Before Jesse could even walk, he had a little walker that he would zoom around the house in and get into absolutely everything. He loved banging into my legs, and I had a visceral reaction every time I heard that squeaky thing coming because I knew it was about to slam into the soft part right above my heel. I developed an automatic reflex to stick my foot out and block him. To this day, I can stop a walker with my foot while stirring a pot of soup on the stove. It’s pure muscle memory.
If I ever accidentally left the bathroom door open, Jesse would charge in with that walker, pull an entire roll of toilet paper off the holder, rip it up, stuff it into the toilet, and throw the rest everywhere else.
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| Jesse at work in the bathroom |
Despite this early interest in the potty, I had absolutely no interest in potty training.
I had a little mom’s group, and every single one of them had potty trained their kids before I potty trained Jesse—even the ones with kids younger than him. They were convinced the only way was to commit fully: stop diapers, never go back, no exceptions. They also thought it was completely crazy that he was approaching his third birthday without being potty trained and strongly implied this would ruin his life.
Eventually, I got it in my head that three years old was as long as I could reasonably wait, so I mentally prepared myself to ditch the diapers.
I followed the popular three-day intensive potty training method my friends swore by. Jesse caught onto pee pretty quickly, but he just could not make it to the potty to poop. And because the method involved going completely cold turkey on diapers, once I committed, there was no turning back.
For months and months, he peed in the potty every time—and pooped in his pants every time. I was adamant about not shaming him. I could tell he was trying and just couldn’t make it, so I stayed positive and cleaned up the poop over and over again. Since it was always underwear or commando, it was a huge pain to manage all the poopy pants and underwear. It pushed me right to my breaking point.
One time, Jesse told me he needed to poop. I scooped him up and ran him to the potty, but he pooped in his underwear just before we made it. Something in me snapped. After what felt like the hundredth time cleaning up messes, I clenched my fists, threw my head back, and screamed at the ceiling at the top of my lungs:
“I’M SO SICK OF CLEANING UP POOOOOP!!!”
Jesse just stared at me in shock for a minute and then bowed his head. I immediately hugged him, apologized and told him he was doing a great job, but I knew something had to change.
I borrowed the book all my friends had followed: Oh Crap! Potty Training. It was written by a woman who had successfully potty trained exactly one child—her own son—and then decided the world needed her superior potty wisdom, complete with a catchy title and strong opinions.
As I read it, I realized I had followed her method almost exactly the first time around.
But buried in the book was a section about serious poop problems. Her recommendation? Look into food allergies.
For that, I will give the Oh, Crap author credit.
Jesse’s doctor gave me a list of foods to eliminate one by one. The first on the list was dairy. Lo and behold, as soon as I cut dairy, Jesse was instantly potty trained.
Jesse did, however, develop some creative interpretations of what counted as a potty. Especially after my mom taught him to go out to pee in her big backyard on a trip to grandmas.
One day I was talking to my neighbor when she interrupted me and said, “Um, excuse me… your son is peeing on a tree.”
I turned around to see Jesse, pants around his ankles, openly peeing on the tree in our front yard.
Exasperated, I cried, “Jesse! What are you doing? There is a potty RIGHT THERE.”
He looked genuinely confused and said, “But the tree is my potty.”
I really had no response for that logic. I still don’t.
My second child, Alora, also reacted poorly to lactose. When I was nursing her I endured days of screaming when I ate fettuccine Alfredo from Olive Garden—and the leftovers the next day—before finally cutting dairy completely out of my diet.
This time around, I got a much earlier start to potty training. When Alora was only a few months old, my mother-in-law taught me how they potty train babies in Uzbekistan.
From what I’ve seen, Uzbek babies spend most of their time strapped to what looks like a stiff wooden board with a hole underneath for poop and, for boys, a literal tube attached to their pee parts to drain urine. Almost every Uzbek adult I know—including Fayoz—has a completely flat area in the back of their head from spending babyhood on these boards. I even have a picture of Fayoz strapped into his.
So while I generally do not take Uzbek child-rearing advice, I was intrigued by the Uzbek poop method.
My mother-in-law taught me that when a baby needs to poop, you take them to the sink, scrunch their legs up to their stomach, hold them by the thighs with their back against your belly, and let their little bare booty dangle over the sink while they poop. Then you rinse it all down.
I tried it with newborn Alora, and it worked astonishingly well. It was oddly satisfying watching that yellow, toothpaste-like poop squirt out. I loved it because it eliminated so much diaper drama. When Jesse was a newborn, he once had such a forceful, high-pressure poop during a diaper change that it sprayed the wall and blasted down the vent. This method prevented all of that.
As Alora’s poops became less frequent, I used the method less often so I still went through potty training drama with her, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as with Jesse. And miraculously, she insisted on wearing underwear to bed—and kept them dry. Jesse wore some form of pull-up for years after that.
I only agreed to potty train my third child, Mason, after Fayoz promised that if I did the training, he would clean up the accidents and do the laundry. Once again, I ditched the diapers. I even made a cute dinosaur chart and bought a frog-shaped urinal with a spinning toy that activated when you peed on it.
Mason refused to use it. I also couldn’t return it because Jesse decided to test it out himself.
Potty training Mason was still just as drawn out and unpleasant as the other two.
By now it was obvious that everyone in our family—including Fayoz and me—are lactose intolerant. And without going into detail about Fayoz and me, I’ll just say it explained a lot. Because of this revelation, we ate a generally low-lactose diet, so we didn’t realize Mason was lactose intolerant until he started preschool and ate the school food… and immediately started pooping his pants again.
My fourth child, Brielle, showed extreme interest in the potty right after she turned two. I was completely burnt out on potty training at this point and flat-out refused to train her.
To my delight, she potty trained herself.
She started using the potty and didn’t even notice or care that she was wearing a diaper. It was perfect.
After months of consistent potty use, I knew I should switch Brielle to underwear—but I really didn’t want to. I had a new baby coming, and all the experts say big changes before a baby arrives cause regressions. Plus, why mess with a system that gave me the best of both worlds?
My last child, Celeste, was born when Brielle was two and a half. While my mom was visiting to help, Brielle suddenly decided she wanted underwear. My mom took her to the store to pick some out herself. She loved them and became an instant potty-training prodigy—except it immediately turned into a power struggle over wearing pull-ups at night.
One night, while I was nursing Celeste, my mom was wrangling the four other kids toward bed—a two-hour process on a good night. She brought Brielle in to say goodnight, and Brielle proudly strutted in wearing her underwear over her pajama pants.
My mom shot me a look of absolute daggers that clearly told me this was the only option after a long power struggle and defied me to laugh.
So I suppressed my laughter and said goodnight.
My potty protégée was officially in underwear well before her third birthday. And surely I deserved this reprieve in potty training woe after years of answering “booty calls” from the bathroom to wipe butts. After all, I myself am a potty protégée. Yes, it’s true.
My sister is only 18 months older than me and my mom believed before 2 is the right time to begin potty training. My stubborn sister flatly refused to use the potty until she had defied my mom for nearly a year and turned that magical age of 3. After observing the potty battle for months, little baby me just up and started using the potty with no fuss at the ripe old age of 18 months old, shortly after I learned to walk.
As a potty protégée myself, and now the mother of one, I thought I must be qualified to write a book called The Booty Call, explaining the superior method of simply refusing to potty train your child. But one fateful day squashed that dream.
Jesse’s soccer team had a soccer scrimmage and end-of-season party at his coach's house. It was the first soccer event I had attended all season because I’d been home with the kids and my newborn baby, Celeste. I promised Jesse I would watch. I really tried.
Almost as soon as we arrived at the school for the scrimmage, every child had to pee and all the doors to the school were locked.
Mason, who had learned a trick or two from Jesse, asked me to take him to pee on a tree.
Brielle insisted she needed a real potty and refused to go in a pull-up. My friend Sara, who was determined that I should see Jesse play soccer this season, heroically took her on a multi-stop potty quest involving 7-Eleven, a gas station, and finally the coach’s house while I stayed with the other four children.
Jesse scored two goals. I missed both.
At the party, chaos reigned. I ran around like a lunatic—feeding kids, running to the minivan to nurse the baby and change her diaper, running back in repeatedly, determined not to miss Jesse’s award. The pristine granite countertops were laden with fancy hors d'oeuvres, hamburgers with all the fixings, and limitless ice cream for everyone—which is always a terrible idea in a lactose-intolerant family and should probably require a waiver. Eventually, Sara called me from the bathroom. Brielle wanted her mommy.
I handed Sara the baby and went in to find Brielle mid–lactose blowout and completely miserable. I comforted her, wiped her, helped her off the potty and squatted down and twisted what I thought was the toilet flusher.
Nope. It was a bidet. It sprayed me directly in the face with the confidence of a machine that knew exactly what it was doing.
Water all over my face. My shirt. My soul.
Brielle panicked as I struggled to turn it off while getting blasted at the same time. While she screamed in terror, I tried to laugh it off like this was all very funny and not my breaking point. Eventually, we escaped the bathroom.
That’s when I saw Mason in the middle of the coach’s living room floor. He was the only remaining child in the room, and laying down stiffly on a gigantic, posh beanbag chair with an expression of terror frozen on his face.
He had peed his pants. The beanbag was soaked.
I took him back to the bathroom. No spare clothes. Brielle was still screaming when we got out. The three of us stood there, all wet and miserable in the immaculate room and looked at the adults still surrounding the countertop chatting about tournament schedules and holding wine glasses. I looked from them to the enormous beanbag stain in the middle of it all and right then and there I made a conscious executive decision. I was not telling anyone.
I grabbed some paper towels, soaked up what I could, left the stain, and walked away.
And that is why The Booty Call will never be published.
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| This frame sits is in my kids bathroom |
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