Getting Real With Veronica Ibarra

From poopy diapers to clogged toilets this potty training thing isn’t going quite like I had been foolishly led to believe. I have two kids. Just two, but my 3 year old is still in pull-ups resisting the big boy underwear and screaming at any attempt to put him on the potty. My 7 year old does use the potty, but for some reason I cannot seem to counteract, believes in the excessive use of toilet paper resulting in a clogged toilet at least once a week.

Once you actually get the kid from the diaper to the potty, I thought that was it.  My daughter was relatively easy as they say girls can be.  She transitioned so easily from diapers to potty that very little was required of me to facilitate it other than buying a training potty, which she used all of three times before deciding that she was a big girl like mommy. Now, I didn’t gloat about it to any other mother that was complaining how their kids were being difficult, but I didn’t really understand. With my son, I understand. I’m talking tears of understanding. I’ll join any mother in the misery of potty training blues.

But it doesn’t stop there. Not only am I fighting (or not, trying to allow him his own adjustment time) to potty train my resistant son, but I’m finding that there is way more to do once they are on the potty. Once they learn to hold their pee to make it to the potty the next lesson in potty training begins: teaching your kid how to wipe.  This lesson isn’t so quickly or willingly learned.

Apparently, I took for granted that wiping was an innate skill or something, but let me tell you, it isn’t. Wiping is a skill that must be taught.  For girls this is a directional issue as much as it is about the appropriate paper wad to do the job. Wiping after a pee took a little work, but that was nothing compared to the after-poopy wiping.

“You want me to do WHAT?”

That was my daughter’s reaction when I started encouraging her to handle things herself. Gradually I started leaving her in the bathroom, which resulted in her yelling, “Mommy! I’m done! Can you wipe my butt?” I will admit that once or twice or more I left her there for five minutes or so yelling at me. All the while I kept grumbling to myself, I thought potty training meant I was done wiping butt.

Well, once I was done wiping butt I became a plumber. It isn’t any more fun than changing poopy diapers, or wiping butt. Poopies are disgusting. No big revelation there. However, for my daughter this means that there must be extra toilet paper used to deal with it. You can guess where that leads.

I look forward to the day that she is no longer clogging toilets, or at least learns how to handle that herself too. I want to believe that will be a great day, but did I mention my son? When will it end? Do I have to wait until they go off to college? Sigh. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this part?