Image Credit: © Mandy Lackey | Potty Training Day 2 (Text added) | CC by 2.0
Jessica is back today with another tale from the parenting front-lines.
If you have every potty trained a child, I know you will relate to this one… The things we do for our kids!!
Read on (you’ll likely be laughing and nodding your head knowingly the whole time), then tell us your most memorable potty training experience. We’d love to hear it.
When my oldest son was three, he went through a charming little phase in which he would use the potty and call everyone in the house to admire his creation. Pretty standard, right?
Then he graduated to “saving” his poops when his daddy was at work so he could appreciate them too. Since my husband worked ten hours at a pop beginning after lunch, and our son had a standing early afternoon potty session, well, you do the math.
At first, we humored him and chalked it up to this whole potty-training chapter of our lives. But after a few restaurant meltdowns, where his grandmother, to my son’s complete dismay, was unable to see the poop he had made in the men’s bathroom, and a few accidental home flushings that resulted in seriously out-of-proportion freak outs, something had to give.
And by something, I mean this poop-saving habit.
The routine usually went something like this: my son would march to the bathroom, trailed by his highly-interested little sister, arrange his little step and potty seat just so, and spend about five minutes singing, playing stationary hide-and-seek with the shower curtain, explaining to our daughter what “big kids” do, and doing his thing.
Then he’d holler, “Mommy, I’m done!” which was his littler sister’s signal to come charging out, squealing her own version of “Momma! Bruder poop! Hurry!”
Then we’d do the wiping ritual and the hand-washing ritual, during which time my son would insist we needed to save his poop for daddy, that this poop was very special and daddy would want to see it, and no, there was really nothing that would change his mind. And believe me, I tried – I once texted a photo of a little turd to my husband. And then we still had to save the damn thing.
One day, we ran through this routine and then, after I weakly agreed to saving another freaking poop, I accidentally flushed it. Because, in my defense, that is what you do with poop.
“Momeeeeee! My poop! My poop! Pooooop!”
He collapsed in a heap next to the toilet, completely inconsolable, while his little sister, immediately grasping the gravity of the situation, peered gravely into the potty and asked repeatedly, “Poop gone? Mommy fwush? Mommy fwush?”
I rushed to explain that daddy had seen his many poops before, that he could make another one for daddy, and that the poop was happy now because it was joining all the other poops in the pipes. But it didn’t matter. There were more tears. Escalated wailing.
There we were, two screaming kids and me jammed in a bathroom, plus the two dogs that had wandered in to see what was up, and I could feel myself losing it. Fast. I snapped at my three-and-half-year old to get over it, that he was too old to be saving poop and we weren’t doing it anymore and I didn’t care how much he cried.
I cringe now, but yeah, that’s what I said.
Eventually, we both calmed down enough for a cuddle and a talk about how big kids didn’t save poop, and besides, poop was really a dirty little thing full of germs, which is why we flush it away and wash our hands afterwards.
It took a few tries, but I knew we were on the right track when I overheard my little boy, from his perch on the potty, explaining to his sister that we wouldn’t be keeping this poop for daddy, but it was okay because he’d seen poop before, and he could even make his own poop if he wanted to see it. Big ones.
More Potty Training Wisdom from MPMK:
Our Go-To Potty Training Tools:
- Our favorite potty
- Our favorite book
- Mattress Protection
- Wet Bags (these are so great for dealing with accidents on-the-go as well as clothes wet from the pool or whatever else. We still keep one with us always!)
The 5 Biggest Potty Training Mistakes
*Post contains affiliate links and is sponsored by Huggies, all opinions are 100% my own.
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