Indoctrination Has an Upside

Ch-ch-ch-changes.....Amidst everything else going on with Emerson right now, we are trying to get him to give up his bottle addiction (Robbie finds it humiliating - I could care less except that he's chewing through a $7 nipple every week) and we are beginning the dreaded potty training journey. I was feeling a little overwhelmed at my growing list of motherly duties, so I looked to Barnes and Noble for some outside support.

After scouring the shelves for several minutes while Emerson overcame his fear of Thomas the Train in order to play on the train set, I found two perfect books: No More Bottles for Bunny! and Once Upon a Potty.

Luckily, he LOVES his new books. When Bunny proclaims that bottles are for babies and tosses his bottle into the trash, he eyes the illustration with a mixture of fascination and trepidation. But I have noticed a drop in the number of times he asks for the bottle each day.

The potty book has an equally interesting picture of "poo-poo" in the potty, which he turns to again and again while sitting in the bathroom. The only thing that bothers me about the book (besides an uncomfortably graphic picture of "Joshua's little hole") is that the potty looks like a water pitcher. But whatever, it's doing the trick.

Since these books have been a success so far, I'm going to move onto others that I saw on the shelf, like Hands Are Not for Hitting, Teeth Are Not for Biting and Feet Are Not for Kicking. As he gets older, there's also the dinosaur series: How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Room?, How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? Hopefully he likes dinosaurs.

I figure if indoctrinating my children with books works, I'm going to write a series of them for the teen years and beyond. With titles like Once Upon a Curfew, How Do Teens Pay for Their Own College?, No More Living in Mom and Dad's Basement for Hippo, and Parents Are Not for Putting in Nursing Homes, it's sure to be a success.

I know, I'm hilarious. Now back to researching potty training....