2 min read

Potty Training

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I wrote this article after a good friend of mine texted me about how awful it is going through potty training with his youngest kids, who are twins. The free-range, no-diaper method they used with their older one isn't really working, and there are piles of... well, you know... all over their house.

It sounds a little like living in a turn-of-the-century insane asylum.

We only have one kid, but potty training him was a bear. He just didn't want to do it. He was super-happy to stay in diapers forever.

What eventually worked was combining potty with something he was both fascinated by and scared by: ghosts. He had somehow gotten it into his brain that ghosts were going to visit him every night, and he was frightened. So I did what any diabolical parent would do: I told him that ghosts come out of the potty, and that they won't swim through poop.

Then we created a chart with ghosts on it that he pooped on. After bathroom time, he'd get to name one (he was also into Pacman then) and cross it out.

I think (and hope!) that I still have that chart somewhere, because I'm going to give it to him at his wedding.

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Of course, kids aren't the only ones who need potty training. Men, it turns out, need it too. From putting the seat down (that took me about 3 years into marriage to learn) to not camping out in there (all men do it, just none of us talk about it).

And then there's the guy in the office who seems to spend all day in the bathroom:

HR would like you to stop painting in the bathrooms, George
I couldn't resist.

...although I doubt they're painting. They're generally just playing Candy Crush (it's still a thing?) or trolling random people on the internet for being bad at life.

Other neato stuff

As someone who has had a decent amount of stuff go viral (including yesterday's doodle, which made it to the front page of Imgur), this story about how TikTok's management team helps choose what goes viral was both fascinating and horrifying.

Then there's this gem about dresses:

Dress Pockets from webcomics

That's it for today! Thanks for reading, and if this is your first time here, please subscribe! I'm not gating posts this week, but will be back to that next week.