Potty Training Dashiell

Potty Training Dashiell

This is not an essay for people who have the luxury of getting "grossed out" by frank discussions about bodily secretions. If you have never had kids or have never been a teenaged boy, this may not be something for you to read. That said, let's begin.
Parenting is that period of life when you spend huge amounts of thought, energy, and time being obsessed with bodily functions. Teenage boys pass through a certain amount of training for parenthood when they become intrigued by burps, poop, and other noises, etc., that disgust and dismay the girls they know. Watch out, ladies, there will be a real need for this knowledge when you have kids of your own! Ask any new parent, and they will tell you that for the beginning two years of a child's life, the first question out of a doctor's mouth when you take your kid in for a checkup or for sickness will be, "How many times a day has he had a dirty diaper?", closely followed by, "How many times has he pooped today?" Men always know the answer. One of the great God-given instincts that men have is knowing about their infant's poop. They have been waiting for years for their early fascination with such matters to pay off. When they have kids, they get to show off their special knowledge in this crucial area. They used to have to hide somewhere to talk about poop and gas; now DOCTORS are consulting them about it.
Well, Dashiell was 18 months old and would pat the lid of our toilet and lift his shirt. I assumed he wanted to potty train. One day, I plopped him on the toilet, holding him carefully so his skinny bottom wouldn't fall in, and lo and behold, he did what every mother hopes for from the day they are born - he went potty in the toilet! Mothers wait longingly for two milestones, sleeping through the night and the completion of potty training. They feel that whole worlds could be conquered by them if these two things could be accomplished. So we began our saga. For the next two days, he would sit on the toilet, eke out a few drops, gasp in wonderment, and say, "Done." Then I would wipe him, get him off the toilet, wrestle him back into his diaper, pants, and socks, and the flushing ceremony would begin. He would slam the lid, yank on the handle, reopen the lid, and put his face as close as possible to the swirling water, all the while making loud gasping sounds and saying "Wow! Ooooh!"
Now, I have read from a very reliable source, (Dave Barry) that toilets spray out water as they flush at least up to, like, forty feet. So imagine the germs to be obtained by kissing Dashiell's pudgy cheeks!
This was the first year he was old enough to notice our Christmas tree. My husband and I went out after the boys were in bed, bought a tree, carefully covered it in a not-so-subtle amount of lights, and packed every branch with shiny, sparkly ornaments. The next morning I closed the curtains, turned off all the lights except the ones on the tree, told the boys to expect a surprise, and brought them in to see it. Chase, our four-year-old, gave us the right reaction. He shouted, "Nice tree, mommy and daddy! You guys did a good job!" (Positive reinforcement is big in our family.) Dash, however, ran right past the tree in his rush to get to the T.V. and turn it on. Barely even glanced at the tree. Probably just glad it didn't block the screen. But this child who thinks nothing of a giant Christmas tree suddenly appearing in the night like a glittering, beneficial fungus, positively adores putting his face in our toilet and watching his own you-know-what swirl around and disappear.
After four days, I was ready to give up on the whole potty-training extravaganza. There is only so much time you can spend in a five by seven bathroom with a squealing, squirming toddler before your vocabulary is reduced and the Mommy Mantra takes over. The Mommy Mantra goes something like," No! Don't touch that! Icky! I said Yucky! Stop! No more!Yuck!" It doesn't actually calm anyone down like a mantra should, it just makes the mom think she has some control over what's going on. She doesn't. Sometimes you add a long, drawn out wail, "Oooooooh, Dash! Why did you do that?" I discovered this part of the Mommy Mantra when I went to get some underwear for Dash, leaving him unclothed for about five minutes. I had decided that he was doing so well with his training that he could wear underwear as a reward. So I went to his room, rooted around in his older brother's drawer for something small enough, and came back. During my absence, I pondered how amazing it was that such a young little boy, and so cute, would potty train at such a young age. Not only cute, but quite advanced, and surely destined for greatness. (Yes, I know early potty training is no sure mark of greatness, but we mothers grasp at straws sometimes to keep going.) When I returned to this miracle child, he had pooped up a nice pile on our floor and was carefully smearing the pages of my photo album with it. Right over pictures of his brother and I before Dash was born. Coincidence? Since this genius child didn't really talk yet, we will never know.
I decided to press on, though, and the next day he sat on the toilet for all of his business. I did not have to change one wet or smelly diaper all day, and when I realised this at bed-time I was almost teary-eyed with joy. Everything smelt fresh and clean, the skin wasn't flaking off my hands from excessive handwashing, and my child was once again destined for greatness. The whole smearing of photo albums was a small bump in the road to absolute perfection. My thoughts like this continued into the next day until I realised that Dash wanted to sit on the toilet to pass gas and nothing else. He was exceptionally gassy and so I spent a huge amount of time saying the Mommy Mantra to him in our tiny bathroom, with no real results except lots of wet, smelly diapers and a crick in my back from sitting on the edge of the tub.
I wanted to quit. I feared that my brain would become atrophied from lack of use because of sitting in our bathroom for years on end with a gassy little boy. So we called it quits until four months later, when he suddenly became toilet trained in two days and, except for an accident about once a month, we haven't had a problem since. He has added to the flushing ceremony and now blows kisses at the swirling contents of our toilet, while calling "Bye, Bye!", which is more than his Grandparents get sometimes.
What did I learn from this? That the possibility, just the hazy possibility, of never changing another dirty diaper again until you have Grandkids is enough to keep a reasonably normal, intelligent woman trapped in a tiny bathroom for hours on end and still think it's worth it. I am a woman, after all. My instinct is to run away from poop and poop stories. That's why women do the potty training, though men talk about it. We are trying to escape poop. Instinct. And anyway, you can always send the Grandkids home for changing.