Boys Just Take Longer

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Boys just take longer, my friend said smugly, as we sat on the zebra bench in front of the sandbox.

My son was three and a half and still in diapers. Her daughter had just turned three and had been wearing big girl panties for nearly six months!

It was humiliating.

There was my big boy with his padded butt running towards the play structure, the crinkle of plastic piercing and painful to my ears.

I felt like a failure. A real looser.

Was this an indication of things to come?

Would my inability to encourage, coerce or cajole my son into mastering the potty be a marker of our continued shared inadequacy?

I vowed to try harder.

To become more focused.

When his aim is accurate and he dunks the Cheerio, I’ll offer a bigger and better reward.

Or maybe I’ll buy the potty toy I saw advertised last week, the Tinkletoon. It plays happy music when ‘hit with number one or number two.”

I read all the books.

Just yesterday we had diaper free time. I’m not quite sure how it is suppose to work. He usually just ends up peeing on the floor.

As I sit pondering a new and more effective approach to potty training, my son calls to me from the top bar of the jungle gym.

“Look at me,” he sings gleefully as he climbs up onto the platform.

Down below, I hear a whine and a grunt as my friend and I watch her daughter struggling to pull herself up to the first level.

“She really wants to be up there,” my friend says wistfully.

Suddenly it all becomes clear to me. Everything is as it should be.

“Don’t worry,” I reply. “She’ll eventually do it.”

Girls just take longer!

By Rachelle Averbach

tagged under: Rachelle Averbach