Tomorrow is a big day in this household. My wife and I, having returned ten days early from our international adventures, decided to use the week of quarantining with our toddler to tackle potty training.
Basically, this means that we’ll be hanging out with a tiny nudist for a week or so trying to guess when it’s go time.
As first time mamas, we’re more than a little bit daunted by this challenge. I’m not super jazzed about spending the next few days wiping pee off my floor, and I can’t even imagine the grosser aspects of the whole process. I’m the kind of person who likes things clean; I believe there is a single correct way to make the bed or load the dishwasher. Adjusting to the ongoing storm of living with a toddler has been hard enough without adding new, um, elements.
All that aside, though, this is actually not about me. It’s about my kiddo learning a new skill. He’s going to be learning a new level of awareness to his body and its functions, deepening his relationship to his physical self. I want to make sure that this deepening is positive and that his relationship to his body is one of love and admiration.
When I was a kid, I had trouble learning to use the potty. I was a bed-wetter until a pretty late age, and I had a lot of trouble remembering to go to the bathroom during the day as well. In hindsight…
