The monster in the toilet.

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Ever notice the child that is screaming because mommy or daddy is trying to take them into a public restroom?  Public restrooms are notorious for having monsters in their toilets.  It is a loud scary monster that sucks you in as the water in the bowl swirls down the mysterious hole.  Potty training would be a lot easier if it were not for the monster in the toilet.  Of course not using disposable diapers would probably help too.

I honestly feel that my daughter’s fear of the loud noise that public toilets make when they are flushed is the main reason it took her so long to get potty trained – that, and the automatic flushing. She fought me for a long time to even sit on the toilet in our home.  We ended up getting her a toilet training seat and even that took a while for her to trust.

The monster in the toilet scared my daughter so much that she would cringe and cry every time I needed to take her into a public restroom just so I could go and being a single mom there usually wasn’t anyone with me to leave her with outside the restroom.  Once she got used to the training seat we tried taking it into public restrooms and she still would not get near the monster in the toilet.

It’s sad when you think about it – there is two reasons public places have changed to automatic flushing –fear of germs and people not flushing the toilet.  Fear of germs is probably why some didn’t flush – others were just lazy or parents did not attend their children as they used the restroom.  Couldn’t they have just developed a flushing system that would allow you to step on the trigger rather than automatically flushing and make it not so loud?  Seriously – I don’t even like automatic flushing – lean forward for something and your rear-end gets splashed.  Sometimes you don’t even have to move and it happens.

Even now at 4 years old (5 in October) she will not use public restrooms and I’m a little worried because she will be starting pre-k this August.  Other than not using public toilets she does great but it took a while before she would let us throw out the training seat.

We might not be able to do anything about the noisy automatic flushing public toilets but after raising five children I believe that disposable diapers are a mother’s enemy when it comes to potty training.  With disposable diapers the child gets used to “going” whenever and wherever without feeling much discomfort because the wetness is pulled away from the skin – for the most part.  With cloth diapers they will feel the discomfort and be more willing to potty train.

When I first started having children, over 26 years ago, cloth diapers were a mother’s nightmare.  You had to fasten the diaper together with safety pins and use plastic pants that left marks around the baby’s legs to keep the mess off the furniture and carpet.  I tried using cloth diapers, at my mother’s insistence, with my first baby but after I accidentally poked him with the safety pin I cried for half an hour and never used them again.  Today’s cloth diapers have drastically changed and have made using cloth diapers easy to use without fear of poking the baby.

With Velcro and snaps, today’s cloth diapers are easy to put together and are formed much like disposable diapers so they provide excellent fitting and comfort.  They may seem a bit pricey at first but when you consider how long they will last – especially if you buy the one size fits all – and the cost of washing vs. buying disposables (which are bad for the environment) – they can save around $2,000 or more depending on how soon you can convince your young one that there really is not a monster in the toilet.