potty training

Ask An Organic Mom

The Chemical Hidden in Toilet-Training Potties

June 16, 2008 at 10:19AM By Lexy Zissu | comment

My apologies for writing about toilet training twice in a row but as I mentioned, it’s all potty all the time around here. While visiting grandparents in upstate New York this past weekend, we had a portable seat with us. Mere moments after arriving, my daughter let us know that there was no way she was going to use the portable seat, that she much preferred – and required – a real little potty. It’s amazing how demanding someone so small can be. We tend to spend a fair amount of time upstate during the summer, and she’s not the only grandchild who visits, so it felt like a wise idea to buy the house a potty.

My parents’ home isn’t located near a wealth of stores and so, on a swelteringly hot day (why so boiling so early in June? scary!) I found myself in exactly the sort of monstrously huge big box store I avoid as if it were my religion. I’m talking a Kids 'R' Us. The offgassing plastic toy chemicals hit us like an anvil when we walked in. But I digress. I’m not-so-secretly fascinated by the shocking amount of crap in these kinds of stores -- does any kid actually need or ask for a fake Barbie laptop? -- but also amazed by how quickly even the most suspicious consumer (ahem) can be drawn in. Life would be so much easier if only I were allowed to just go ahead and buy everything in this store, I found myself thinking after 3 minutes of inhaling the fumes. Imagine the luxury of not knowing or not bothering to read labels!? ... Need a stepstool? Get a stepstool! No research, no looking for unpainted hard wood versions. Oh, the simplicity!

Back to reality ...

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tags: kids, parenting, plastic, toilet, toddlers, antibacterial, potty training

How I Found Cotton Kids Underwear (And You Can, Too)

June 5, 2008 at 1:59PM By Lexy Zissu | comment

We’re potty training for real in my household. It started ages ago. The kid’s paternal grandmother is originally from Finland and claims to have gotten her first son (the babe’s uncle) trained at twelve months. As with most grandparent claims (AKA family myths) this isn’t entirely true. No matter.    

Starting sometime around twelve months we took a little potty brought to us as a gift from a trip to Helsinki and put it with her toys. All of her favorite stuffed animals would sit on it and she became so interested in what they were doing there (and what we, her parents, were doing on the big girl/boy potty) that she managed to produce some, um, items in the potty at around 15 months. We have plenty of pictures of the rare events but she clearly had no concept of when she had to go, or muscle control, until recently (she’s now 2 years 4 months). This coupled with a very crucial factor -- desire/willingness -- has lead to serious training. She’s still in a diaper for naps (we learned this the hard way when an underweared stroller nap was sadly interrupted forty minutes in by a relaxed bladder) and overnight. The amount of potty talk (and potty related books and progress update phone calls to grandparents and rewards for "producing") is staggering. Thankfully both of her parents have puerile senses of humor and find scatological things amusing. It’s been a hilarious process and as I type this, we’re concluding our first week where she spent most if not all of the days outside in the real world (as opposed to in our apartment) in big girl underwear. She’s thrilled and proud and so are we.

She’s a "holder,” as opposed to someone who has to "go" all of the time, which has made this process, arguably still in its infancy, much easier than I expected. What hasn’t been easy? Finding said big girl underwear. It’s pretty simple these days to find the green parenting items I want and need at stores around me. Even in New York City, I do have to go out of my way for certain toys or creams or glass canning jars but eventually I locate what I’m looking for. So when my daughter announced last week that she was done with diapers, I was shocked to discover that it’s impossible to find tiny, all cotton (preferably organic and lacking marketing/ads for Disney characters) undies in downtown Manhattan. ...

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