When I Made My Baby Cry

The particular incident I’m going to talk about is related to toilet training my then-20-months-old.

I was given advices to begin his toilet training from when he was 9 months old. I had been told of numerous examples of how if you don’t begin it soon, the child would be dependent on the diaper for a long time. So, I bought a baby pot, and tried to begin my ordeal named- toilet training. It is pertinent here to admit that I’m a little bit of a cleanliness freak, so the thought of the ‘accidents’, which are a natural part of this training, was a major deterring force for me. Still, I powered through. It didn’t last, though, because my son refused and resisted going for it on the pot. I read numerous articles, and decided that perhaps I should wait until he is ‘ready’. He was in a phase of not-sitting-in-one-place-for-more-than-one-minute, and no amount of cajoling and entertaining could keep him in the pot. Good sense prevailed and I let it go for some more time, till I felt he was ‘ready’.

A few months passed and the time came when both my husband and I felt that Adi is willingly sitting in one place for a long time, cuing for going for potty, and stopping all activity when it was “time to go”. According to literature this was the time to strike the iron. I again took upon the task of keeping him diaper free and trying to make him go potty in his baby pot. But he was looking at me dumbfounded. Believe me, I tried all tricks passed down to me by my family as well as those that I had read in books and seen in videos online, but nothing seemed to be working with my boy. So I did what no parent should do in such a situation: I screamed. I yelled at him for being dumb. I cursed myself for not starting his training early on. I blamed myself for this failure. My little angel looked up at me, too scared to even let out a cry, eyes brimming with tears. His face in that moment remains unforgettable to this day. I just hugged him and then he let out the cry of his life. He cried so badly that he was almost breathless. We were alone at home at that time and even though he must have been mighty upset with his monster mother, my poor baby had nowhere else to go. So he hugged me tightly. As I type this I cannot help but remember those moments of utter disgust that I felt for myself mixed with overflowing love that I felt for his vulnerability. So I did what I should have: I quit.

Over the course of more than a year I kept trying repeatedly and then quitting, because my kid just couldn’t fathom the idea of pooping in the pot. With each trial I felt a-monumental-failure as a mother. I mean I had taken the conscious decision of being a stay-at-home-mother for some years, and there I was, not even able to get my kid to use the pot. What a shame!

I made my baby cry that day. Of course babies always cry, that is their way of communicating. But this was different, because it was I who made him cry. It all started with that one good-natured and well-intentioned query by a fellow Mom in the park, “Why haven’t you potty-trained him yet?”. This question robbed me of my peace about my child’s well being. Well, any parent knows that it is easier said than done to be ‘at peace’ with your kid’s development, because there’ll always be a few kids of your kid’s age, who you’ll look at, who’ll make you feel that you’re doing way less than what you should be. It isn’t your kid you feel “ashamed” about, actually it is your parenting. A couple of months after my sunshine had turned one year old, I met a kid of the same age who was almost pre-school trained, and my mind started bugging me, “What if my kid can’t compete with these kids in school and then might feel like a failure?”. Next you know the daily dose of happy and chirpy rhymes got replaced with songs about alphabets and numbers. Of course, that didn’t last; as far as the song selection goes, Adi’s choice is the last word.

Upon pondering, I felt it was disgraceful on my part to try to get him interested in something that he isn’t taking an immediate interest in, and something that he eventually would be involved in. After all, he is not going to go through life being illiterate or uneducated. So what’s my hurry? My hurry stems from the invisible and unannounced race that we parents, at least most of us, seem to jump in, the moment our child is born. From comparing notes about the developmental milestones of the first year, to comparing marks of our children in school, to comparing teenage love companions of our children, to the jobs they get, the story goes on. I reiterate here that it isn’t the children who are in the competition but us parents, and that too because we wonder what different can WE do to do better. As if our child’s achievements are our doing! Honestly speaking I used to think I was above all this. Reading a plethora of parenting books and articles makes you believe that you’ve got this and you aren’t going to do anything wrong…. Until you do. Of course I didn’t just stumble upon this wise epiphany. It has taken some incidents to get things shaken up in my head.

My kid is now 3 years 3 months old, he is potty trained (I felt like I should mention it), and is in his preschool stage of education. Interestingly he got potty trained only recently, and it took me just two days. You read that right. It took me exactly two days to potty train him. I was forcing the training on him when his mental faculties were not ready for it, because his brain was busy in internalising other interesting things. I realise that I did that because of the “shame” that I felt for myself. I have since then learnt to question myself whenever I felt similar emotions. Case in point is recently when he was unable to, literally unable to, grasp the concept of paddling his cycle. He used to paddle backwards so the cycle obviously didn’t move. Sumeet and I perhaps ran out of patience so we gave up. But still I kept on encouraging him to sit on the cycle and lug it around any way he liked. I had to stop myself from chiding him several times because it used to break my heart at times to see kids exactly his age paddling away smoothly. But I gathered myself and sternly told myself to stop comparing. I had to wait till he felt like it. After all we had bought the cycle for his enjoyment; it was not to mark a milestone in his development. Life is not a race, contrary to what we have internalised all our lives. Life is for living, and I owe it to my child to make him learn that, instead of passing on my competitive insecurities to him. For that I myself need to unlearn many a thing, and I am learning to do that every day.

Adi is now cycling well, all thanks to his Nanu (my father) who patiently and lovingly nudged him towards this activity. It wasn’t easy but my Dad didn’t give up, and after three weeks of consistent efforts my little bunny was cycling perfectly. I was incredibly proud of him the day I saw him cycling untiringly. I was happy not just because he could now cycle, but also because I didn’t pressurise him. I was happy because I stopped comparing my kid to other kids as well as comparing myself to other parents. Every child is unique. As cliched as it sounds, it is true. I am letting my Anhad free, just like his name, because one day he is himself going to bloom into whatever he is meant to, and whatever he wants to.