Potty Mouth

This isn't just an entry about finally successfully potty training my 3 years, 10 month old son...it's about what I have learned as a parent and person. I feel the way that someone learns and problem solves is the true insight into a person and who they are. In this case - the potential of who they will be.
I consider myself to be a natural teacher. I feel that I can teach anything I know to someone else and better than it was taught to me. My confidence was unwavering...until I had to work on potty training my son.
There is undue pressure on all parents to have their child potty trained in order to go to school or be moved up into the next level at daycare. It is an incredible pressure that just can't be understood until you have gone through it. Your entire worth as a parent becomes potty training. Failure means your child won't be ready for school on time, be left behind by his peers and be left behind FOREVER! Okay, a little dramatic but it becomes a crazy sense of urgency to get this natural process of growing up complete.
I never worried about potty training til my son was about 2 1/2 and then I realized I had better start reading up on this. We had a little potty in the bathroom of our house since my son was 1. He would sit on it, rarely. I thought, hey, I can do this. I mean how hard can it be? I know how to use a toilet. Everyone I know uses one successfully. I was ready to hit it head on. I bought a book "How to Potty Train your Child in just One day." It's a great book. Really talks to parents about all the pressures we are put under to get our children potty trained by a certain age. I followed the procedure in the book exactly. I really thought my son was ready. He wasn't. That attempt was about a year ago. I had little success and lots of laundry. I felt defeated. I was so confident that I could teach him.
Various other events took place to thwart my efforts. I went active duty in the Navy and I was separated from my children (on and off...mostly off) for about 6 months. Anyone who watched/babysat my children swore they would have him trained in a week. Yeah, right.
And it goes without saying that there is TONS of advice from people who don't have kids or those that do and claim there child was potty trained a year old. Yeah, right.
My son, being who he is, does things at his own pace. He crawled at 11 months, walked at 14 months and spoke (more than his native Klingon) at 3 years old. He is not on any one's schedule but his own. I know that about him. He is a creature of habit. My mother called him mini-"Monk" (after the OCD TV detective of the same name) at an early age. Things had to be just so. If not, this lead to great tantrums and we would never know why (he couldn't communicate in English clearly enough). He likes to know how things work and he likes a procedure. I don't think I took these things into consideration when initially training him. I just thought - he's getting trained darn it!
A few months ago he started going to a home daycare where there is a boy a few months younger than him that is also going through potty training. This sense of friendly competition and encouragement had caused my son to turn a corner.
My son had been dry in the morning for over a month and through is naps. A sign a child is ready for potty training. He had been using the potty at the home daycare during the day (to urinate only). Rarely at home and he was still in pull ups. About a week ago my son came home and said he needed a "clean diaper." He insisted. I knew why. There was one part of bathroom business he didn't want to do in the potty. Once I put the pull up on him - he did what he had to do. That's when I decided - anyone old enough to ask for a clean diaper is old enough to use the potty. The next morning I put him in underwear and he hasn't been in a pull up since. Dry all night and day. He does everything in the potty now. No wet accidents and rarely any of the other kind.
My son will do things at his own pace. I should have remembered that. And I think I forget that like any other human being he has a will of his own. I need to keep this in mind as I teach him the other things he must know to move successfully through an uncertain, often unforgiving yet filled with possibilities world we live in.
Needless to say we are all extremely proud of him. Almost giddy with delight. He is also proud. This was not the impossible task that it seemed to be - just 2 weeks ago. It was part of being a parent and a child.
And suddenly, my son appears to be older. He is tall and lean and carries himself like a child and not a toddler. A little man.