And yes, we have failed.
Rewind to when Alex was about two. I was Skyping a friend of mine in India, a mother of two, and the subject of potty training came up. She expressed disbelief that Alex still wasn’t potty trained. Apparently most babies in India are potty trained before the age of one. They get them into a routine after meals from when they start solids, and then it just becomes second nature to them as they get older. I started to panic and immediately started searching online, and discovered, to my relief, that two and a half was what the Internet chorus seemed to recommend as the best time to start training. Phew, off the hook for six more months. I heard the small but insistent voice in the back of my head though, nagging me: “The earlier the better. You are SO going to regret this.” I chose to ignore it.
We always had an excuse to put it off a little more. Oh, we’re going away. Oh, we have visitors. Oh, he’s got a cold. Because, of all the things to be experienced in this adventure of being a parent, potty training was the thing I dreaded the most. It seemed like there were two camps of toddlers. The ones who took to it naturally and quickly, without needing to be ‘trained’ at all, and the ones who put their parents through hell. I had an inkling which experience we would have. I definitely didn’t want Alex to still be in a nappy at the age of four, but I wasn’t exactly eager to begin the process that would lead to nappy-free bliss.
Eventually, though, after yet another bout of questioning from his grandparents, we bought the underwear and potty, and commenced. It didn’t start well. After a day of him peeing in his pants and of us cleaning floors, we persuaded each other to call it off. Alex wasn’t ready, and neither were we.
We started again a few weeks later, with his nursery doing the same. Right at the start, there was an epic accident on the sofa and an equally epic telling off which demoralised me, but this seemed to then set off a smooth transition to the routine of him peeing in his potty regularly. He even did number two sometimes in the toilet. We patted ourselves on our backs, thinking we were clearly on our way.
But then, slowly but surely, we realised we had a constipation problem. He had been constipated before, so the first few runs of this (no pun intended) we blamed on dropping the ball when it came to making sure he had enough fibre, liquids and exercise.
It became apparent, however, that it wasn’t just about his diet and physical activity. We had been vigilant as hawks with regards to those things over a few weeks, and still he was constipated. It just didn’t make sense.
Then while I was reading about toddler constipation and toilet training, I came across a line that toddlers should not be berated or punished if they go in their pants. And of course, we had, repeatedly. It had worked with peeing; surely it would be the same with pooing, was how the thinking went.
You’d think at this point that we’d be used to things not being logical with a toddler, but this took me completely by surprise and immediately connected the dots. Of course he was constipated. He didn’t want to anger us by pooing in his pants, but he didn’t want to poo in the potty or toilet, so what was the alternative? And once it had built up and there was the added pain of going, why exacerbate it? Better to just ignore it as much as possible.
Until of course, he couldn’t. Those of you who have experienced watching a constipated child trying to go will understand the helpless frustration a parent feels. Short of medication and an enema, there’s nothing you can do besides hold your child, stroke his hair and back, massage his belly and be absolutely powerless to ease the whole thing. It felt sometimes like watching him go through torture.
So we went to the doctor’s and got some laxatives, which we gave to him twice a day, and the paediatrician warned us not to stop until everything was back to normal. And since then, unsurprisingly, he’s been in a better mood, with more regular bowel movements, and we are relieved.
He’s also back in his nappies, which is the failing part I mentioned right at the beginning. I had prematurely started celebrating the end of spending so much every month for nappies, when at the moment he’s actually using way more than he ever did with his three to five little poos throughout the day.
I’m trying to console myself that he will eventually be ready, but I’m also horrified that we inadvertently caused the pain he has been going through. It really goes to confirm, yet again, that toddlers are people and yet, we as parents sometimes expect them to behave uniformly like most other toddlers we read or hear about if we apply certain methods or rules.
Now when I look back, I know we should have started this way earlier, before he had got used to being in a nappy all the time. I’m not sure when exactly, but the way described by my friend in India sounds good.
Yet another thing learnt for hypothetical child number two. Though he/she would probably be completely different, of course!
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Uma is a Malaysian working mum with a French husband and a toddler named Alex living in their fourth country together.
Image credit: Flickr user Todd Morris
