how to potty your kid in public without being a jerk
Several friends sent this story to me last week. If you didn’t hear about it, here’s the deal: last week, a woman brought her potty training twins to a Utah restaurant. Where she proceeded to potty them. In the restaurant. At the table. Using little portable potties. While they (and all the other diners) were eating.
Now, I’m the last person to be offended by a little baby pee. For one thing, it’s sterile, and for another, I’ve had occasional pee puddles on my floor pretty much constantly for the past few years. Poop is a different matter, but still — I’m not easily offended by baby poop. Even toddler poop is just one of those realities of parenting. No big deal.
But however much I may love diaper free time, even I think it’s totally unacceptable to potty your toddler at the table in a public restaurant.
I’ll admit: I’ve been tempted. There have been times when I’ve sat in a restaurant and noticed my baby signaling a pee. Sometimes I just happen to have the baby potty in my bag or the bottom of my stroller. Sometimes I don’t feel like getting up and schlepping everything to the bathroom just for a quick little pee. But I’ve never done it. Not once in four years. I’ve never pottied my kid at the table, and I never will.
Because even though I think there are times and places where it’s okay to potty a baby in public, at an indoor table of a restaurant is not one of them.
And this is just one of the many reasons why elimination communication is so much less stressful than potty training. Potty training, at least in many of its common methods, is an all-or-nothing deal. You have to ditch the diapers and never look back. You have to commit to it all day, every day. Which means either that you are stuck at home till you finish, or you are going to be tempted to try something like this. And honestly? I understand where this mom is coming from. She’s got two kids in the middle of potty training. They probably always pee while they’re eating. At home, she sits them on little potties at the table, and they pee while they sip their juice, and she doesn’t have to use a diaper, and everything works out great. I’m sure she struggled with what to do at the restaurant. Do I put them back in diapers and undo all the work we’ve put into training? she thought. Do I risk them peeing all over the restaurant seats? Or…do I just do what we do at home?
I can understand why she opted for C. It’s a better choice than B. She probably thought nobody would even notice what she was doing — those chairs do look a lot like booster seats, after all. It was a risk she was willing to take.
Unfortunately for her, it backfired.
But you don’t need to make her mistakes.
If you’re practicing elimination communication, then you know that it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing deal. It’s perfectly okay to go back and forth between diapers and underwear as much as you need to. Your baby won’t get confused. You communicate about it, and you potty the baby if you can, and if you can’t then you reassure them it’s fine to use the diaper and then you change as quickly as possible. It’s no big deal. The babies don’t mind.
But even if you’re going for the more conventional potty training route, you can learn a few tips from the EC crowd. Because those of us who are used to pottying our babies from birth everywhere we go, in the house and out in public, have developed a few codes for when and where it is — or is not — okay to potty a baby. So even if you’re doing conventional training and ditching the diapers once for all, you don’t have to be stuck in the house. At least not entirely. Here’s how to find an appropriate location to pee a baby in public.
1. Look for a bathroom first. This is obvious, right? If there’s a bathroom available, use it. If your kid doesn’t like public toilets, bring a little potty and put it in the bathroom. Nobody will have a problem with that. You can even take him into a stall and put the potty on the floor in there. That way he’ll have privacy, and he’ll be in an appropriate place. If there is a bathroom, the fact that it’s gross or small or has a loud toilet is not an excuse to go somewhere else. If you can get to the bathroom in time, then you should potty in the bathroom. Period.
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