This is a little something I wrote when I was potty-training my son. I was re-reading it because I need to start training my daughter. I figure there are at least a trillion potty-training nightmare stories out there, so I though I’d share mine in hopes that you would share yours.
I haven’t written in a while because I’ve been busy potty training. Yikes, that is time-consuming and I’m happy to report we’re in the home stretch. It’s the most wonderful thing ever. I’m only changing one set of diapers. I feel like I’ve been given a gift from god.
I read that a major hurdle in potty training is initiation. This means that the child initiates going to the potty as opposed to me or his father dragging him down the hall to the potty. Or tricking him or bribing him or any of the other subversive techniques we came up with. So we were really looking forward to the day when our son initiated.
I didn’t quite picture it the way it happened. We were on one of our weekly trips to McDonald’s, which are very important to my sanity. Thank heavens for McDonald’s, that’s my parenting motto. They can keep a kid happily busy for at least an hour. There is nothing more precious to a parent than a worn-out child.
McDonald’s is where my son chose to initiate. And when I say he initiated, I mean that he dropped his pants, pulled down his underwear and started walking towards the bathroom, while yelling “I have to go wee-wee” at the top of his lungs. We were in the playroom which was on the opposite end of the restaurant from the bathroom. I had to run across the room with McNaked while praising him for letting me know and trying not to give him a complex about dropping trou in the middle of McDonald’s. I also had to carry the baby.
McDonald’s employees have likely seen customers drop their pants in the restaurant before. Some of perpetrators probably weren’t even children. I don’t think the two teenage boys at the table beside the had ever seen a weenie flapping in the air at a restaurant before. I think one of them might have choked. I noticed they had left a few minutes later.
Happily, we made it to the bathroom on time which is the only thing I really cared about. He dropped his pants and ran out into the hall at the pediatricians office a few days later. That was a few weeks ago and he hasn’t done it since. Hopefully, he won’t run around without his pants again until college.
