The Potty Animal

Yesterday, we bought Mikey a potty. It’s arguably too soon. He’s 22 months old, and most authorities say boys aren’t ready for toilet training until they’re closer to 3, not close to 2. He also is wet every morning, and the rule is that until you can hold your bladder, you’re not ready for toilet training. What we’ve been doing is letting him come into the bathroom when we go, and his job is to flush the toilet and put down the lid afterwards if he wants.

So, why did we buy him a potty? We just wanted him to be comfortable with it, sitting on it, playing the drums on it, whatever he wanted to do. We’ve talked to some friends of ours whose 2-and-a-half year old daughter cries whenever she’s put on her potty, and we wanted to make sure that Mikey didn’t have that same reaction. Let him warm up to the object over time, we reasoned.

Tonight, we came back from a playdate and dinner, and Ian went to the bathroom and Mikey followed. A moment later, I saw that Mikey had his pants and diapers off and was sitting on the potty. Ian asked for me to get him a book to read while he sat, and I gave him “8 Silly Monkeys.” (“8 silly monkeys jumping on the bed / one fell off and bumped his head / Mama called the doctor and the doctor said / ‘No more monkeys jumping on the bed” et cetera).

A minute or two later, Mikey bolted up and we saw that he had pooped in his potty.

Not saying that he’s toilet trained, but pardon me while I brag about our 22-month-old and what he did 24 hours after getting his first potty.

Genius.