyone was small - the twins and my oldest are 2 yrs apart– i would have lived in the bathroom for three years!
Anne
October 10th, 2005 at 4:50 pm, Jenette Says:
We have also read the article, but it really wasn’t news to us– well, it was news that people are still trying it. We have a neat old book from the 50’s on child rearing, and in the book, they explain how to potty train your child by age 8 months. Yeah. Our son is three and some, and still wears pull ups at night, with occasional accidents during the day. I can’t imagine training him at under a year.
Fortunately for us, he had two poo accidents, and decided he did NOT like the feeling of poo in his underwear.
But yes, hoo ray for Charlie! When they can be proud of themselves, and be happy that you’re proud of them, it REALLY makes the process so much easier, doesn’t it?
Happy days, off to Old Navy.
October 10th, 2005 at 7:04 pm, The June Cleaver Diaries Says:
I’m about to read the article, and then I’m sure I’ll be seething well past bedtime. I feel exactly the way you and everyone else here. Although, I have to admit, I bet Alex would be MUCH more willing to forgo diapers once he saw his 9 month old brothers on the pot. Reading little Reader’s Digests. And humming. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll set up some elaborate deception for Alex and get him into his Robot Underwear in less than a week—- so long as I don’t actually drop a baby into the toilet. Yikes.
October 10th, 2005 at 7:55 pm, Susie Says:
I don’t know whether to laugh or scream. WHY WHY WHY do people think this is a good idea? A baby has so much else to do at 6 months with mastering rolling and maybe thinking about crawling and discovering their toes fit perfectly in their mouths. Why confuse and frustrate them by holding them over a hole. God I can TIME Liam’s poops these days and there is still NO WAY I’m potty training a 13 month old. I think, like you said, it’s something we’ll do together when he understands it. BAH!!! Now I’m in a tizzy - hand me some chips.
October 10th, 2005 at 8:00 pm, lauritajuanitasanchez Says:
I saw that load of hot, steamy BS in the Times on Sunday. I’m sorry, but NO, I’m not potty training an infant and I’m not feeling guilty about having a kid who is almost 4 and who can’t pee in the potty. My kids eat Ho-hos for breakfast and wash it down with Coke-a-cola! A HA HA HA HA!!! I’m a BAD mommy!!! (kidding about the breakfast foods, not kidding about the NY Times)
October 10th, 2005 at 9:30 pm, Jenorama Says:
I have to admit that I was a lazy potty trainer.
I would take away the kids’ diapers and they did pretty well with peeing on the potty, but boy, they would not poo on the potty.
They would hold it for a week.
They were all nearly 4 before they were completely potty trained. I was in grad school and working too. I don’t remember much about potty training, actually… Getting them all to be able to put on their own clothes was a much bigger feat…
October 11th, 2005 at 8:46 am, Kara Says:
I used to live in the Berkshires surrounded by stay at home “trustifarian” moms who chirped endlessly about organic foods, homeschooling, no diapers, no television, bella donna teething remedies (no, really), the fact that they found it “unfair” that the local Waldorf school would only accpet 4 and 5 year-olds who were weaned, and that “instructional kindergarten” goes against a child’s natural inquisitive nature and provides too much structure.
Do you know what happended when my orange food eating daughter had these kids over to play? These kids are one step shy of ferile. They don’t share and one of them actually strangled her- HARD- in front of her mother and me and did not ilicit a response from her mom. I, on the other hand, freaked out and tore the other kid’s hands away from my 4 year old’s neck. Infants who run the show turn into preschoolers who run the show. And parents who don’t need to work for a living (and I realize it’s a choice for some, not others, so don’t flame me)need to stop sniping at those of us who do.
I’m just sayin…
October 11th, 2005 at 11:43 am, lemonade Says:
Congratulations Charlie!!
My husband and I laughed when we read the article on Sunday. I thought, great, another modern-mommy task for me to fail at(cesarean after 48 hours of labor, had to feed formula after breastfeeding proved too much for my 32A’s)!!
Our 2-1/2 year old daughter Piper is almost completely potty trained. I can’t take much credit I’m afraid - she attends full time daycare and the wonderful ladies there have done most of the dirty work (literally). Though she did pee all over me at the park the other day so I don’t feel like I’m missing out. She had absolutely no interest in it until recently when we started all out bribery (books and little toys) and I bought a pack of day-of-the-week undies with cute little animals on them. We are so proud of her and she is extremely proud of herself and I’m amazed at how grown up she seems to me sometimes - and then she starts whining because she can’t pull up her pants by herself and I’m back to reality.