April 21, 2011

Dads Get Company In The Potty, Too

a child looking in the toilet.

In my ongoing effort to point out that dads experience many of the same things that mothers do, let’s talk about the bathroom. Yes, gentle reader, I too have been subjected to the indignities of a lack of potty privacy.

At first I found it extremely frustrating that I could not make a number one without being interrupted. And forget about number two. It was like my kids had a Spider-Sense of sorts, a potty predictor — somehow they KNEW that I was going to need to use the bathroom and waited until I was in there to make whatever request they could have made earlier. Juice. Food. Notification of a particularly amusing anecdote heard at school. Whatever it was, it simply could NOT wait until I was finished.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. Recently, maybe a year ago (or two weeks; like the so-called “mom brain”, my sense of time rapidly evaporated once I became a parent), I began making informing my children that whatever they needed could, in fact, wait until I was done peeing. Or even, dare I say it, pooping. Because everybody poops. Even dad. And sometimes dad wants some privacy.

That was another reason for the Potty Privacy Act of 2010. (Or 2011. See above.) I realized that on some days, the only privacy I was going to get was in the bathroom. Once the kids come home from school, especially if the wife is working late, I’m on full-time solo dad duty. This isn’t a complaint, simply a fact. It can be a long time until everyone is in bed and I have something resembling silence again. Going to the potty isn’t exactly “Calgon take me away,” but it’s better than nothing.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvE65VOcAL0]

Some advice/hope for parents of both genders. Eventually your kids will start to understand the notion of potty privacy, and the simple pleasures of going to the bathroom alone. Or maybe they just realize that private parts isn’t only the name of a book and movie by Howard Stern.

It’s also possible that I made my case so well that my children simply decided to respect my privacy. But I doubt it.

Note: inspired by a Facebook post by Amy Hatch.

Image via Archive.org


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