Now that my baby is two-and-a-half, and is probably not a baby anymore, I figured it was time to start toilet training. He seemed quite capable to go on command in the shower, and so I thought maybe this would translate into some very easy potty work. The thing that had been delaying me is that I was still holding out for him to be that prodigal “he trained himself” poster-child that every family seems to get. I haven’t had one yet, and so I had hopes that he would definitely be “it.” He wasn’t. Or maybe I just didn’t wait long enough.

I bought the Thomas the Train underwear. He put on two pairs at once. And that’s about as far as we got because it was almost bath time, and that meant he would likely pee in it, and not in the toilet. So we had a super-successful first day, with two dry pairs of underwear. He did not win any candies or stickers, but I suppose that’s good because I hadn’t even made a chart.

Toilet training is the part of parenting nobody warns you about. Probably that’s because it would drastically reduce our population, as who would ever want to voluntarily have children and endure the unpredictability of spontaneous accidents on the new carpet, in a car seat during a five-hour road trip, or in the middle of an aisle at Target (and then you are forced to add a roll of paper towels to your shopping cart and use a few to clean up the puddle. True story. All of them). All of you parents of self-trainers clearly don’t get it. You are in your own, spoiled club. In fact, the world would probably become a bottleneck population of self-trainers and those who needed help in training would become extinct, unwilling to further procreate. And yet, for some reason, I had four children.

But the thing is, I only trained two of my kids. One child I sent to school and pretended that she was trained. I knew she could do it; she was just so resistant and stubborn at home, but I figured she would be nicer to her playgroup teachers. So I dropped her off in underwear and announced, “We are working on training,” and said goodbye. It wasn’t really lying because “working” is a vague term that encompasses a lot of aspects of toilet training. We purchased Dora underwear, and I even bought an end-of-training prize that sat wrapped on her desk. So what if she had never been near a toilet? (Please try not to steal this trick, or else the teachers may one day catch on. I may have to resort to this strategy with my son this year, and I don’t want it becoming too popular before I get one more use out of it. The playgroups may all change their policies and make some kind of toilet-training test that a kid has to pass before showing up in underwear, and then I’ll be doomed.)

My daughter trained very successfully, courtesy of her teachers. And I felt so lucky that I had scored this freebie training experience, that I figured I should have another child after her, because child-rearing wasn’t that bad, after all!

And so here I am, trying to train that fourth child, or trying to wait until he learns on his own. He starts school this week. Maybe I will just send him in the Thomas underwear, throw an extra roll of paper towels in his backpack, and hope for the best…

Sarah Abenaim is a freelance writer living in Teaneck. She can be reached at [email protected].

By Sarah Abenaim