Potties, Potties, Everywhere

You know, I've peed in a lot of potties in my life and I never really thought about how difficult it must be for a parent who is potty training their children to find a public toilet that is the right size for the kids butt.

I've thought about how difficult it would be to a child of the opposite sex...and the obvious questions that would arise about the external plumbing.

I've thought about the germ factor of public toilets... and trying to dangle your kid over a dirty potty.

But I never really thought about how a tiny little kid may not be able to appropriately span the width, much less the length of an adult-sized toilet.

That is, until I had a kid that was potty training.

Now, I understand that most of the world is adults, so most of the toilets in the world are going to be adult-sized toilets.

But you really would expect that places geared towards children would have some sort of adapter or child-sized toilet.

You know, like McDonald's.  I don't eat there, but I know a LOT of kids go there...no child-sized toilet.

Or the play area at the mall.  You'd expect that the toilets near that play area would have at least one child-sized stall, right?  Or perhaps one in the "family" bathroom?  It would make sense there wouldn't it?

Or Disneyland... (hate to admit that they've failed on that one, but in all the years of marking my territory there, I never saw a child-sized toilet)

But the one place that I was MOST, well, irate about not having a child-sized toilet...was the Children's Hospital.

Now, this is a hospital ONLY for children.

ONLY children.

And while I understand that it would be too limiting to have some rooms with the child-sized toilets (like in preschool) vs. the adult-sized toilets, you'd pretty much expect that they would have an adapter that they could put on the toilet seat to allow your child to piss in peace.

But no.

They don't even have child-sized commodes...

During our recent stay at the hospital, we had to bring our own from HOME....only to find out that the adapter ring for that training potty doesn't fit the oblong, industrial-type public toilets.

What shocked me so much was that when we asked for the trainer or tot-pot, the nursing staff looked at us like we were speaking a different language.

"A what?  You want a training toilet for your kid?  Here?"

Yes, here.  People do pee (and more) in the hospital.

o_O

So, I guess my month of finding stupid things that people do is just beginning again.


BTW, I did find a solution that didn't involve me hugging the back of the toilet while my daughter sat upon it.  It turns out that our tot-pot could have the bowl removed, but otherwise be intact.  We put the whole thing up on the toilet seat and it was very sturdy because of the rubber feet.  The only thing our daughter needed was a crown.