Monday, February 27, 2012

Public Toilets: The Potty Training Foe

My newly potty-trained child has decided that public toilets are her enemy.  We went to an automatic flushing toilet on Sunday morning and I've never seen my child so terrified.  I can't say I blame her.  Have you ever had one of those toilets flush on you mid-business?  I mean, is the sensor just a guise for a sick joke from the toilet gods?  I swear those toilets only flush when they're supposed to 10% of the time.  Most of the time they flush 5 seconds before I'm finished.  Even worse is when I stand there staring at the toilet, waiting for it to flush but end up having to push the button instead.  

Lydia's always had a fear of noises.  When she describes her fears, she talks about fireworks, thunder and, oh, scary toilets*.  So considering this is one of the biggest fears in her life right now, it's hard to figure out what to do about it.  Do I just let her pee in the bushes for the next few years?  Hold it in until she gets home?  Let her pee in the sink?  Believe me, all of those options crossed my mind!

Here's the best answer I found from trawling the internet**.  Post-it notes.  I'm going to be telling Lydia to choose her own post-it notes so that when we encounter the monstrous automatic flushing toilet, we can deactivate the sensor by sticking a post-it note over it.  How brilliant is that?  We'll see how it works.

*They are so scary that even the NY Times wrote an article about them a few years back.
**Yes, I did google, 'What to do when your pre-schooler is scared of automatic-flushing toilets'. 


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