Potty Training

Potty Training

My youngest son, Matthew, is approaching three years old and the wife and I are ready to go full throttle with his potty training. He already goes pee on the toilet when he wants, but the concept of pooping in it is totally alien to him. He’s seen his brothers and sister do it but the idea of him doing it just doesn’t register. He’s perfectly happy getting the one on one attention that comes with changing his diaper.

We used the reward system with the triplets and it worked really well. Every time they pooped on the potty they received an M&M (Nestles Smarties to those outside the USA). At first my son Joseph didn’t quite understand how the system worked. We told him that every time he pooped in the potty he’d get an M&M. So he would poop in his diaper, walk to the toilet, take off his diaper and dump the contents in. Then he would demand his prize.

It all seemed perfectly right to him. He had fulfilled all the requirements, the poop was in the potty. It took a little while but he eventually got it.

I’m told by other families that the Cherios method works too. They throw a couple of Cherios in the crapper and the boy stands there and does target practice, peeing them under the water.

The most bizarre and funny case of potty training in our house happened when my wife decided that she wanted to train our cat, Chanel, to use the toilet. This was before the kids.

Chanel was our beautiful, extremely feminine , black white and gray, long haired cat. If she had a human counterpart, that human would’ve been Blanch DuBois from “Streetcar Named Desire”. She was delicate in every way, very affectionate and really did rely on the kindness of strangers. Her most endearing quality was her silent mewing.

She would purr and open her mouth to meow but never actually make the sound. It was as if someone turned off the volume. God she was beautiful.

Back to the story. Shannon, my wife, bought this contraption that fit on top of the toilet seat. You were supposed to sprinkle some kitty litter, not a lot but just enough, to give the cat the idea it was supposed to go there. Eventually, after the cat used it a few times, you would tear off a tab and create a hole that would now let the cat poop into the toilet. I told my wife it was ridiculous. Chanel agreed.

She refused to use it. Every time she walked into the bathroom where her litter box used to be and saw the new setup, she would raise her nose, stick up her tail and proudly walk out. This went on for days. She held it for days. Boy was she stubborn.

Then, finally, she walked into the kitchen and meowed, loudly. My wife and I were surprised and looked at her. She turned and started to walk but would stop and look to make sure we were following. We did, we followed her all the way to the bathroom. She stopped, her ears went down, a low, guttural, growl emerged from her such as we’d never heard. She leapt at the kitty toilet cover grasping it in her teeth and violently ripped at it, whipping her head back and forth, until it lay, shredded, in pieces, on the bathroom floor. Then she lifted her nose in the air, perked up her fluffy tail and walked out, past us.

I immediately put back her litter box.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Life, My Kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.