Potty Trained?

All about the potty training:

I wanted to do a post on this because a lot of people have had questions about the subject and I know that I myself was very curious/worried about where Button would be in the process before we traveled so I wanted to make sure I gave details for families coming behind.

Button was 18-months-old when we brought him home and he was NOT in any way potty trained. His foster family's form of waist management for Button was, when at home, for him to "go" wherever he went and then they just cleaned it up. Because they had a simple plank-floor home with very few possessions this may have posed less of a problem than we would imagine. When away from home he wore a cloth or disposable diaper. Due to this, Button rarely wore pants when at home, but usually a long shirt or a t-shirt and loose shorts. This method is a common, culturally accepted, part of childrearing in Thailand (and many other countries).

Some adoptive families don't want to talk about this because they don't want their children (and foster families) to be judged by small minded people (understandable) but I feel comfortable just saying this is one thing that is done differently in a different culture and it is perfectly acceptable. Americans don't do it that way, and I am happy about that, but it's ok that Thai society is more comfortable with body function. A superior attitude might be simple to feel but it's healthy to remember that we are one of the few countries with the money and resources to diaper our children 24-hours a day.

Button is much more conscious of his body functions that the average American diaper trained child of his age probably due to actually having been able to feel himself going to the bathroom for the last 18 months. When he does his business he tells us ASAP and then when I ask, "Do you want Mommy to change your diaper?" he will shake his head yes. So while he is not potty trained he is aware of his bowel function and I am trying to keep him from loosing that awareness with all of our plastic sterility. I have hopes (naive though they may be) that this will aid in our eventual potty training.

The other thing I will say is that when we first met Button we accomplished a diaper change under the watchful eye of his social worker, the amazing Mo, in our hotel room. He was placid as a summer lake. I thought, "Fantastic! No problem! The kid doesn't mind diaper changes!" The thing was that as long as diaper changes remained infrequent they were kind of a novelty. So that was cool. When Button realized that he would be wearing said diaper all the time and there would be no more peeing on the floor and these diaper changes would occur regularly every two hours he sort of went berzerk. For the next 3 weeks diaper changes were a fight to the finish. Now we pretty much have it under control but for a while there it was American Gladiator in the nursery.

--Rosemary