Toilet training is shit....literally.

Toilet training is a nightmare and something that you just keep putting off until you just can’t put it off any longer. Unless of course you have been lifting your child’s bum in the air since day dot over the toilet and encouraging them to faecal drop! Who has the time or energy? People do it though just like some people communicate to their children via sign language for the first months of their lives. Personally I’m a little old fashioned and prefer to wait until my baby can actually talk and think for themselves! Not that I’m criticising other peoples’ parenting choices. That’s a lie. I am but surely you should enjoy the pure innocence of those first few months. A baby relies on you for everything- that’s the point. They already have a system of communicating- it’s called crying and some babies are very good at it. Not all cries are the same and that’s what you have to figure out as the parent. Much easier than sign language I would imagine!

Dear Reader I have completely digressed! They say that the ideal age for toilet training is two for girls and three for boys. Of course your mum will tell you that you personally and every sibling you have was out of nappies by the age of two. Maybe you were but that’s because you probably weren’t in disposables so the incentive to get out of all that washing was huge. Also who could be bothered with the pins- good job disposables exist otherwise my two would look like they have regular acupuncture sessions!

Son number one was three and a half before the nappies came off for the last time. He was a nightmare to train, I tried star charts, blackmail and letting him run around naked (at home I will point out). He would go to kinder in underpants and not use the toilet from nine to five. They would put him on the toilet but he just refused to go and then on the way from kinder collection to the car park he would always wet his pants. It was infuriating and I felt that the whole process was souring our relationship because I knew he could do it. Eventually, I just bit the bullet and put him in underpants all the time. It took just three days for him to realise that I wouldn’t give in like I had before. He is a very stubborn child or as my husband likes to point out “just like his mummy.”

 They can regress though as we found out on a recent holiday. Imagine the scene, we’re at lunch with the in-laws and we’ve just started our second bottle of wine(okay we’re not going to win parents of the year). We thought Jake had been playing with another little girl when we saw him waving his arms about as if swatting flies. On closer inspection we noticed that there was something on the floor, this something was making people move tables! Jake had done a steaming turd in the middle of the restaurant that had not been caught by his boardies. Oh the shame, thankfully we were so anaesthetised by the wine! We proceeded in dragging him back to the room with poo squishing down his legs….no photos of that holiday experience! It will become a funny little childhood tale that will be told at countless milestone events and to any girl or boy he happens to date in the future!