Today I stumbled upon potty training. I use the word stumbled because that is what actually happened. For the past few weeks Jonah has been asking to go to the toilet and I have been desperately trying to ignore his pleas. I am not ready for this. It is so much easier to put a nappy on a child than to have to take spare clothes everywhere and constantly ask them if they need a wee. Then there are the accidents, which in the case of a certain boy of mine, are sometimes not quite accidental. However, this morning we had a morning at home so I decided to take off the nappy and see what would happen. An experiment.
To my utter dismay, Jonah took to it like a fish to water (excuse the pun). Never have I begun potty training to have the child say on the first day "Mum, need a wee". Both other times we had wet patches (and worse) all over the floor, and little pairs of pants lining the radiators ready to be weed in again. This success, unfortunately for me, meant that I had to carry on with my 'little experiment'.
The most irritating part was the obsession with the whole toileting process. Having never been allowed in the toilet before (not IN the toilet, before anyone makes a silly joke), it has been very exciting and Jonah has spent most of the day hopping on and off the toilet, flushing it, wiping various body parts with toilet roll and washing hands rather vigorously. Then once I have finally managed to extract him from the most exciting part of the house he asks again "Mum, need a wee". At one point, I left him to it because I couldn't bear to watch him splashing water all over the floor yet again. After a few minutes of what I thought was OCD hand washing, he shouted me "Mum! Look!" I went in expecting to discover a mess, a puddle of wee or worse but what I actually found was a poo in the toilet! Not on the floor, not all over the seat, not smeared everywhere, but in the toilet! It made me realise that perhaps my reservations about potty training are because of all the difficulties we have had with the aforementioned child, and I shouldn't expect Jonah to be the same as him. He is a different child, and will be different to potty training. Perhaps I should not expect the worst....
Of course, it is all early days and anything could happen. Maybe today's successes were just a fluke. Only time will tell. There was a difficult moment when we arrived home from school and all 3 needed the toilet at the same time though.....
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