The Comfort Zone

I admit it. I am a mindless drone. Doing exactly what advertisers tell me to do.

I'm so desperate to potty train my youngest that I'm dishing out fistsfull of cash for products that I know in my heart won't work. Disposable training pants. You know the ones. You can get them with cute little cartoon characters on them that disappear when your wee one piddles, or, the latest concoction, the liner that actually allows your child to 'feel' wet.

Here's the problem with these training pants.

My child apparently likes his - um - warm and squishies. He is either ignoring the mess completely, or he's decided it's comfortable. His own portable comfort zone, so to speak. Maybe it affords him extra padding during play time. I don't know. Whatever his reasoning, he refuses to tell me when he 'goes' and puts up quite the fight when I mention trying the toilet. I've tried bribery. You know, the usual - stickers, treats, toys, etc... Heck, I was willing to buy him a $50 custom painted dinosaur toilet seat today if it would have coaxed him onto the can. Nothing doing.

That's why these training pants won't work. My son is too comfortable in them. Disappearing designs mean nothing to him. He's a boy. They're only designs, after all. He can pick up a set of markers and make his own designs, if he really wants to.

Those feel-wet liners aren't the greatest either. I tried them once. Either my son has a bladder the size of a 25 year old frat boy's after a kegger, or the manufacturer miscalculated the tensile strength of the liner. After one all-nighter, I was cleaning up a bazillion little crystals from my son's nether regions because the liner had disintegrated from over-use.

So why do I keep spending money on these things? Well, I have to put something on him if I don't want to spend my days chasing him around with a black light and a mop. And, while I'm not generally the kind of person who cares about what other people think, it's a little embarrassing having him in regular diapers at his size & age. Besides, I don't think those little tabs would hold up to his brand of horseplay.

Come summertime, though, we can move on to Plan B. We're going to spend every waking moment outdoors, where he can run around in a little bathing suit and nothing else. If he piddles down his leg a couple of times, maybe he'll finally get the message and start taking me up on my toilet training offers. Or, maybe he'll just like his newfound 'freedom' and decide on his own that those comfy training pants aren't that comfortable after all. With my luck, though, he'll probably enjoy peeing outdoors, at which point he'll start competing with the neighbour's dog for height on the fence posts.

Technorati Tags: Toilet Learning ; Potty Training ; Training Pants ; Toddlers ; Parenting ; Motherhood