Stinky Diapers Be Gone!

At the risk of turning off some of ye faithful readers, I must dedicate this journal entry to Jujube's potty training success. She doesn't wear diapers during the day anymore. When she needs to poop or pee, she knows to go to her Dora potty, and then does her business. She loves her Disney undies.

Since we've been showering her with compliments every time she uses the potty, going to the potty has always been a pleasant experience for her, all around. When she's done, she summons all of us over and then proudly presents her products. After we are done viewing, she bring each of her stuffed animals for them to take a look as well. Sometimes she puts them so close to the potty that I get nervous the animals may come back with a brown nose. A few times her poop smelled something vicious, and we had to applaud her while holding our breaths.

We owe our success to Chinese people's tolerance of diaperless toddlers. In China, even before kids can start walking they start getting potty trained. When they are out with parents and need to go, instead of frantically looking for public bathrooms, parents can simply lift them by their legs and let them go on the side of the street. Nobody bats an eye, and this is true on a dirt road in rural areas as well as on the most expensive real estate in Beijing.

Any parent who's gone through the saga of potty training his or her children knows that consistence is important. If you want them to go diaperless, you have to keep them that way as much as possible. However, in the US, the pressure of having to find a bathroom prevents parents from being that daring. It's often much easier to keep the kids in diapers simply because outings can get too hard to manage.

Here in Beijing, when we are out with Juju and she needs to go, we just pull her pants down, help her squat, and she goes (only pee. Poop is not that easily accepted, but ye wise parents know that it's the pee that's a bitch). Let's see...she goes on the playground regularly; she's fertilized the lawns around here almost on a daily basis. The most outrageous was probably last week when I took her to a chic kids' bookstore in a very yuppy complex, and she just went under a tree on a major street...twice. Nobody cared. Kids peeing in trashcans when indoors is also a fairly common sight.

These days, Juju is fond of peeing outside and drowning ants with her pee. Potty training her has been a piece of cake. If by now you think it's ridiculous that kids (and we are talking about little kids, kids under three. Juju's almost two) pee everywhere, people here think it's outrageously ridiculous that many American kids still wear diapers past the age of three. You can't go to preschool here without being potty trained and you can't find large size diapers anyway.