Urinal Obessesion: A 3 year-old's tale
source: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/05/14/urinals/index.html
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This story from Salon.com deals with the author explaining his son's travails with potty training which resulted in....an obsession with urinals.
It's a hilarious article. Here's a selection:
May 14, 2009 | When my son was 3 years old he became obsessed with urinals. Ordinary toilets held no particular charm for him. But urinals -- well, that was another matter altogether. It made no difference where we went -- a supermarket, a restaurant, a library -- the first thing he had to do was run in and see the urinal. When we drove the three hours to New York to visit his grandmother he wanted to stop at every gas station on the Merritt Parkway. He was an early reader, so he could read the road signs that indicated how many miles it was to the next service island. I would look for an SUV and drive behind it to create a blind spot so he couldn't see the signs, but it never worked.
"Da," he would say.
"Ya," I would say.
"I have to pee."
"Boo, we just stopped five minutes ago. Your bladder can't possibly fill up that fast."
"I have to pee."
I wanted to say, "No, you don't have to pee; you just want to see the urinal, and you know what, it's the same urinal as the one at the last gas station. I'm not stopping, Boo. I am not stopping." And I would have said this, but my wife thinks our son is a god, and so if he said he had to pee then we had to honor the signals his body was giving him.
I knew I couldn't win with her, so I told myself it was OK, this fixation of his. It was his way of achieving mastery over the world, of developing a sense of control. If I took the long view I would realize that what I was witnessing was the gradual refinement of his taste, that mechanism by which he paid attention to some things and ignored others. All kids had their obsessions. Their obsessions revealed something about their character. Exactly what my son's passion for urinals might foreshadow was beyond me, but I decided to go with it.
Anything similar ever happen to you?
It's a hilarious article. Here's a selection:
May 14, 2009 | When my son was 3 years old he became obsessed with urinals. Ordinary toilets held no particular charm for him. But urinals -- well, that was another matter altogether. It made no difference where we went -- a supermarket, a restaurant, a library -- the first thing he had to do was run in and see the urinal. When we drove the three hours to New York to visit his grandmother he wanted to stop at every gas station on the Merritt Parkway. He was an early reader, so he could read the road signs that indicated how many miles it was to the next service island. I would look for an SUV and drive behind it to create a blind spot so he couldn't see the signs, but it never worked.
"Da," he would say.
"Ya," I would say.
"I have to pee."
"Boo, we just stopped five minutes ago. Your bladder can't possibly fill up that fast."
"I have to pee."
I wanted to say, "No, you don't have to pee; you just want to see the urinal, and you know what, it's the same urinal as the one at the last gas station. I'm not stopping, Boo. I am not stopping." And I would have said this, but my wife thinks our son is a god, and so if he said he had to pee then we had to honor the signals his body was giving him.
I knew I couldn't win with her, so I told myself it was OK, this fixation of his. It was his way of achieving mastery over the world, of developing a sense of control. If I took the long view I would realize that what I was witnessing was the gradual refinement of his taste, that mechanism by which he paid attention to some things and ignored others. All kids had their obsessions. Their obsessions revealed something about their character. Exactly what my son's passion for urinals might foreshadow was beyond me, but I decided to go with it.
Anything similar ever happen to you?
