The Pirate Seat

Potty training is a fact of life for any parent. At some point, you are forced to spend hundreds of hours trying to get your child to use a toilet. You talk with other parents to get advice. You beg, and bribe your child to use the potty. Potty training consumes your existence. And for a working mother, you feel unusual pressure because at some point, your daycare provider will not let your child advance classrooms, if s/he is not potty trained. And so - you feel like you fail if your child can't advance with his classmates.

My husband and I were lucky with our first two - Matthew potty trained at 16 months thanks to the Sandra Broyton books which I can proudly say I can now recite without looking (I may not know a lick of Shakespeare, but I do a mean rendition of Snuggle Puppy...), Emme self-trained. One day she announced "no more diaper" and that was it. But, Nicholas was a different story. I have never had two kids in diapers at the same time, and so it was with that Nicholas had to be potty trained before Lucas was born. And so we began the routine with Nicholas like we had with Matthew - put the potty ring on the toilet, get a book, and let him do his business while we read to him.

But, Nicholas is not Matthew as I quickly learned the first time I had him on the toilet and he promptly throws his hands in the air and announces "tah dah" as he begins to pee ... promptly spraying me, the book and the wall. This was not going to be easy. And so it was for months as my husband and I tried to potty train Nicholas. He was willing to use the toilet - he just got overly impressed with himself anytime he did anything. But, one thing he picked up on early was the fact that when you are on the toilet, you always had company.

So - he took it upon himself to make sure that anytime I had to use the toilet, he would join me with a book in hand. Like most Moms, I thought this was unbelievably cute until I realized that I would never have a moment to myself if I didn't get him out of the bathroom. I started to tell him that I needed privacy. But that didn't deter Nicholas. No matter what I said or did, Nicholas would not give me privacy. He would acknowledge my privacy - "okay Mommy privacy" in his two year old speak - but, he would never leave me alone. And then it happened, one day Nicholas asked for privacy in the bathroom and while I would not have advocated for leaving a 2 year old alone on the toilet - I thought this was the only way to get him to leave me alone in the bathroom. I headed for the door. And as I was about to leave, Nicholas got upset. So, I stayed and we read. This cycle has continued for a couple weeks now - he would ask for privacy, I'd try to leave, he'd get upset, so I stay. I couldn't figure it out. But, I chalked it up to Nicky being 2 and not understanding what privacy meant --- until today - when I took him to the bathroom at church.

"Nicky go on the toilet" " "No". No? No? What does he mean "No?" - he's been wearing underwear now for almost four months - why was he refusing to get on the toilet? We've been in this bathroom dozens of times before - why he is acting up now? So I resort to begging and bribing Nicholas to get on the toilet. I stopped just shy of offering him a pony - when he
decided to get on the toilet. I was relieved, but also curious as to why he didn't want to get on it before when I asked. "Nicky, how come you didn't want to sit on the toilet before" - and he looks at me with his big, bold eyes and tells me "Nicky wanted to sit on the 'pirate seat' just like Mommy. Mommy says 'I need pirate seat' when she goes potty. Nicky wanted pirate seat, too." And so it was at that moment, that I realized that it wasn't the two year old that needed a definition of privacy but his Mom ... AARRGHHH.