Let’s Get the Potty Started!

K.,

My Better Half and I have started potty-training Kai and Leo, two boys who are quite content to soil their diapers rather than do their business in a plastic potty in the kitchen. We’re trying not to let this deter us.  Some milestone needs to be reached by their second birthday next week besides the ability to walk, right?!  They don’t talk yet, so we might as well focus on bowel control. It’s something for which Leo, in particular, seems to have no talent. It’s like that kid INVENTED pooping.

We routinely spend half an hour each morning with Leo diaperless in the kitchen, putting him on the potty, bribing him with chocolate chips, and throwing ticker tape parades if something should happen to land in the plastic bowl. Usually nothing happens, except a lot of excited pointing and exclamations of “Poop!” Yes, Leo, that’s where poop goes. How about you put one of your many daily poops in it? “No,” he informs us, as he flees bare-bottomed into the carpeted living room. Thus, with great resignation and trepidation, we diaper him. Moments later he, you guessed it, poops.

Kai is a bit more wily. To great fanfare and treats he accidentally pooped once in the potty, but he usually won’t sit on it long enough to reproduce those first heady results. He will, however, produce three molecules of pee to earn a few chocolate chips. He will never ask to sit on the potty to avoid peeing in his diaper, but when given an opportunity to receive a bribe, Kai can manage a wee wee-wee.

I don’t know how you feel about bribing children, but we had great results with this method when potty-training Jamie. Some parents don’t agree with using candy as a motivator for influencing their child’s behavior. I personally think those parents must have a secret diaper-changing fetish. I realize we’re on a long and stinky road by starting this process so early. If parenting is war, then this bout of potty-training is only a battle. Leo and Kai may be packin’ heat, but I’m armed with M&M’s. And I know, sooner or later sugar always wins.

Don’t be so melodramatic, Leo. It’s a potty, not an electric chair.

A.