I’ve been getting progressively more worried about the fact that my efforts to potty train my 3yo, Tommy, over the past six months have resulted only in negative progress. When we started, he was willing to sit on his potty once a day while I read a story. Now he runs away screaming when I suggest it. It has turned into a classic power struggle. All the conventional wisdom I’ve picked up from my peers and those “what to expect” books and their ilk has told me to give it a rest. When I told a neighbor I was making an effort to get him sitting on the potty, she said “why bother? There’s no point in trying until he’s ready”. But he will be 4 in less than six months. He is too big to sit comfortably on the potty I bought over a year ago. He has been dry overnight for at least a year and a half. I personally am “ready” to say, fuck this, he has to get out of diapers now.

We went to the big central library the other day and while my two boys zipped around the room and knocked books on the floor, I desperately grabbed a dozen or so books off the potty training shelf, and only had a chance to see what I’d picked up when we got home. I think I checked out just about every picture book there is on the subject, and ironically, Tommy loves them. He just doesn’t seem to make a connection with what’s on the page and his own pee and poop.

Another book I got was called “Diaper Free Before 3”, and I have to say it gave me the jolt I was looking for. This book goes against the grain of most parenting books by advocating early training -- starting to sit the baby on the pot as soon as he or she can sit up, so that they just come to accept it as part of a normal routine. This is the way it has been done for centuries, and still is in most places where plastic diapers aren’t readily available. The author gives some dramatic statistics about the rise in the age of potty training since the availability of disposables, and points out that the notion of delaying the training until the child is “ready” arose at the more or less same time disposables came on the market, and that diaper manufacturers have actively supported this philosophy. She also says that only a decade ago, she had to write prescriptions for diapers for children over 35 pounds. They weren’t usually available on supermarket shelves because they were considered to be medical supplies meant for kids with disabilities. This is also the first book I’ve read on potty training that actually mentions the environmental impact of all those disposable diapers. This honesty makes me trust the author when she says that the idea that toilet training trauma has long term psychological impact is also a myth, and boy do I really need to believe that given the hysteria Tommy displays when I gently tell him it’s potty time.

The course I’ve decided to follow is just to let him go diaper-less, and hopefully the discomfort of peeing and pooping himself will eventually overcome his resistance, because obviously holding him down by force on the potty is still out of the question. I just really, really wish our rented apartment didn’t have wall-to-wall carpeting...Maybe I should invest in some of those products for getting “pet odors” out of carpets? I also wish we had used cloth diapers from the beginning. I thought it was out of the question because we use a laundromat. If only I’d been on hipmama when Tommy was born. Now I know they’re not that scary and impossible. Damn. I feel so angry that we have come to this. Tommy is learning the alphabet song and can name the planets and jump over a skip rope. If I had gotten him used to the potty before he was old enough to resist it, he would never be in the position of being miserable and embarrassed because he has just made a big dump on the floor, poor kid. Wish me luck mamas, please.