It’s been eight days since I changed a diaper.
I was starting to wonder if I should add a new line to my business card touting my specialty – Professional Diaper Changer since 1994.
My youngest child is well on his way to blowing out four candles on his next birthday cake. He can dress himself and insists on fixing his own breakfast, but he steadfastly refused to use a potty chair. When asked, he assured me he would be potty-trained when he was “growed up.”
I wasn’t too concerned about his potty habits when he turned two. I was willing to wait until he was ready. As his third birthday approached, and passed, I admit, I was getting a little worried. My dad was quick to predict my youngest would still be wearing a diaper under his graduation gown. I think he meant high school graduation, not preschool graduation. I wasn’t that worried yet.
For most Americans, the baby boom began after World War II. In my little neck of the woods, the baby boom began several decades later, lasted a year, and produced enough cousins that we’re already saving for the graduation boom 15 years from now. My son was born in the middle of this boom.
On my husband’s side of the family, if you were female, of child-bearing age and your name started with “L,” you were pregnant. Lisa, Loralee, Lesley and Linda all gave birth during our personal baby boom.
On my side of the family, we weren’t as picky about what your name started with. Irene, Jessica, Heidi, Linda, and Irene again, all gave birth to children during the one-year boom. No less than eight cousins were born during the year and by the new millennium, most were well on their way to being potty trained. All of them, that is, except mine.
I was beginning to feel the squeeze, but peer pressure wasn’t putting any pressure on my little one’s bladder habits.
During conversations with my mother, mother-in-law, grandmother and other assorted relatives, I would discover the potty-training progress of the cousins. Irene happily reported she now had one completely trained child. Further investigation proved her “one completely trained child” actually consisted of a 3-year-old who went “number two” in the potty and a 2-year-old who would do “number one” in the potty.
My mother offered lots of helpful advice on potty training.
“Put him on the pot every day,” she’d say. “Remind him.”
She wasn’t the only one. Advice flowed on how to successfully potty-train a toddler. I urged my husband to allow our son to join him in the bathroom. I promoted these bathroom excursions like an elementary teacher promoting a field trip to Water World.
I tried everything – bribery, begging, cajoling, crying, reasoning and pleading. My son had a counter point for every argument I presented. He hadn’t even entered preschool yet, but his life was already on a well-planned schedule. Potty training, he insisted, would arrive when he was as tall as I, after he learned to drive, and before he went to school.
Trips to the store for underwear didn’t perk his interest, not even when we bought NASCAR underwear. Those training pants we bought were great at staying pulled up. It was the pull-down-and-go part that didn’t work. Attempts to let him be “uncomfortable” made everyone in the family uncomfortable except for him. I began to wonder if his legs were plastic and his nose malfunctioned.
In the end, it was my mom’s advice that worked. Well, it was her advice, a trip to the local home improvement store, and a short-lived career change to “weekend warrior.”
It seems our potty-training flunky was extremely interested in the purchase of new tiles for our bathroom floor. He quickly discovered his sisters had a ticket to the best seat in the house to observe the new floor installation.
“Daddy, I have to go to the bathroom,” his sisters would say. It didn’t take him long to put those words to use for himself.
So here I sit. It’s been eight days since I changed a diaper. My son is wearing a pair of NASCAR underwear and my bathroom has a new tile floor. Life is good.
Copyright © 2003 Linda Sherwood
