Hop Aboard the Potty Train

I have to thank my son, age two and calling himself "Um" at the time, for the title to this post. I was listing his friends, attempting to invoke a little peer pressure, "Jay's potty trained and Amy's potty trained, and Sam is potty trained...". To which he answered, "Um wants to be on the potty train!"

And so he did board, one month before his third birthday. Not because he had a ticket, but because I ran out of diapers the night before Thanksgiving. There was just no way on earth I was going to enter a store the day before Thanksgiving for a child who could already change his own diapers. I'd like to say it was some kind of awesome parenting on my part that I can count his total "accidents" on one hand, but I'm pretty sure it was more of a fluke.

In any case, between my own two kids and five years of teaching preschool, I figure I can technically claim to have been potty training children for seven (albeit nonconsecutive) years. I've noticed a few things and occasionally give out advice, including the following:

The biggest and most typical problem parents face is power struggle. If and when kids figure out that you have a vested emotional interest in one of the few areas of their lives they can control, you're in big trouble. Nothing delays potty training like a child noticing their bodily functions are a constant topic of conversation. If you feel anger or find the topic taking up more than its fair share of your gray matter, it's time to take a step back and try again in a few weeks or a month. It's their poop and children WILL win if they decide to dig in those heels.

Pull-ups: more expensive yet less convenient than diapers. I can almost guarantee that your child's preschool teacher wishes your family would skip this step. The toddlers and preschoolers are evidentially not watching enough Pull Ups commercials to realize that fancy expensive diapers are supposed to make them feel like big kids. The preschool teachers treat them just like diapers, except that if a child poops, teachers are likely to have to remove their pants, shoes, and socks instead of just a diaper.

When to switch to underwear: when your child has some control and you have some patience. Most parents know the physical signs of readiness on the part of the child. The only thing I want to add is that it is just as necessary for the adults to be emotionally ready. Make friends with the washing machine first and foremost and try saying "Oops! We'll have to wash that!" with as little rancor as possible a few times before you even begin.

When to switch to underwear at preschool: After your child has been successful for a week or two at home, he or she is ready to come to preschool sporting underwear. Children are successful sooner in their comfort zone, so it makes the most sense to start at home.
Sitting or standing? If you're the one who has to clean the toilet...well, let's just say I know a women who asks not only her boys but also her husband to sit. At my preschool we have child sized toilets not to mention janitors, so it really and truly makes no difference. At home you might want to consider whether your child is tall enough to stand and how stable he feels if he does stand on a stool.

Fear: I have a child afraid of the potty almost every year. There's the precarious position, the scary sound, the water which looks much deeper to a child who may not be able to swim. I've had a parent ask me every year if I think their child is afraid because he or she has been traumatized or is suffering somehow. To me chances seem slim. The potty can just be a scary place. Try offering to flush after your child has left the bathroom.Bribery: This is supposed to be a no-no, but y'know, sometimes it works. Smaller bribes seem to work on occasion, but the more successful bribes usually go something like, "You'll get a huge kitchen set for Christmas if you poop in the potty." It's winds up escalating what is probably already a power struggle, but if you have the means and your kids aren't that stubborn, maybe it's for you.
With just a small change in semantics, bribery can turn to the Premack principle, otherwise known as "grandma's rule", a perfectly acceptable form of parenting. This is the ole' "As soon as ______ happens, _______ will happen."

Bribery: If you clean up your toys, I'll take you to the park.
Premack principle: As soon as you're done picking up your toys, we can go to the park!
Bribery: If you poop on the potty, I'll give you a cookie.
Premack principle: After you sit on the potty, you can have a cookie."
See how the Premack principle assumes that mission will be accomplished while the bribery sort of has an element of begging? Done with the consistency and without negative emotion, the Premack principle can be a friend in more areas than just toileting, as opposed to bribery which will always feel like bribery.

Note that "You can't go to the park unless you pick up your toys!" or "You can't have a cookie unless you poop on the potty!" turns the situation away from presumed compliance and back toward coerciveness.

One family who had been involved in a power struggle of ridiculous proportions had their problem solved when summer came around. I'm not sure if dad presented this using the Premack principle or if it was more of a natural consequences type thing. After months of struggle, Joey was potty trained seemingly overnight when told that the local pool did not let children swim in diapers.

Of course you want to ask your pediatrician if things seem to have gone awry, but generally the more relaxed you are about potty training, the better it will go. So to speak. Good luck!

Back to the silliness

I've managed to accidentally see a couple forgettable movies this year which I could probably count on one hand if I could just remember what they were. But last weekend my brother David recommended that I watch a movie on purpose.

We were discussing the infinite gory details of my week which had been one of those in which enough little things go wrong to make any one of them seem like a big deal, otherwise known as "being pecked to death by chickens". Concerned for my emotional health, David asked, "What are you going to do this weekend?" I thought resting to get rid of my cold a reasonable goal.

"On Saturday I'm going to mope. Sunday I'll teach Sunday school and then eat dinner at Aunt Lynne's." My brother in his infinite wisdom decided that an entire day devoted to moping might be a bit much.

"I could watch TV..." I volunteered. "Watching TV indiscriminately can be really depressing." He recommended that I rent a movie. "It will lend direction to your moping."

I doubted Blockbuster would carry either of the movies I've been wanting to see: You See Me Laughing or Be Here to Love Me. There was a third possibility too, a probably obscure documentary on Texas singer songwriters, the name of which I couldn't remember.

David emailed me to say that I had been correct on the unavailability of my preferred movies. In reality, a documentary probably offers less in the way of escape than fiction anyway, and perhaps especially a documentary about a manic depressive alcoholic musician.

Instead my brother recommended Secretary, which he described as "a great and weirdly romantic movie about a woman recently released from a mental hospital after treatment for self-mutilating tendencies and her new job as secretary for a successful attorney with a tendency toward angry disapproval." He's pretty sure he took that description from Netflix, but not surprisingly I don't have Netflix, so the verdict is still sort of out on that point.

I headed to Blockbuster: "Where do I find Secretary?" "The drama section." "Drama?!?! I'm not sure I actually need any more drama..." Shortly after I arrived home my friend Laurie came over and we started the movie. I explained that I always took my brother's advice in as much as I am able, but that I was wary this time, because the movie sounded depressing. "Oh no!" Laurie explained, "I like depressing movies. They make my life seem more normal!"

Obviously this is not a kid friendly movie. Even if you HAVE been looking for just the opportunity to discuss self mutilation and/or submission to men with your kids, this is probably not the discussion starter you're looking for. Unless of course your plan is actually to promote self mutilation, because for the main character in this movie self mutilation seems to serve a purpose, albeit a sort of disturbing one.

I learned a lot from this movie, or more to the point from discussing this movie with Laurie. This is what happens when you spend just over half your adult life married: you find out from a friend that the characters in disturbing movies are almost sort of semi-normal. You also find out that all kinds of other things that sound totally off the wall are almost sort of semi-semi normal, but that's beside the point.

All in all, I think both David and Laurie were right. It ends up being a decent sort of escape, because although neither character in the movie really has any positive personality traits, they end up "happily ever after" despite or even because of their particular bundle of issues. It's the type of movie that ends with "See? The both of them are a couple of freaks and yet they're happy within their lunacy or perhaps even because of it. I look like incredibly sane and positively well adjusted compared to them. I had no idea I was solid as a rock!

Just the date (the calendar date that is)

I was all set to press publish the normal laughing at life's absurdities last night when I found midnight had passed me by unnoticed. I'm sort of torn between not posting at all today which fits in well with my "no crying on this blog" attitude and my inability to keep quiet. I figure the best compromise might be to keep it short (also a near impossibility for me).

To that end I'm only going with only my most poignant memory of 9/11. I was teaching first grade (six and seven year olds) in public school at the time. On the actual day our instructions had been not to breath a word of what was happening to the children. There's a balance, I think, between what my daughter's school did (turned on the news for the six year olds to watch) and stonewalling the obvious hysteria, but I've promised brevity...

The following morning we were allowed to discuss what had happened during class time, the assumption being that their parents had already had their shot at providing comfort and explanations as they saw fit. The children didn't have many questions. In fact, only one hand went up. "Was it on purpose?" I will never forget their collective gasp at my answer- the sound of an entire classroom of children having their hopes dashed at once.

Need some overpriced crap?

Need any overpriced crap? Because my kids, like children the nation over, are selling it for school. If you happen to be related to my children, you're supposed to feel obligated to nod yes and dig into your wallet.

If you have kids in public school or are related to children in public school, perhaps you're already the proud owner of 7,432 square feet of reversible wrapping paper. Or maybe you merely have magazine subscriptions that don't run out until the year 2126.

Private schools don't escape either. I've already sent home two fund raisers with my preschoolers and the school year has barely begun.

Getting into why or how we have decided that it's a great idea for our five year olds to sell garbage to their relatives and neighbors to help finance their education is probably a stretch for this relatively carefree blog, so I figured I'd just settle for making fun of some of the items my son is currently selling:

As if the shoes weren't ugly enough, now you can have a mini crock that is "perfect for holding your cell phone"...because just setting it directly on the table would assault the senses and all.

For the record, I fully appreciate the practicality and durability of crocs. They make excellent camp shoes. I just don't happen to want one for my coffee table.

Here's a mug for $9 and two plastic magnets for $8. These are worth it, I'm sure.

I'm not actually a big Disney person, but even if I were, I'd have to be a serious collector to buy this $20 timer:


Since I'll need to buy something, it might be this thing. It would go nicely in my purse with the all purpose tool, would replace my lost allen wrenches and it's probably only double what it would cost at Academy:

Here's an inspirational notepad. For a mere $7.50 you can have some 4 inch square pieces of paper, jot a note or two and then deposit them directly into the trash alongside the rest of the stuff in the catalog. Or you could just skip the middle step:

*****

Didn't I promise I still had plenty of bar bathroom pictures left over from summer? This is my coteacher and one of my best friends in the bathroom at Sliders. Unbeknownst to me she'd been waiting to make an appearance on my blog for awhile now. The bathroom at Sliders is pretty clean, and like the rest of Sliders, well lit. Perhaps a little too well lit in the bar itself, but you can never have enough lighting in a bathroom:

Sliders main selling point, though, is not necessarily the bathroom but the fact that it's a great place for dogs to drink while they look out the window forlornly:

*****

On other dog related topics, lunch room conversations today focused on what foreign objects whose dog had eaten and pooped out, up to and including socks, pantyhose, and a fleece blanket.

Generally speaking I can chew, swallow, digest, and even manage to enjoy my lunch during all types of poop, blood, vomit and other biological discussions, but this one for some reason seemed a little unappetizing.

I'm continually telling my son he needs to toughen up a little and not let one little comment ruin an entire meal. He should really sit in on a preschool teacher lunch sometime.