I Believe in You
So my son was potty trained at age 4...okay he was almost 5. Whatchu gonna do? Does it make me a bad parent? No. Circumstances in our lives at that time did not permit me to tackle that milestone head on. I didn't have the time or the emotional strength to commit to that undertaking as I had uprooted my son and I to Toronto for 10 months to care for my ailing mother. Upon our return I had to re-enroll him in pre-school but their rule was that he had to be potty-trained. Oy! He would go to the potty to do number 1 but it was always the closet for number 2 despite the lack of a pull up. At any given moment when we couldn't find our sweet boy, my hubby and I would look at each other with eyes as wide as saucers and it would slowly dawn on us, "he's in the closet, go, go, go, go!" We were always too late. Then came the dreaded clean up. At this point he was doing man sized droppings! I was at my wits end. As incentive to go on the toilet, I tried making him wash out his underwear and pants, that didn't work. I tried the threat of him not being able to go back to school....who was I kidding? All I got was a grin. Shamefully, I resorted to yelling and time outs! Nothing worked, until one day my husband sat him down and said, "Son, you can go potty anywhere you want, the closet, behind the couch, in your pants, anywhere you want". I thought to myself, "has this man lost his ever-loving mind?" But I got the reassuring hand on my knee, signalling to let him finish, as he continued. "But I know you can do it in the toilet, I believe in you. So when you're ready, you can use the potty on your own." From that day on, my son didn't have one accident. Not one. Kudos to my hubby. What I didn't know was that just the week before as my husband and my son were driving, my son asked him to race the car beside them. My hubby said, "no son, I can't", meaning it's not safe but my son took that to mean, "I am not able to", to which he replied, "yes, you can daddy, I believe in you!" My husband basically used my son's own words to encourage him to do something he didn't think he was able to do. Power of positivity at its best.
