Positively Parenting

By Tara Lindis

The night was warm, as I got my twenty-one month old, Fyo ready for bed. I put his pajamas on, and he promptly asked to take them off, even his diaper. Fyo ran around, demonstrated his new found ability in jumping, sat on my husband’s lap, and then fell asleep still completely naked. My husband, Kent, and I looked at our son, his sweet and content sleeping face, and the sweat beading up along his shoulders, neck and back.

Neither of us had the heart to put clothes on him when it was so warm. But the real question was his diaper. We had started toilet training early. We had started it by accident really; one day Fyo started fighting his diaper changes, even running away and hiding when I brought out a diaper. I said, “Fine. You don’t want a diaper change, then I just won’t put them on you.”

He said, “Okay.”

And because we’re currently living in Bali, we get away with it. We let Fyo run around naked, like the Balinese do with their children. So far, the toilet training has gone rather easily, and he only wears his diaper during his three hours of nursery school, and at night.

Until now.

“Well,” Kent asks, “what’s all the research say about nighttime toilet training? What do we do? Can we start?”

In the past, Kent has teased me about my stacks of library books and compulsive researching habit. But then, in moments like this, he’s thankful that I’ve read everything.

“The mainstream says essentially that when he goes three to five nights without going and waking up with a dry diaper then we can take him out of his nighttime diapers,” I said.

“But that could be until he’s four or five!” Kent protested.

“For some kids it is,” I replied.

“But the waste!” Kent pointed out.

This was one of those parenting moments, when we were at a parenting crossroads. I do a lot of research, but I also have a tendency to throw the experts out the window and follow Fyo’s lead and my instincts. Kent and I also want to parent Fyo in a way that reflects our values, and we both have a hard time with the waste disposable diapers produce, even as we’ve been grateful for the convenience of them. I also see the sense and ease in waiting until kids just naturally stay dry on their own accord, yet, like Kent, I can’t help but think, oh the waste! Even if we had found a way to use cloth while traveling, there’s no way around the resources that diapers require.

“We don’t have to follow the experts,” I said. Our main parenting mantra is to do what works for us.  “My grandmother had her kids toilet trained day and night by the time they were seventeen months old, and Ginny says all four of her kids were trained by their second birthday.”

“Let’s go for it.” Kent said. He leans over our sleeping son and says into his hair, “When you have to go, holler, and I will wake up, and we’ll go to the toilet.”

Oddly, this bit of sleep talking seemed to work. At 5:10 am the next morning, Fyo sat bolt upright in bed, and hollered, “DAD!”

Kent got up, and ran him to the bathroom; Fyo peed. There was much rejoicing. We thought we had just won the toilet training lottery.

Half an hour later, Fyo was still wide-awake and singing. I patted his leg. Wet. The mattress. Wet.

As I stripped the bed, and watched my naked toddler run around the room, I thought not just of the things we do for our children, but the things we do for our values.

Tara Lindis has taught English Literature and Composition classes at community colleges in Denver, Colorado, and has spent the last year living in Singapore and Bali, writing, and raising her soon-to-be toddler son. She blogs at www.taralindis.com.

Read more of Tara's blogs:

Sharing Some Thoughts on Sharing

Wanting the Bath

Sharing: The Hard Part