Potty Training Books

Ok. This is a little embarrassing, but I will tell you what happened when I tried to potty train our boy, Tyler.

Technically, there is no right age to start potty training, but 18 months is the average age parents start to toilet train their kids. So when Tyler hit that magical 18 month mark, it was game on. I was ready to dispose of the diapers and the only way to do that was to toilet train the boy.

My wife, Tina, and I went out and bought a cute little potty chair. We did try to let Tyler choose the one he wanted, but he didn't seem to care which one we got him, so we picked out a nice little blue one that looked easy to clean.

When we got it home I I was all sorts of excited, and with a lot of fan-fair, I showed it to the boy. Unfortunately, he wasn't interested in that cute little blue potty we bought him. He didn't give it a second thought as he walked off to go play. As a matter of fact, he wouldn't go near it. No talking, bribing, or coercing could get him to go any where near the thing. If he wouldn't go near it, he couldn't use it. What was I to do?

Well, I may have been a little overly anxious, and just a wee bit frustrated, when the not so bright idea of picking him up and placing him on it came into mind. So that is what I did. I picked him up, held him over the little blue potty and began to lower him down...

That boy turned into something like a rabid cat. His arms started flailing and his legs started kicking and he managed to kick the mini toilet down the hall. So I set him down on the floor and went to go get the thing, but that is when he ran to his mother. Game over. She told me that he may not be ready for it yet, and in no uncertain terms, I was no longer in charge of potty training our son.

Well I have to admit, I was a bit cheesed. I just dropped $30.00 on a child's toilet seat that he was not willing to use and I was still going to have to buy diapers. Not to mention I was outsmarted by an 18 month old, who in one spastic swoop, managed to undermine all my plans and got me sent to the dog house.

All I had going for me at that point was that I didn't know what I didn't know. I was new at all of this parenting stuff and luckily for me, I didn't do any real damage. Fortunately, my wife is smarter than I am. She had the good sense to go out the next day and buy a book on potty training.

The book she bought was called Toilet Training in Less Than A Day. Surprisingly, we both learned a lot more from it than we expected.

Isn't it funny what triggers the mind? I had totally forgotten about my miserable attempt at potty training our little boy. That was about twelve years ago and he is not so little any more. But for some reason my wife picked up a book on poop for me the other day, Everybody Poops 410 Pounds a Year. Every time I picked up this book, all I could think about was my misadventure with my boy and his poop.

I do not know why she picked up this particular adult bathroom reader for me. Maybe she thinks that I am full of crap and wants me to know more about the source of my affliction. Or maybe she thinks that I need to fill the rest of my brain with useless knowledge that I can forever cast upon her whenever something tickles my fancy. I know that she just loves it when I spew out trinkets of worthless trivia to her and her friends.

I may never know why she bought me this book, but I am glad that she did. This book is a hoot. It is full of neat little facts like:

-President Johnson held meetings with staff while he was taking a deuce.
-The Nazis, who suffered from dysentery in WWII, ate camel dung for the natural antibiotics.
- Parrot fish poop out fine white sand after they eat coral!

This is some great knowledge. Who wouldn't want to know this kind of stuff?