Chinese parents have developed a seemingly genius method of potty training: as soon as baby is walking, they bring out the “trainign pants” which are essentially just a regular pair of pants… with a slit across the crotch and butt. Whenever little Xiao Wang needs to make a pee-pee, he just squats down, the plants split open just wide enough to avoid any mess, and the little tyke goes about his business. Sure, this method involves cutting up good pants, but it also saves a ton of cash on diapers. Genius, right?
Except for the part where mom has to run around cleaning up puddles of pee, and where I have to constantly watch where I walk when out on the town lest I step in a pile of baby doo-doo.
Needless to say, when it comes to potty training, I don’t think we’ll be going native any time soon!
But we certainly do have potty training on the brain. A couple of weeks ago, we let Charlotte run around the house sans diaper- what we like to call free-ranging. After about 10 min, J. asked her if she needed to pee, and then scooped her up and plopped her down on the toilet. And wouldn’t ya know, she actually peed in the toilet! And holy cow was she proud of herself (almost as proud as we were!)
Since then, it’s become her favourite game. She’s broadened her vocabulary to now include “peeeeeee!” and “pooooo!” In the evenings, I usually let her free range after dinner until bathtime. At least 10 times, she’ll cry out “peeeee!” and I’ll race her to the toilet. Usually, it’s just a false alarm, but at least once or twice, she’ll sit really still, get a look of complete concentration on her face, and then beam with pride when the pee starts flowing. As a reward, she loves to flush the toilet.
I know my little kiddo is totally ready for more than just an hour of diaper-freedom. But I’ve also quickly realized that I am so not ready. I’m still in the early stages of cloth-training-diaper research! I dont have a potty-training strategy! Hell, I don’t even have a potty ( it’s in our shipment from Moscow, expected to arrive any day)! And what the heck do I do when we’re out and about and Charlotte starts yelling “peeee! peeee!” ?
I sense a very messy future in store for us…
The split pants were one of the first strange things I noticed in China but I guess they have their use. It does make you think twice about putting anything down on the ground though.
Haha, yes they certainly are strange but also strangely practical!
Hope you’re enjoying New Zealand!
Glad you are back! Mason is potty trained (pretty much) and he spends most of his home time without pants on, so much easier than taking them off over and over. Yesterday, we were at someone’s house. He went in the other room and came out about 2 minutes later–no pants, announcing “mama I made big poo poo”. His pants and undies were in the hall, but the poo poo was in the potty!
Go Mason! Love how he had to let you know that it was no regular-sized doodey!
I am potty training my son now. It is exhausting. Some days are good others he doesn’t want to even if his life depended on it. Good luck.
I totally agree, it is really really exhausting, between lugging the potty around with us from room to room, to constantly watching Charlotte to make sure she isn’t pouring pee all over the floor!
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