Don't Worry About It

Paloma is two and half years old.  If you have children this age or remember those days, the answer is yes, we are in the midst of potty training. 

I don’t think it’s hard but it is fraught with high hopes and frequent disappointments.  Right now in our household Paloma, Suzette and I devote a lot of time and attention to body waste.  We talk about poop, we read about poop and we think about it.  Poop in our house is a remarkable thing.  If Paloma is around she likes to participate in any visits to the bathroom.  She has appointed herself the Official Family Flusher.  If Suzette or I should inadvertently flush our own toilet, it causes a family crisis and requires a retake and apologies. When she flushes the toilet, she checks it and comments on our product.   “Daddy made big poop.” 

Paloma has her own pink potty which she likes to sit on bare bottomed and watch television or set it up at the sliding glass doors to the veranda and watch the world outside, her legs spread and her feet up on the window.    Even though we’re on the sixth floor of an apartment building, we’ve told her this is something she may want to stop doing in a few years.  It’s OK for now. 

Paloma has pooped in the potty now and again.  She often pees in the potty, in fact more often in the last few days.  We’re still celebrating each event.  At her daycare we’re told she does use the toilet and pees and poops in it, though not all the time. 

All of this effort is with the understanding that when she is ready to use the toilet on a regular basis, she will.  What we do before is just practice and shouldn’t be rushed or pushed, encouraged but not to make too big a deal of it.  Everything positive, no trauma.

Paloma is good about telling us when she has pooped but she doesn’t like to be interrupted while she’s doing it and she particularly doesn’t like to have her diaper changed.  A year or so ago she had problems with constipation.  It took us awhile to get past it.  A small daily dose of stool softener recommended by the pediatrician has taken care of it.  But there for awhile she was having considerable trouble around bowel movements and her little bottom was sore.  The whole process of pooping, cleaning her up and changing her was difficult and she would cry through it. 

These troubles left their mark.  She’s better now but for awhile she would tense up when cleaning her after a poop.  It was hard, accompanied with tears and required overcoming her resistance to opening her legs.  So even today she doesn’t like having her poopy diapers changed.

This last Sunday I smelled a familiar and pungent odor as she passed by me.  “Did you poop your pants?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. 

“Should Daddy change your pants?”  I asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, in an excellent Tony Soprano impersonation. 

Suzette and I are sure by the time Paloma starts junior high, she will be potty trained.  It will happen.  Maybe even soon, but in the meantime,    “Don’t worry about it.”