The Toilet Habits of Young Boys

The Toilet Habits of Young Boys

Thursday, 4 June 2015

Contrary to the beliefs of pre-children me, I appear to really enjoy having older children. It's been a bit of a surprise to me, I had myself pegged as a "baby person" which just goes to show that if you want to know about the real me, I'm the last person you should be asking.

That said, there is one point of having an older child that makes me want to weep; more specifically one point of having an older boy and it catches me out every single time.

I'm a bugger for doing "just one more thing" before I go to the toilet so basically, any time I am heading to the toilet it is because I'm in a race against time before my bladder gives out. It means I am always in a hurry and not on the lookout for puddles.

Somehow, there are always puddles.

And somehow that means there are always soggy socks, which is a horrible slow creeping moment of realisation when your bladder has made it clear that there is no way you are going to get away with making it wait any longer, and you have already committed to sitting down.

So there I sit, feet held out like a lizard on hot tarmac, trying to see how I can safely stand up again, and trying to make my call to Alfie sound like my teeth are not furiously clenched.

My teeth are always furiously clenched.

By the time he slouches into the room, his limbs seems to have almost lost the ability to support him. He looks at my indignant face as if I have lost all reason to expect him to mop up our new indoor water feature.

And this is where the idea of natural consequences becomes a simple theory to implement, because I am damned if I am getting down on my hands and knees to deal with Lake Titicaca, and despite the near constant complaints, he is fairly understanding of why that might be the case.

I know this because when I ask him how he managed to get to get pee literally everywhere except the toilet, his reply is normally along the lines of "yeah sorry mum, I got bored".

Bored: I only wish I were making this up.

When pressed for a reason as to why there was urine in an arterial spray across the entire bathroom including - but not confined to - the floor, potty beside the toilet, and two walls, his reply is that the 90 odd seconds it takes him to empty his bladder, was about 80 seconds too long to hold his attention.

And of you are wondering what the photo at the top has to do with Alfie and toilets, the answer is not a damn thing. I needed a photo and nobody needs to see the state of my toilet.