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Potty Training - Childhood memories


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How about relating childhood memories (your own or of siblings)  of potty training in RL.  I suspect many of us are here because of childhood potty training.  In my case (late 1940s) I was trained very early and only have some vague memories.  But I do remember younger siblings and some other kids in the neighborhood being potty trained in this era.  For one thing I do remember a rather strict schedule for being put on the potty chair.  The minute after getting up (night or nap) out of a diaper and onto the potty.  Directly after a meal.  And at something like a hour interval at first, this increased later but even at five she insisted we stopped what we were doing probably every two hours.  Later as adults for our own kids we did have an actual schedule. It was based on when they had went in the past or when we thought it was likely.

I will relate more memories in a little while but maybe you will share some of your own memories.  But mine were of a rigid formal process that was required of the child.  Not like today when the child sort of decides when to be trained.

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I was born in mid-July 1964, the third of six siblings. My memory begins during Memorial Weekend of 1968, 6 weeks before I turned 4. Because my bladder was tiny and over-active my Mom would nicely ask me to wear 'just-in-case' diapers on long car rides and special events. That first memory was havining my pinned gauze diaper changed on a lawn at Renaissance Faire.

Both my younger brother and next younger sister were toilet trained before I have vivid memories. Missy is five years my junior. I do remember it took forever to toilet-train her, yet neither of my parents ever scolded her or appeared frustrated. Missy still needed cotton trainers and vinyl panties during the day until after she was five and never really stopped bedwetting. From age 4 until I left home for university Missy shared a bedroom with me. Until she turned 12 in 1981 it was my duty to diaper Missy for bed.

Even when our oldest sister Penny was still having day wetting accidents our parents never scolded about that. Thus I believe the family tales that I was day trained by 30 months and night trained at 33 months. I did not revert to bedwetting until I reached puberty at age 12. I lost my day control at age 21.

What brought me into the ABDL community was learning that many incontinent adults used ABDL play as a way to cope. feeling it was Okay to have fun in my diapers freed me of depression.

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No memories of this, but as I didn't have fairly reliable bladder control till my late teens and that happened progressively,  I'm certain it was a traumatic time for me. Which would well explain why my mind pushed those ear;y memories as far into the darkness as it can. And with me now being diapered constantly it's become something I wouldn't want to remember or re-live at all.

Bettypooh

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I remember sitting on the plastic potty for hours in the middle of the lounge room. In those days (70’s) there was no TV, so I was left to entertain myself however I could, so long as my butt stayed on that potty. I don’t remember whether I actually did any #1 or #2, but it seemed of little benefit, coz I had issues with #2 for many many years. 

 

Maybe I am the way I am today because I resented being on the potty, when not long before I was in nappies?  Such a waste of time, I’d probably have thought too (I wouldn’t be surprised if I did actually have those thoughts)

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Ozziebee during my childhood potty chairs (at least here in the states) were the most common piece of training equipment.  Of course we didn't have TV to watch either.   Many had a tray that was attached.  That meant you could have a toy or book or even a snack while there.  I'm guessing you were seated on something like the second photo.

Being required to sit until you did something was the standard during my childhood.  And most had a seat belt (even into the 70s) to insure you stayed there as long as mom wanted you to do that.  Although some didn't, but to get off the chair without permission resulted in having your sore bottom put back on the chair.  Our chair had a seat belt to assure compliance.  At even at that age my mom had a small paddle to guarantee you followed her directions for other things.  Perhaps there was a similar rule and punishment if you got off the potty?  Participating in potty training was not optional for a child.

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I was born Sept 3, 1964. I don’t remember to much, about my actual toilet training. I do have some snapshots in my head, of the time. I can remember sitting on the toilet, thick cotton training pants and plastic pants, around my ankles. Mom waiting, with the door wide open!  I think I was around 2-2 1/2. We didn’t have a potty chair, or even a potty seat. Mom, just stuck me up on the main toilet, and part of my toilet training, was to learn to balance and sit, without falling in, or off! I do remember, sitting on the edge of that big seat, trying not to fall, do my business, and get done! I do also remember, having to learn to pee standing up. Mostly because, again mom needed to stand by, (with the door open), to first unzip you, or unbutton, and make sure I put the seat UP, and didn’t pee anywhere but in the bowl. It wasn’t easy, as the toilet was pretty high. 

Unrelated to my own experience, I thought I’d share a pice of vintage portable potty seat, toilet training oddity. (I found and bought this, on eBay)

Its a potty seat, that fit over the big toilet, it could be folded up, for carry along travel, but the biggest feature was, the harness that would keep the child on the seat, while mommy attended to other interest. A picture is worth plenty, so I will add a few here.

It was made by a company called Gibbs, in Ohio. They only recently went out of business. They mostly made wooden toys. 

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I've seen kids hanging on for dear life.  It sure can't help the process.  If the child ever slipped and went in, you can bet getting them trained would be REALLY difficult.

Once you got older at my house and you graduated to  a seat like this one in the first photo once trained.  The reason, I think was that you weren't sitting for a LONG time like at first.  Tying up the only toilet for a long time wasn't practical.  I do remember using a seat like this.  And yes mom used the seat belt, you still needed permission to get off the toilet.  She would look in the toilet and verify you had done something, especially for the expected morning poop.  I wasn't permitted to pee standing until I started Kindergarten.  And if you missed you could expect a spanking.

The second photo was a seat my neighbor had.  i thought it was kind of neat when I was a kid.  I played over there a lot and often one of them was on it.  The back of the duck was the pee deflector.

little toidy blue with guard.jpg

dootee wi arms front.jpg

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From AbabeBill's photos of the baby  potty harness I found this method to keep the kid on the toilet.  The small loop secured the pair of belts to the toilet seat.  The big loops went around the thighs.  The other loops restrained the wrists.  I thought being strapped to a seat was tough but to have your wrists strapped down seems nasty.   I'm glad my mom didn't use one of these.  And being patented in 1942 it sure might have been used on me in the late 40s.

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I have few memories from this time although it was a point of pride from my mother that I had been trained spectacularly early: 18 months is the most optimistic metric I’ve heard but it’s also been described as 20 months.  In any case, well before 2 years of age.  This was to avoid having more than one child in nappies as my sibling was about to be born shortly before I turned 2.

I can remember ONE episode of me being left on the toilet to perform (using a kind of insert plastic seat) whilst my mother went off for a long conversation with the Avon lady (as you do).  I was NOT happy.

  I couldn't get off the throne myself, I was too high off the ground and the toilet door was shut in front of me.   The door was white and the walls a kind of lemon color.  It was cramped and boring.  I can remember being later told that my grandmother was a stern advocate of periodically locking up infants alone so they didn't become too attached to human company so being left to my own devices for periods of time was also part of my toddler training.

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The only specific things I can remember are a few moments of being sent to preschool in Pull Ups and otherwise being very against the idea of potty training. I remember they were the old Mickey Mouse Pull Ups too, right when they first were getting into the colored side panels. Apart from that, there isn’t much else that comes to mind.

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Oh the more than one in nappies and the difficulty of washing them was a big driver in getting the child early training program.  That and controlling children was important to older generations.   I've run into a number of old examples of isolating the trainee.  The first outhouse style, notice the door latch was on the outside.  The trainee was stuck there until someone let them out.  And on closer look the second one also has the latch on the outside.  The third was a chair with the doors closed only their head stuck out.  So it could have even been worse.  But sitting there, waiting on an adult who might not have making you happy as a first priority was very boring and frustrating.  been there, done that.

outhouse potty chair.jpg

potty shed 2.jpg

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Smash-N-Dash  do you remember being coerced in any way for getting you to use the potty.  Often daycare potty as a group activity makes it easier but not always.

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Thinking a little more about the straps to hold the kid on the toilet.  I'll wager that strapping down the wrists were to guarantee you didn't touch your naughty parts.  They were very concerned about self abuse.  As matter of fact, the reason most of us boys were circumcised, it was thought that would it would help us from being over stimulated.  They were convinced that masturbation would cause terrible things to happen. 

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As a toddler going through potty training.  It was difficult.  I had many accidents and my parents were hard on me and really wanted to potty train me.  They even allowed me to continue to use a pacifier to relax me.  Thinking that relaxing me may force me to want to use the potty instead of the diaper.  But I was continued to be diapered until age 7 or 8.

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The thing I remember from the potty training period was being asked one morning whether I wanted to wear a diaper or underwear for the day. I chose a diaper, naturally, and we went to run an errand. As we were checking out at the grocery store, with me riding in the cart, my dad asked if any of us needed to use the bathroom, and I said yes. He said, “Honey, you’re wearing a diaper.” The cashier giggled, which I found embarrassing, and I filled my diaper.

I don’t remember the rest. I wonder if my dad’s logic, which I think looking back on was pretty stupid, or lazy, seemed to make as much sense to him as he was wiping my butt at home ten minutes later. All he had to do was take the diaper off, let me poop on the potty, and put it back on. A lot less work than what he ended up having to do instead.

I remember other incidents past toilet training age. It’s funny how so many of my earliest memories involve diapers or accidents. Guess that’s just a sign that I was always a DL.

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I don't really have any potty training memories as it was quite early . I do know whenever I had any accidents while playing or trying to hold it to long I would be terrified of being spanked so I imagine that corpral punishment had a play in my training .

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On 4/16/2019 at 9:13 AM, 1950potty said:

Oh the more than one in nappies and the difficulty of washing them was a big driver in getting the child early training program.  That and controlling children was important to older generations.   I've run into a number of old examples of isolating the trainee.  The first outhouse style, notice the door latch was on the outside.  The trainee was stuck there until someone let them out.  And on closer look the second one also has the latch on the outside.  The third was a chair with the doors closed only their head stuck out.  So it could have even been worse.  But sitting there, waiting on an adult who might not have making you happy as a first priority was very boring and frustrating.  been there, done that.

outhouse potty chair.jpg

potty shed 2.jpg

potty box.jpg

Smash-N-Dash  do you remember being coerced in any way for getting you to use the potty.  Often daycare potty as a group activity makes it easier but not always.

The first one looks old enough to be legit. The second one is, of course, new, and may just be the kind of decoration people who keep fake deer in their garden find amusing. Fare be it from me to call anyone a redneck, but I’ll say instead they have the aesthetic taste of bumpkins. Also, red mulch. Blech.

The third one looks like a torture device.

Every time I hear someone praise old fashioned parenting, I think of stuff like this and the prevailing belief back then that children needed to be controlled instead of taught, smacked for everything they did wrong, and that they had no rights or dignity that needed to be respected. We treat dogs better than that.

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Author_Alex  You are probably right about the center picture, It looks a little too neat and clean to actually have been used.  BUT there is a picture of a kid with pants up sitting in it.  (I didn't want to post it because of that). 

And here is one of the first one's interior.   It sure seems well used. 

And the last one might of had a nasty use.  I'm seventy two and a lot of things happened to kids back then that are now called (rightly) abuse.  And the farther you go back the worse things  could be done.  But I tried to think of a more reasonable reason to use that enclosed chair.  Perhaps it was to keep the child warmer in an unheated or poorly heated house.  I was five or six before we got anything that functioned well for heating.  We did often get dressed in front of a space heater.  The bathroom was chilly!  

Or the third one might have been for modesty, but most little kids don't have modesty problems.  So hope one of these nicer reasons happened in reality.

 

outhouse potty chair open.jpg

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I did a little more research about the chair that closed up.  My guess about keeping the child warm may have some merit.  I found a number of antique European children's chairs similar to this one.   In the comments it talked about using it with a warmer which went into the chair in the bottom space.  The heat then rose through the holes to warm the child.  And the holes in the back were to secure the child in the chair.

antieke-kinderstoel-17e-18e-front.jpg

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antieke-kinderstoel-17e-18e-seat.jpg

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1 hour ago, 1950potty said:

I did a little more research about the chair that closed up.  My guess about keeping the child warm may have some merit.  I found a number of antique European children's chairs similar to this one.   In the comments it talked about using it with a warmer which went into the chair in the bottom space.  The heat then rose through the holes to warm the child.  And the holes in the back were to secure the child in the chair.

Wow, wonder it the child would turn Christian, and denounce Satin after being sat in that contraption? 

1 hour ago, 1950potty said:

 

 

 

 

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On 4/16/2019 at 10:13 AM, 1950potty said:

Oh the more than one in nappies and the difficulty of washing them was a big driver in getting the child early training program.  That and controlling children was important to older generations.   I've run into a number of old examples of isolating the trainee.  The first outhouse style, notice the door latch was on the outside.  The trainee was stuck there until someone let them out.  And on closer look the second one also has the latch on the outside.  The third was a chair with the doors closed only their head stuck out.  So it could have even been worse.  But sitting there, waiting on an adult who might not have making you happy as a first priority was very boring and frustrating.  been there, done that.

outhouse potty chair.jpg

potty shed 2.jpg

potty box.jpg

Smash-N-Dash  do you remember being coerced in any way for getting you to use the potty.  Often daycare potty as a group activity makes it easier but not always.

I can’t say I remember. I don’t remember much from potty training to begin with, apart from the little I have already. My guess is I was probably one of the only kids not fully potty trained when I started preschool. I know at some point I was fully daytime trained not too long after I started, so I was probably right on the cusp of being fully daytime trained.

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  • 1 month later...

I remember a bluish attachment on our toilet in the bathroom off the kitchen with a splash guard shaped like a duck or goose head very similar to this second one:

On 4/15/2019 at 10:31 AM, 1950potty said:

I've seen kids hanging on for dear life.  It sure can't help the process.  If the child ever slipped and went in, you can bet getting them trained would be REALLY difficult.

Once you got older at my house and you graduated to  a seat like this one in the first photo once trained.  The reason, I think was that you weren't sitting for a LONG time like at first.  Tying up the only toilet for a long time wasn't practical.  I do remember using a seat like this.  And yes mom used the seat belt, you still needed permission to get off the toilet.  She would look in the toilet and verify you had done something, especially for the expected morning poop.  I wasn't permitted to pee standing until I started Kindergarten.  And if you missed you could expect a spanking.

The second photo was a seat my neighbor had.  i thought it was kind of neat when I was a kid.  I played over there a lot and often one of them was on it.  The back of the duck was the pee deflector.

little toidy blue with guard.jpg

dootee wi arms front.jpg

I also believe I was the source of pride at how early I was potty trained.  I do remember helping my mother get supplies for the diaper changing of my sister who was two years my junior.  Also, when she was being potty trained, I added to her incentive to gain control with "only babies wear diapers" reminders and probably teasing her about hers and about any accidents she had.  I know I teased her about her inability to pronounce her r's and her tendency to pick her nose and eat her boogers as being babyish.  I now believe my diaper and accident shaming may have been from stuck attention on my own sense of associated shame and/or envy.  I felt quite a bit of shame when I would loose bladder control and wet my pants during a spanking.  Teasing my sister to tears and lying about a misdeed, were things that might evoke a spanking.  After a spanking I would run to my room to cry and quickly change and hide the evidence of my shameful regression to babyish incontinence.  The hypocrisy of scorning this behavior in my sister when she was potty training while still having my own accidents in the daytime like this when I was so far past the potty training stage was not lost on me.  It was the source of a very strong need for secrecy about them and drive to assert my maturity and responsibility in all other areas of my young life.

When I reached middle-age and bladder control issues and their impact on my life increased to where I finally sought professional help specifically for this issue, I noticed the sound of running water was a reliable trigger for urgency and daytime leakage.  Then, by pure random chance, it came up in a conversation with my mother that she used to turn of the faucet to run water as a way of getting me and my siblings to start peeing when she sat us on the potty during potty training.  To this day this is still a trigger.

Has anyone else known this water running technique to have been used during their potty training?  Has it persisted in any way as a pee trigger?  I read an interesting architectural anecdote about a significant increase in water consumption after an office building remodel.  The investigation that ensued to find a leak in the new fountain in the building's courtyard that all the offices surrounded found no such problem.  A closer look revealed increased frequency of bathroom use attributed to the sound of the flowing water of the fountain.  So I believe this is a common practice in potty training resulting in a pee trigger.  When I mentioned this as being one of my known triggers, my urologist turned on a sink faucet during my urodynamic testing, which I always thought was a guarantee of getting a measurable response and the medical diagnosis of detrusor instability and overactive bladder.  But I always felt the learned response may be more psychological and treatable through behavioral techniques than physiological.

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  • 1 month later...

I have no memories of being toilet trained, or even of my younger sister being toilet trained.  My parents were completely overwhelmed at the time, I had just turned 2,. my older sister was 3 1/2, and my younger sister was an infant. My mom was in the hospital for months when I was a year old. It was the mid-1960s, and they were washing all our baby clothes in a wringer washer. They had a diaper service, probably starting when my mom was in the hospital. So it was all undoubtedly stressed and rushed.

They meant well,  and were mostly great parents, but they were super uptight about pee and poo and the human body. All I know is I came out of that stage with a lot of shame about accidents and embarrassment and shyness about needing the bathroom. I don’t remember that messy stage in our lives ever been spoken of until I was 11 or 12, when my older sister asked my mom how you toilet train a baby. She blushed really intensely and said “Well, it’s not easy.” And she told us that one of us used to pee our pants for a long time after we were trained and one of us used to poop them for a long time afterwards. I was so embarrassed to have it talked about I don’t remember which of us was which. I wet fairly often as a little kid, and don’t remember ever having a messing accident, so maybe I was the wetter.

The whole subject of me being (and not yet being) toilet trained seemed at best awkward and taboo and at worst shameful and gross to me until my fetish kicked in right at puberty. Probably like a lot of kids it felt impossible to imagine I had ever been a helpless diaper-wearing baby, or to understand it really wasn’t so long ago. But once I started being aroused by wetting myself I would often role-play doing it like a little boy, and got very interested in what it must’ve felt like to be in diapers: wearing them, and wetting them, going to the bathroom in my pants wherever I was, and being changed. 

I wished I could remember all of it. The best I could do was read the toilet training chapter of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care over and over, for clues about what it must’ve been like before, during and after I was reliably trained.

Not too long after I was playing with those feelings I had a cousin in diapers, and then in toilet training. It all seemed fascinatingly gross, messy and embarrassing but also funny, adorable and innocent. We spent major holidays in the house she was living in, and I remember her laying, crawling and then running around in wet diapers and sometimes poopy ones as a baby. And then later on being there at Thanksgiving and Christmas when there were potties all over the house, and her toilet training board books and sometimes pants she’d had an accident in in the bathroom.

I still felt really embarrassed about the whole subject, but also loved hearing it talked about. And my aunt liked to do the embarrass-the-next-generation aunt thing of reminding me that she used to change my dirty diapers too...

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  • 1 month later...

Returning to this thread again.  I remember a conversation my mother had with a neighbor mother about a third mother (call her Mrs Jones).   My mother thought it was odd that Mrs Jones spanked her kids in their soiled training pants.   She did say that Mrs Jones' children were too old to be still not properly trained.  Her big objection was that spanking them in soiled training pants made clean up harder.   And she definitely was not disapproving the spanking for potty training.   My experience is that the child would be cleaned up before they were well spanked.  That was usually the application of one of those ball on a rubber band type paddles.

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