Toilet-Train Kids Without Shame

Dear Ann Landers: Well, it has happened again. I just heard on the news about another small child killed by someone in a murderous rage. And once again, what lit the fuse was toilet training. So often when a child is beaten or killed at home, the guilty party confesses that bed-wetting and “accidents” had something to do with it. The phrase most often heard is “I guess I just lost it.”

All of us, and especially obstetricians and pediatricians, need to get the word out. It is normal for children ages 3, 4, 5 and even older to wet the bed at night and to have accidents in the daytime. Young children sleep too deeply to feel the urge to go to the bathroom. In the daytime, sometimes, they feel it, and sometimes, they don’t. Or they intend to go but get distracted until it’s too late. Children don’t wet themselves on purpose. And all children have accidents - shy first-graders, busy second-graders who try to “hold it,” kids with stomach flu - all of them.

Parents can’t beat, shame, berate, dehydrate, frighten or otherwise torture a child into being a potty prodigy. You’ve just got to keep your cool, hold your tongue, hold your nose and forgive your child for being perfectly normal. - New Mexico

Dear New Mexico: You have written a letter that is going to make life a great deal easier, and more pleasant, for a great number of people, and I want to thank you.

Some children are toilet-trained by the time they reach their second birthday. Others are still in diapers and rubber pants until they are 3 or even 4 years of age.

The important thing for parents to remember is that they must not make a major issue of it. There must be no shaming or punishment. And the less said about “accidents,” the better.

Dear Ann Landers: Last year, my husband, to whom I have been married for 18 years, was “found” by a 22-year-old daughter he had never seen. He and the young woman’s mother got married out of state when the mother was three months pregnant. They were both underage, and their parents had the marriage annulled. The baby girl was given up for adoption.

My husband told me all about this before we married, but we never told our two children, who are now 12 and 13. My husband has met his daughter, “Polly,” twice since she surfaced - once at the birth mother’s home and once for lunch at a restaurant.

Ann, at their lunch meeting, my husband tried to explain to Polly that he is her birth parent, not her dad, and that there is a big and very important difference. He hoped she would understand that he has a family and wishes to retain his privacy.

Polly refuses to get the message. She wants to be part of our lives and is adamant that my husband tell our children about her. Ann, we want to be left alone to raise our family. This young woman is becoming a serious problem, and we don’t know what to do. Will you please give us some guidance? - Loyal Readers in N.Y.

Dear Loyal Readers: Many years ago, Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a distinguished member of the Supreme Court, said, “The right most valued by civilized men is the right to be let alone.” Too bad Polly does not abide by this concept.

Now that Polly has found you and is making a complete pest of herself, you must simply freeze her out. She has no right to inflict herself on you and disrupt your lives. Your husband must tell her this in no uncertain terms. If this means hanging up the phone or shutting the door in her face, so be it. Self-preservation is the first law of survival.