Paradox Blog

We went to a party at a friend's place. As usual our daughter, Samantha, spent all her time playing with other children and hardly ate anything for dinner. After we went home, she felt hungry. She had some crackers and a cup of milk right before going to bed. I asked her did daddy put her pull-up training pants on for bedtime? She replied with a tone of assurance, "I am potty-trained." I beamed not only at her confidence but thinking only two months ago, we were in the thick of it not knowing how or when would she be potty trained. A year ago, when my daughter was two, it was probably the right time to train her but I was not ready. I followed some parents' advice and started her with regular panties instead of diapers. It was messy and I gave up hoping there would be a better time to start. The better time never came. I tried to reason with my daughter, explaining the concept of potty-train. She replied, "What potty-train? Is it like Thomas (the Tank Engine-a toy train character)." Summer came and past, fall came and past, before you knew it. She's three years old. I started to panic. She's going to start school next fall and almost all schools require the attending children be potty-trained. But I still waited till the harsh winter weather let up a little. I felt ashamed whenever I had to let friends and acquaintances know that she's not potty-trained yet. Some would express surprise, some offered understanding remarks like "you can only do it when she's ready" or "they eventually will be". I found solace in knowing some other parents have children potty-trained when they were well into three years old. But in my heart I knew the key was me, the mother. I had to make up my mind and be persistent about it.

It was mid-February, I had finally recovered from the holiday crunch. I marked the last two weeks of February off and prepared to dig in for the long hall. The first three days were simply wet. There were more misses than hits. A big box of baking soda and a bundle of dry and wet towels came to the rescue whenever a leek happened. The carpet and sofa were covered with wet spots that we would likely to find ourselves sitting in one or stepping on one. I asked the question do you wanna go wee wee almost every half hour. My daughter who has a good sense of humor learned to ask me the same question before I even opened my mouth. Miraculously, starting the fourth day, there were more hits than misses. One day my daughter came to me and said "Wee wee". My immediate reaction was "where", thinking there was a leak. Then I realized, she did not mean she had an accident but that she would like to go to the bathroom. I was ecstatic. Of course, there were still accidents from time to time after that. But to me it was a big hurdle jumped over. She goes to a half-an-hour "just for fun" ballet class every week. Our ritual was: I would make sure she went to the bathroom before we left the house and I would ask her again after her half-an-hour class. This particular day, we left our house a bit earlier than usual. She did go to the bathroom before we left. After her class, I asked whether she needed to go to the bathroom. She said she already did and her underpants were dry. I was puzzled until I found out she had asked the dance instructor to take her to the bathroom during class. I was impressed since first of all, I had not teach her to go to the teacher for help thinking the class was so short. Secondly, we speak mostly Mandarin at home and she managed to communicate her needs successfully. She is much more in control than I gave her credits to. Pooh-pooh training seemed a lot easier, since we can always tell when she's straining herself. When that happened, we would just pick her up and run for the bathroom. Almost the same time she learned to tell us she needed to go wee-wee, she learned to warn us of her going pooh-pooh. Now I am a proud parent, whenever I need to take her to the bathroom outside our home. I am in the same league as all those parents who had successfully trained their children. "What's that smell" Samantha asked. Well, you can never rely on the cleanliness of a public bathroom. "I wanna go wee-wee at home. We have a bathroom at home." she said. "But honey, we are not going home for another hour." I replied. "It's smelly. I don't like smelly." she whined. Well, I guess I have only moved on to the next level of the parenting game.