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Toilet Training Is A Pain In The Bum

You never thought you’d be so excited about someone taking a sh*t.
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Toilet training: just another one of the glamorous (okay, maybe I mean gruesome) parts of parenting children. People will try and tell you that children should be trained by a certain age, gloat that their child was toilet trained before the age of two or shove some magical manual in your face that will supposedly train them in three days.

But like everything with parenting, there is no rule book that applies to every child because, shock horror, every child is different. And while you might be one of those lucky bastards whose kid did toilet train at 18 months in three days, most of us are not. And here is what I've discovered on the road to toilet training a toddler...

There is no right way

There is no right or wrong age or way to do it. I've had to really rethink the whole idea I had in my head of how and when it was gonna happen. Kids will decide when they're ready, you cannot force them.

It takes a lot longer than you expect

I'm convinced anyone who says their kid toilet trained in three days thanks to some magical unicorn holy grail of a e-book means that their kid worked out how to wee in the toilet in three days thanks to some magical unicorn holy grail of an e-book. Because poo takes a whole lot longer -- so stop bragging and pass me a wine.

It's okay to use bribery

You will up your bribery game tenfold just to get someone to sit on the dunny. "Hey sweetie, Mummy will give you a chocolate, a new Barbie and a Lamborghini if you do poo in the potty."

You sound like a broken record

"Do you need to go toilet?", "Do you need to do wees?", "Do you need to go poo"... EVERY. SINGLE. SECOND.

The washing

You will wash a LOT of little pairs of undies. Some will not even be salvageable and be straight-in-the-bin jobbers!

You never thought you'd be so excited about someone taking a sh*t

There is nothing more exciting than a toddler running up and saying: "I did poo in toilet." PRAISE THE LORD, LET'S THROW A PARTY!!!

You're not done buying nappies.

Because night time is a whole other ball game.

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