Toilet Training
A while back, the Mrs. went out and bought a bunch of those toilet locks to keep Junior from playing or having an accident in our restrooms. One night, she says to me: Why don’t you go childproof the toilets? I say OK. I get up and go to each of our three bathrooms and close all the doors. I come back and proudly announce that I am done.
She didn’t like this and gave me a bit of grief over it. She insisted that I install the toilet locks. Groan. I did it and it was a pain in the butt.
After a couple of days, I hated them. When they’re on, the seat won’t stay up. As a guy, your choices are to either awkwardly lean forward to hold the seat up while taking a leak (no easy task) or peeing like a girl.
Also, these toilet locks, and I am not making this up, are held in place by double-sided tape. What this really means is that they are not held in place at all. Thankfully, they didn’t last more than a few days.
We now just shut the bathroom doors.
August 22nd, 2005 at 1:34 pm
I remember getting our first toilet seat locks. I opened the box, and tried to “dry fire” the damn thing. Turned my knuckles white just trying to squeeze it hard enough to release the latch. That wasn’t going to fly for any urgent late-night urgent “call to arms”.
We ended up with the kind that connects at the seat bolts, and consists of an arm that swings out over the lid. Most importantly, the seat stays up when you swing it back to lift the lid.
August 22nd, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Toilet seat locks? You do realize that humans survived several generations without toilet seat locks. (Before then, it would have been outhouse seat locks…) What is the theory, that a toddler is going to nosedive into the toilet and be unable to back out before he drowns? It sounds like a pretty remote chance to me.
My son was, err, unusually active and inquisitive. At the age where in theory he should have just been learning to crawl, he kicked the wooden bars out of his crib so he could fall onto the floor and crawl all around the house. He got into the spin dryer with a load of laundry. At two, he came up missing once – after a half hour of frantic searching, I was sitting on his toybox womdering what I hadn’t covered yet when it suddenly started vibrating and screaming. (After letting him out, I hastily “modified” the latch so it wouldn’t latch.) At three, he got away from his mother and came up the ladder to help me fix the roof. But he never stuck his head into the toilet.
Locking the bathroom is a pretty good idea, because bathrooms tend to accumulate all kinds of things babies might try to eat that aren’t intended for internal consumption. It’s probably easier to see the door is always locked than that everything is always put up high – and your kid will be climbing shelves long before you expect it, anyhow. If they’re anything like my kids, by the time they’re ready to use the bathroom, you’d better have them taught to stay out of stuff – because they’ll climb anything, and be better at opening your locks than you are…
August 23rd, 2005 at 8:44 am
I’m not so worried about my girls nose-diving into the john, but more with them saying one day, “Look, Papa, I’m washing my hands all by myself!” or “Look, Mama, Tigger’s taking a bath!”