Potty Training in a Modern World

I am in the process of potty training my two granddaughters and maybe I should add my grandson needs a touch up here and there. Certainly the parents are in the forefront of the potty training but when the kids are attending GranPaz Skool I am the potty trainer.

GranPaz Skool is what I affectionately call my babysitting service. The name was inspired from the many city day care centers with titles like Kidde Kollege, or Lil Luved Ones Day Care Center. Certainly you have noticed them if you live in a city and drive by once boarded up storefronts now converted to the care and well being of children. GranPaz Skool is open daily for the care and well being of my grandchildren and classes are held in my home. At the present time I have three grandchildren in attendance, two two-year-old girls and a seven -a year-old boy, who attends after going to his regular school for first grade.

First let me clear up what I mean about potty training my seven-year-old grandson. Technically he has been potty trained for several years but as a seven-year-old boy his method of potty is something like this: Lay on the sofa watching cartoons until the bladder is about to burst. Jump up and run into the bathroom unzipping your pants along the way. Start to spray when you first see the toilet and then attempt to get some sort of aim after you are standing in front of the toilet, then put the seat up. Zip your pants and walk back to the sofa. It probably does not matter much that he never flushes since very little makes its way into the toilet. Hand washing would also mean standing in the puddles he made while crossing the bathroom floor on the way to the toilet so maybe dirty hands are preferable to wet feet. What he needs is a refresher potty training course every so often just to reinforce the reason we use modern plumbing fixtures in our society.

Now, let me turn to potty training my granddaughters, who are both about the same age. Jenna is on her way to understanding what the toilet is used for. The toilet is another object used to manipulate her grandfather into giving her whatever she wants. Sitting on the toilet means that she is able to unroll yards of toilet paper, play in the sink with the water and dispense gallons of soap from grammy's turtle soap dispenser. Afterward she can run around the house naked.

Bitsy on the other hand is still in the need to know phase when it comes to the toilet. She loves to sit there and grab my nose since she has me sitting on the floor right at her level. Then of course all of the potty talk will inspire her to soil her clean diaper as soon as I put it back on her.

There is an end to this tunnel and eventually they will get the idea; however, I just cannot remember my own children, their mother and father, being so stubborn. They had their training back in the days of cloth diapers and rubber training pants and that just might be the answer. Modern diapers are just too comfortable. They absorb too much and don't give the kids that wet soaking feeling. They must be thinking: "Why not stay in a diaper which wicks away all the wetness as soon as you go?"

What incentive do modern kids have to stop what they are doing and go and sit on the toilet? They have none. Their diapers are too comfortable. My suggestion is that they have training diapers which will have a rubber lining so all of the yucky stuff will just sit there and they will have to squirm around in it until someone changes them. Mark my words kids would potty train much easier than they do now.

Granted it will be messier for us to clean up but no more so than trying to get a poop-filled pull-up off of an active two year old. And with the rubber lined training diapers the potty training will go much faster so the messy time will only be for a short while. And that is the problem.

There is little to no chance of ever getting a company to manufacture something which would stop children from using their product. In fact it is probably a known fact to the diaper manufactures that the better they make their diapers the harder potty training will be and the harder potty training is the longer kids will wear diapers. If this trend continues, it is possible that in the future we will have college students still in diapers. Maybe we will just graduate from our Pampers to our Depends.

This idea is scarey and we need to do something about it right away. I am weary of always having to carry a diaper bag when I take the girls out and I know they can be trained a lot quicker than they are being trained now, all they need is a little incentive.