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Silly Monkey Story: A Ticking Time Potty


Last week was April vacation for our local schools.  We did not have many big plans aside from attending a Red Sox party, so we decided to take the children to the mall one evening to have dinner and to pick up a few things we needed.

While we were having dinner, our 5 year old daughter said that she needed to use the potty, so I took her to the family rest room.  She immediately got nervous because there was a self-flushing toilet.  She thinks the sound of a toilet flushing is much too loud in the first place, but not being able to control when the toilet flushed was making her very anxious.

Still, she sat down to pee.  I was very proud of her for being brave.  After I waited awhile, I started to wonder why nothing was happening.  It turned out that she was holding it because she thought that once she peed in the bowl, the toilet would flush.  Then I told her that the toilet was motion-activated and would flush when she stood up.  Well, that just made things worse.  So, there she was, sitting there afraid to pee and afraid to move, like she was sitting on a live bomb.

After what seemed like forever and after a few people knocked on the door to see if the bathroom was occupied, my husband called me from the table to see if everything was okay.  We must have been gone quite awhile.  After I explained to him what was going on, he told me that I could cover the sensor with my hand so that the toilet would not flush until our daughter had done her business and had gotten up.  Well, thank goodness that worked!

I am laughing about it now, but at the time, I was getting pretty aggravated because . . . well, have you ever tried to use logic on a 5 year old?