Ok, so we all know my child was toilet trained by his first birthday … the whole of Cape Town seems to know and it has become urban legend. I was not trying to prove anything but purely exercising my need for self-preservation. I wanted to go the terry-cloth route but couldn’t cope with washing them (despite the Marigolds) … so I had to devise a plan. By ensuring all ‘pushing’ was done out of the nappy (something that took a fair amount of vigilance), poo nappies were practically eliminated by the time he was six months old. The rest came easy. He didn’t know any different – the toilet was always the place to do the business and there was no struggle associated with having to get him used to the toilet after years of feeling comfortable sitting in his own faeces (which, let’s face it, is just not right).

When I was pregnant I used to tease that I had a parasite … until I my ‘parasite’ actually got a parasite. He was nine months old and the culprit was Giardia. This karmic payback not only caused the filling of terry cloth and waterproof liner but also the spreading of said parasite-infested faeces down child’s trousers, out past the ankles, down my jeans, onto the car seat and baby seat … all while lifting my child out of the shopping trolley and into the car to go home. Eco or not, there was no salvaging that one – the child was stripped and hosed down in winter frost on the front lawn and the terrycloth nappy and liner were promptly disposed of.

The point that is becoming so hard to make here is that all those things usually associated with potty training that no one thinks has anything to do with anything else because everyone is brainwashed into believing that the only time one can potty train is after two and only once the child has indicated certain personality changes … have more to do with things that are going to happen anyway. Around the time that traditional potty training takes place, my child went through the hand washing, the need to watch the poo flush away, holding the poo in until it hurt etc. … yet he had already been out of nappies for over a year.

So does it not stand to reason that all the pressure parents put on themselves to look for cues and then try and get their kids trained is totally unnecessary as this is just part of the normal developmental stages?

Which leads me to the obvious conclusion that I am now confident that I did it the right way after all … despite all the critisicm and warnings that it just wasn’t normal and that I would find out later on when he regressed. He didn’t regress and happily uses the toilet by himself, even lifting the seat when he does so … and he is not yet three.