i can poo in the potty...

Let me be honest, it was my idea to start potty training for senior – that’s Yudhi our 4-year-old for you. The wife said, to give her credit, said again and again that there was no need to rush him in and he would learn when the time was right. But being a father and being from India, where potty training used to start even before little children learn to walk, I always had a quirk inside me that he must start, and that he must start now.

How can you teach something to a newbie? Well, you can teach them traditionally, where you speak to them, tell them, and they understand and follow you. So I did that. The wife bought a “potty” book that explained the “business” in children’s terms and contexts. The wife bought a colourful plastic potty which “magically” played music when potty or “peepee” dropped inside. The wife also bought a “baby” toilet seat which could be fitted on top of an adult toilet seat to accommodate the tiny backside of senior (and hopefully junior when the time comes).

I tried the teaching method and nothing worked. Yudhi could recite the rhyming words from the potty book without rhyming the meaning behind. He would become stressed and I would leave him and his pottying in diaper habits alone for a while.

Then I tried the “see and copy” methodology. Not that he had not see the wife or me on the potty before, but I made it an emphasis now to let it be known that each sitting was the best time of my day. I could read, I could finish sudoku puzzles, I could draw, I could write poetry and such. So much was the extent of my role play that I started enjoying my potty time even more than I was hoping my son would. But all this role play also never had any impact…on the other hand, one day, Yudhi told me in no uncertain terms that he would only potty on the potty when he was 16-years-old. I realized that I had been stressing the poor boy too much and decided to leave him alone till he was ready to do his business the way we wanted him to.


Yudhi in the "hot" seat


Two weeks later, one night just before bed time, he jumped up…”I want nappy, nappy…quick, poo-poo is coming,” I asked him, “You want to try the big potty?” Whatever the thought in his head, whatever the reason that made him say yes, I wouldn’t know (but hope that all my role-playing or teaching may have made some impact after all) but just that one yes from his side was all he needed to be potty trained.

Luckily all the props were already there. He lowered his pajamas, and underwear, placed his Winnie-the-pooh! toilet seat on top of the normal seat, and plonked himself on it. He looked at me with a half-unsure plead to leave him alone. And as I left the bathroom, I heard sounds of success plopping down in the waters and my mouth lifted upwards in a smile and my chest swelled with an unknown pride when I dashed to the bedroom to inform the wife.