Categories: Parenting

ELMO Goes Potty, Everyone Goes Poo and Your Child Can Too

In my quest to teach my daughter how to go “potty” in the potty chair I have been and will continue to use any tools available to me. It is my hope that if I can appeal to her sense of humor and love of certain cartoon characters that her ability to potty will catch up with her desire to potty. We purchased a chair, let her determine its placement in the bathroom and whenever possible allow her to wear training panties (no pull ups please except I may change my mind after today’s accident on the couch cushion!). We run run run to the potty whenever she says she needs to go “poo” and she even takes her own diaper off – she has better bathroom manners than some adults I have seen in public restrooms. Now if only I could teach her to put it back on. She washes her hands and flushes the toilet-but I can’t get past that just one potty in the chair thing each day.

Recently I borrowed the Sesame Street Elmo’s Potty Time DVD from the library, which as soon as she saw it we absolutely had to watch, because after all who doesn’t love Elmo (ok, I will tell you who, my teenage daughter who was sinking into the seat hoping no one could see the Elmo Potty DVD playing in the back). But besides her, everyone loves Elmo right? Elmo’s DVD begins with Elmo exiting his bathroom to be surprised by his friends (the audience) who have come to visit him. He explains that he is a big boy now and he goes to the bathroom in the toilet. But before he was big he went potty in a potty chair and before that he pottied in his diaper. His father enters the scene and a very special discussion is held between daddy (whose voice is very Elvis-like) and Elmo about how hard Elmo had to work to learn to potty and how proud his daddy and mommy are of him for working so hard and being a big boy. Next, dad sings (again in an Elvis like rendition reminiscent of Elvis) a very proud of you Elmo song. My daughter is transfixed, but is this red little hairy monster really teaching her anything about going potty?

Elmo’s friends the Bear’s show up and they are teaching Baby Bear to go potty – but guess what? Like every other family they have their own special names for each part of potty-ing. They say wee wee and woo woo. Now this is very confusing to my daughter, as you can tell by the way her little brow is furrowed in concentration or maybe my two year old knows what I obviously don’t and that’s that bears and monsters don’t really go potty. Oh, but the vocabulary lesson does not stop there. Now we get to see real live children who are giggling and laughing about the variety of names they use – here we go – pee pee, poo poo, wee wee, woo, woo, tinkle, piddle, poopy, caca, ok– I can stop now I know.

The potty lesson does not end here. Elmo also discusses with the Bear family about wearing diapers, training pants, hand washing, flushing the toilet and even a song about “everyone has accidents. Not only does he discuss flushing the toilet but now my daughter when she hears the toilet flush says whoosh whoosh, just like Elmo!

In the background and during each segment, as the video is set up much like “Elmo’s World,” on the Sesame Street show we are treated to encouraging songs with fun beats that even my 10 month old gets excited about. Maybe she will train very early, who knows but with all this exposure I may have the first one year old to potty in a potty chair. She is already interested in the potty chair because of all the excitement.

But my training adventures do not stop there. I added to my media several books that my daughter and I read together about potty-ing. Her very favorite is “Everybody Goes Poo.” For all the parents out there that have not read this story to their potty training child – Don’t! Actually, my daughter loves it and has asked for it every day. It exhibits animals of all sorts going poo. It reads, birds go poo, elephants go poo, camels go poo . . . and so on and so forth. Two whole pages are depicting humans at various ages all on the different venues available to us (toilet, potty chair, and diaper) going poo. While the colors are fun and interesting and you can have a wonderful time reinforcing color recognition, even I was put off a little bit by the “poo” that was coming out of different animals. There is even the opportunity to “count” the lumps of poo by the various animals. The book is quick to say that “since everything eats, everything goes poo.” Oh what fun we have had with this book this week. Now my daughter can point to lumps of poo and say, “Poo mommy, poo!” in her excited little girl voice. I can’t wait to see it happen at a public bathroom.

I continue to look for the perfect media presentation to reinforce all the lessons about potty-ing in the potty chair that I am attempting to teach her. The search goes on, but I guess I am getting somewhere because today she actually “pooed” in the potty chair and did the Dora the Explorer, “We did it Dance.” That makes two times today. Progress at last.