Potty Humor

I believe books cure problems. The SAT study guide got me into college. A resume guide helped me through a bevy of jobs. The bookstore nurtured me through my lonely twenties. When I couldn’t find a husband, I bought a book. When I found the husband, I bought another book. When I couldn’t decide whether to get an MBA or to start writing…. you bet, I bought a book. When I got pregnant, I bought Everything You Needed To Know.

When my son Allen was born, he decided not to follow any schedules set forward in my manuals. He did not read my books with their timelines and checklists.

I was fine with him doing his own thing with just about everything except the potty. I began pestering him at two. I bought a book to solve this problem.

I’m not talking about the “how to train your child to go” book. Several helpful friends have given me a gross ton of those books. I’m talking about books that feature a toddler as the hero, taking actions all his own, and deciding to use the pot, and throw away those landfill-clogging-disposable diapers that have been raiding my pocketbook since July 2004.

Vulgarity – in all of it’s grossness – can be a great giggle inducer for the picture book crowd and for the parents who get to read to them over and over and over again. I know this because I have read so many of them I could recite them with every flush. It’s a book about poop and pee. They laugh and you can too.

Every 3 months. New book, new underwear, new technique, and fresh attitude. By the end of the week, we would both be in tears, with zero success. But the book would be read six times a day. He liked the books, but the potty could take a hike. Exhaustion was setting in. I wondered if I would have to convert his college fund to future diaper purchases.

I didn’t mind a little fart humor. I didn’t even care when we went into the bathroom to read on the potty. Two and half years later, I was begging and scratching to get out. My beloved son, 4 ½ years old, would not potty train.

Yes, before you start to suggest anything – I tried it. I had two and a half years to try. Cherrios. Bribery. Chuck-E-Cheese. I even threatened Guantanamo Bay. Nothing worked. I went back to what I knew. Get a book and try again.

Then I found Have You Seen My Potty? Farm animals steal Sally Sue’s potty (which they call a poo-pot). She’s desperate to find it, because she has “something very important to do.” The animals are all very impressed with the poo-pot because it has improved farm hygiene and now they don’t have to walk around stepping in poo anymore.

The rhyme is perfect. The pictures show the animals sitting on the pot, as Sally Sue looks everywhere for it. The reader knows the secret. I laugh every time, so does my little guy.

I don’t want to say this was the book that made it happen, or it just happened while we were reading. Maybe it was the laughter that just made us all relax while a little something dropped into the pot.

Additional Potty reading for connoisseurs:

- Once upon a Potty* – by Alona Frankel
- My Big Boy Potty* – Old fashioned, but he liked it.
- Big Boys use the potty* – DK Publishing (with lovely stickers and a chart)
- Everyone Poops –by Taro Gomi and Amanda Mayer Stinchecum
- Diapers are not forever- Elizabeth Verdick and Marieka Heinlen. Simple bright illustration that show families, boys and girls of all ethnicities.
*Girl and boy versions.

Bettina’s picture book, Moose and Magpie, will debut at Book Expo America on May 30, 2009. She is thankful it is not a potty book.

Related posts:

1. Connect with Bettina Restrepo: Golden Books, a Golden Legacy
2. MOOSE AND MAGPIE by Bettina Restrepo