Potty Talk...

What is it with kids and potty talk? They are obsessed. You can’t have a two-minute conversation without a kid between the ages of 3-12 trying to work it into a sentence.

And if they can’t work it into the sentence, sometimes they will just blurt it out to make them feel better.

Take last Sunday night. I, being a fabulous father, gathered our kids together, shut off the TV, radio, Internet, etc. and sat down with our family and started to play charades. However, I wanted the kids to be invested in this game as well, so I asked them to each write down ten activities and place them in a bowl, so when they said, "Who wrote this stupid idea down," it would have come from them and not me. Harmless, right? A perfect little family sitting down together, acting. What could go wrong?

I was wrong. It quickly became clear after the first three pieces of paper were drawn, that these kids are 100 percent obsessed with potty talk. Poop was the first word drawn from the bowl. I can forgive this, I thought to myself. Pooping is an activity. And although it may not be what I had in mind, it did fall into the ground rules I had set for the game.

After we guessed poop, I sat excitedly, waiting to see what we would act out next. Although I should not have been surprised, the second word presented to the group was poop throw. Now I am not even sure this is a real activity, but I let them have the benefit of the doubt, to keep the game rolling. However, when the third word was pooping, I had to stop the game.

I could not believe that we had picked three selections, out of thirty, and all three had to deal directly or indirectly with fecal matters. "Enough," I stated. "No more poop. No more potty talk, no more anything about the bathroom." Laughing under their breaths, they all agreed.

Then, as Brooklyn picked out the fourth selection, I watched in astonishment as she proceeded to act out something she thought said poop corn. And while I am not sure what a poop corn is, I did see it acted out with a great deal of effort.

When I asked to see the paper, it said popcorn. “That is it,” I said. “No more poop talk. I am sick of this.”

And, if by fate, as I stood up to walk out of the room, Sydney came running in and said, “What is wrong, Poopy Daddy.” Then she proceeded to laugh and laugh and laugh.

And while this fascination boggles my mind, it is something that seems to have been around since we started having kids. However, as your kids get older, you do start to see a distinct change in a child’s openness with these movements (pun intended).

For example, when Boston was the tender age of four, he would walk into Holly’s Salon, downstairs in our home, while she was working on a client and say, “Mom, I have to…” and then sensing that he should not say what he had to do, he would place his hand by his behind and open it up 5 or six time and make a gassy noise that sounded like the longest and loudest toot in the world.

Yes. It was very subtle. No one had any idea what he meant. No one had any idea that he had to go to the bathroom. But once Holly said OK, he would run off to do his business and when he came back he would never let onto what he had done. Somehow, he understood that this is something that we talk about less and less as we grow up and become young adults.

But if things are complex when we are younger, things get much more sticky when we become adults. Adults will do anything to hide that they are going, have to go or ever went at all.

I can recall, with distinct clarity, coming home from a dinner at a friend's house where I must have had 15 bottles of water. Holly’s mom and dad were staying with us and I had to sleep with the kids, in their bunk bed. In the middle of the night, I woke up and was 100 percent sure that Boston had peed on me.

That is, until I realized, I had peed on him. Not my proudest moment, but sadly, not my most infamous either. I quickly ran downstairs and let Holly know that Boston had peed the bed. I acted disgusted as I quickly hid the fact that it was me that was soaking wet from my waist down, while he was mostly dry.

So maybe our kids have had it right all along. Maybe it is us adults who have it wrong. It is only a natural aspect of being a human. Let’s take a firm stand and be absolute in that fact that we will no longer be ashamed when we pee the bed, write poop in a game of charades or use it for a nickname for our father….Let’s embrace our humanness and feel pride when it is time to, ahhh, go.