A Note on Peeing Position for Boys

Some of my friends also have boys and we talked about whether to train our boys to pee sitting or standing up.  Some of them preferred to train their boys to pee standing up right from the beginning.  Some were concerned that if they didn't do so, their boys would never know how to pee 'like a man'.  For me, I prefer to train them to pee sitting on the potty because during the early days, letting boys pee standing up is usually quite disastrous.  To save myself from all the cleaning up, I prefer to train them to pee sitting on the potty.  I feel that there is no need to worry about them not switching over to pee standing up.  For my boys, they eventually switch over when they saw their father's example.  The second one switched over earlier because besides his father, he also saw his older brother's example.

A Note on the Terms to Use

For me, I use 'shee shee' for urination and 'uh uh' for bowel movement.  Some people are adamant about using the 'correct terms' and by that, they mean 'pass urine' and 'pass motion'.  Honestly, I find that these two terms seem to be very 'Singaporean' and I feel that they are 'unnatural'.  Just think : which adult in real life says "I am going to pass urine/motion"?  More often than not, we use terms like 'I am going to the men's/ladies' room/washroom/toilet' or more explicitly, 'I am going to pee'.

The schools here seem bent on teaching these two phrases as 'proper' terms to use for going to the toilet.  They may be 'proper' but nobody really uses them in real life, and I don't think they are polite terms to be used in company.  So I am don't waste my effort teaching my kids these terms.  I leave it to the schools to deal with the so-called 'proper terms'.  Besides, since I toilet-train my boys at about 2, it is easier for them to pick up simple terms rather than trip over terms like  'pass urine/motion'.  You can, of course, use terms like 'pee pee' or 'wee wee' if you want.  At least your little one will be able to tell you without difficulty that he needs to go to the toilet.

Teaching Boys How to Aim

I don't really bother too much about teaching my boys how to aim because that's their father's job. (^.^)  I read about leaving a cereal (e.g. a Cheerio) in the toilet and make it a game to aim at it.  I would probably not leave a Cheerio in the potty, though, just in case the boy pick it up to eat!  For a potty, I would probably use stickers, e.g. the star stickers that are quite cheap.  Stick one in the potty and get the boy to aim at it.

The Final Frontier

That is, getting rid of the sleep-time diaper.  This usually happens last.  The child can be toilet-trained in the day for years but still needs to wear a diaper during nap and night time.  Usually, the nap diaper is the first to go.  Either the child stops taking naps or there are more instances of him waking up with a dry diaper.  Some kids do stop wetting themselves and wake up to pee all on their own.  However, many do not.

Again, at some point in time, you just have to bite the bullet and remove the diaper.  A good time is when the child starts waking up with a dry diaper every now and then.  I make my boys go to the toilet before nap/bedtime.  In the evening, I also try not to let them drink too much water especially closer to bedtime.  Once the diaper is off for good, they sleep on a waterproof sheet to prevent them from ruining the mattress.  Once they can stay dry and not wet the waterproof sheet for a good period of time, I will take the waterproof sheet away for good.

For night-time, only the eldest one had problems as he was oblivious to the wetness and would sleep through it!  We started off by waking the boy up in the middle of the night for a pee break.  This was usually done before our own bedtime which was around 11pm - 1am.  It could get a bit frustrating in the beginning when we kept missing it.  By the time we got to the boy, he had already wet himself.  But we kept on doing this and within 6 months, the boy was totally off the night diaper.