Potty Training Samantha
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.