Gabriel, and I were perusing a music shop in Cali, Columbia, when
Gabriel, butt cheeks squeezed tight enough to diamondnize coal, face red
with concentration, tells me in a hush, “Mommy, I have to poop.” He
says it real casual, like there’s no big rush – but I can see beads of
sweat popping out on his forehead and upper lip.
I’m dual minded, half of me is elated (it had been 4 days since his last number 2) but half of me is terrified that it’s going to be a problem (it always is).
We get to the bathroom as fast as he can ass-clench his way across the room and find a toilet, with no seat, in a room the size of a tic-tac. I lead Gabriel to the can, he drops trou, and bombs the potty the second his pants have cleared his knees. It’s four days of fecal spectacularness floating in 2 inches of water. It’s beautiful, it’s terrible…it’s not even remotely flushable.
Again I find myself with a moral dilemma. I can either:
a) Tell the store manage (whose had been graciously allowing my adorable 5 year old to manhandle a cavalcade of musical instruments he couldn’t possibly afford) that his bathroom needed to be condemned.
b) Attempt to flush a turd that’s displaced more water than Archimedes Crown, down a drain with the circumference of an Oreo Cakester, therefore dooming us all.
c) Slink out of the store and solemnly swear to never, ever (under any circumstances) return.
Let’s not play games here, People. We all know what I did. I smiled in that poor man’s face, thanked him for his time and got the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible. I suck, I know. I’ve often wondered what happened when the next customer entered the tic-tac. I’m betting that pictures were taken, possibly posted on Reddit. Not my finest hour, but also not the most horrifying toilet tale I could tell you.
My kid has some serious bathroom issues. Freud would say his Mother made him anal retentive. The truly disgusting things I’ve seen my child do are a testament to the fact that he’s more of an Oscar than a Felix. But Freud (though a lunatic) would have been right about one thing: I may have not given birth to his fear – but, I did nurture it into a living, beast of abnormality. Yep, it was me.
You see, when Gabriel was about a year and a half old he had a complete nervous breakdown in a McDonalds’ bathroom. My boy and I were innocently washing our hands, when -all at once – two toilets were flushed and then a jet engine (cleverly disguised as a hand dryer) was ignited. My kid went from 0 to ‘hot mess’ in .8 seconds. We had to leave. Immediately. Fellow happy meal seekers stared at me as I bee-lined my baby out the door, no doubt, wondering what manor of child abuse had preceded our dramatic exit.
I handled this situation SO badly. I made a big fuss over comforting him, bought him ice cream and apologized profusely – on behalf of the bathroom. I told his Daddy the story using phrases like; ‘horrifying experience’, ‘poor baby’ and ‘scared to death’. Then, as the crown jewel of terrible parenting choices, I didn’t take him into another public bathroom for a very long time.
Blind children are prone to constipation because they typically don’t move as much as sighted kids of the same age. Gabriel already disliked the whole concept of going to the bathroom – sometimes it was uncomfortable for him – then we had the McDonalds Bathroom Massacre of ’08. Those were the contributing factors that lead to the War that has been toilet training my boy. There will be a day, a fine day, when the only persons poop I’ll have to worry about, will be my own. Oh, how I long for that day. I think I’ll have a party…how does Vodka go with Metamucil?
I’ve told you this long and moderately nauseating story for one reason. Blind kids become negatively conditioned very quickly. We all know that the scariest things in life are the unknown things, the things that you can’t see coming. Imagine if you never saw anything coming.
I made a deadly mistake, but learned a valuable lesson.
Gabriel was recently nipped by a puppy on the pant leg. He’s not a huge fan of dogs, and I could see him maximizing the incident in his mind. He was crying that he’d been bitten by a dog. His tears were heartbreaking. No mercy!! Being the bitch of a Mom I am, I not only made him clarify the story, explained that being nipped by a playful puppy and being savaged by Cujo are two entirely different things and then….I made him pet the puppy. He was weeping softly and his heart was thumping out of his chest, but he pet that puppy. It was an incident that remained an incident and not an incident that became an all consuming nightmare.
The moral of this story is twofold: 1) Never feed the fire of your child’s fear. Downplay it. Try and make it into something fun or funny or a highly rewardable challenge. 2) If you’re ever in a music store on the main street of Cali, do NOT tell them that I sent you.
.
I’m dual minded, half of me is elated (it had been 4 days since his last number 2) but half of me is terrified that it’s going to be a problem (it always is).
We get to the bathroom as fast as he can ass-clench his way across the room and find a toilet, with no seat, in a room the size of a tic-tac. I lead Gabriel to the can, he drops trou, and bombs the potty the second his pants have cleared his knees. It’s four days of fecal spectacularness floating in 2 inches of water. It’s beautiful, it’s terrible…it’s not even remotely flushable.
Again I find myself with a moral dilemma. I can either:
a) Tell the store manage (whose had been graciously allowing my adorable 5 year old to manhandle a cavalcade of musical instruments he couldn’t possibly afford) that his bathroom needed to be condemned.
b) Attempt to flush a turd that’s displaced more water than Archimedes Crown, down a drain with the circumference of an Oreo Cakester, therefore dooming us all.
c) Slink out of the store and solemnly swear to never, ever (under any circumstances) return.
Let’s not play games here, People. We all know what I did. I smiled in that poor man’s face, thanked him for his time and got the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible. I suck, I know. I’ve often wondered what happened when the next customer entered the tic-tac. I’m betting that pictures were taken, possibly posted on Reddit. Not my finest hour, but also not the most horrifying toilet tale I could tell you.
My kid has some serious bathroom issues. Freud would say his Mother made him anal retentive. The truly disgusting things I’ve seen my child do are a testament to the fact that he’s more of an Oscar than a Felix. But Freud (though a lunatic) would have been right about one thing: I may have not given birth to his fear – but, I did nurture it into a living, beast of abnormality. Yep, it was me.
You see, when Gabriel was about a year and a half old he had a complete nervous breakdown in a McDonalds’ bathroom. My boy and I were innocently washing our hands, when -all at once – two toilets were flushed and then a jet engine (cleverly disguised as a hand dryer) was ignited. My kid went from 0 to ‘hot mess’ in .8 seconds. We had to leave. Immediately. Fellow happy meal seekers stared at me as I bee-lined my baby out the door, no doubt, wondering what manor of child abuse had preceded our dramatic exit.
I handled this situation SO badly. I made a big fuss over comforting him, bought him ice cream and apologized profusely – on behalf of the bathroom. I told his Daddy the story using phrases like; ‘horrifying experience’, ‘poor baby’ and ‘scared to death’. Then, as the crown jewel of terrible parenting choices, I didn’t take him into another public bathroom for a very long time.
Blind children are prone to constipation because they typically don’t move as much as sighted kids of the same age. Gabriel already disliked the whole concept of going to the bathroom – sometimes it was uncomfortable for him – then we had the McDonalds Bathroom Massacre of ’08. Those were the contributing factors that lead to the War that has been toilet training my boy. There will be a day, a fine day, when the only persons poop I’ll have to worry about, will be my own. Oh, how I long for that day. I think I’ll have a party…how does Vodka go with Metamucil?
I’ve told you this long and moderately nauseating story for one reason. Blind kids become negatively conditioned very quickly. We all know that the scariest things in life are the unknown things, the things that you can’t see coming. Imagine if you never saw anything coming.
I made a deadly mistake, but learned a valuable lesson.
Gabriel was recently nipped by a puppy on the pant leg. He’s not a huge fan of dogs, and I could see him maximizing the incident in his mind. He was crying that he’d been bitten by a dog. His tears were heartbreaking. No mercy!! Being the bitch of a Mom I am, I not only made him clarify the story, explained that being nipped by a playful puppy and being savaged by Cujo are two entirely different things and then….I made him pet the puppy. He was weeping softly and his heart was thumping out of his chest, but he pet that puppy. It was an incident that remained an incident and not an incident that became an all consuming nightmare.
The moral of this story is twofold: 1) Never feed the fire of your child’s fear. Downplay it. Try and make it into something fun or funny or a highly rewardable challenge. 2) If you’re ever in a music store on the main street of Cali, do NOT tell them that I sent you.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment