Sit Down or Stand Up?

Our nearly two year-old is ready to be potty trained. When he's home, he walks around in just his underwear, tells us when he needs to go, holds it until he can get near a toilet, has an accident now and then, and only wears diapers to bed. Great. In a day when I've seen 5 and 6 year olds still in pullups, our little guy is ahead of the curve.

The trouble is, he is still not quite two yet and isn't big enough to...stand up easily to pee. So in the many months we've been training him up to now, he's been sitting down on the kid's potty to go. He is a boy, and it's his right and privilege as a male to stand up to pee, which affords lots of advantages over the delicate female, who require a 'special place' to go. You have a portable bathroom pretty much anywhere if you have to bad enough. Plus, you can get in and get out of public restrooms in relative ease. In some countries in Europe you have toilets right out in the open for convenience. You try going in one of those, you uterus carriers.

I've tried to encourage him to go standing up in the potty, to some success, but in thinking about it I hesitate teaching him this skill because honestly most guys aren't very good at it. Which I don't understand. You just point it and let gravity take over. But having used public restrooms so many times it is baffling to me how many guys can't hit even the urinal, which is even more foolproof than the sit-down stall toilet. It's on the rim, the floor, the wall; in the sit-down some guys don't bother to lift the seat. You'd pass it off it were a few malcontents, but it is a feature of every public restroom.

So perhaps, for cleanliness sake, it might be better to keep my son sitting down. On the other hand, all those guys who can't hit the seat may have been taught by their mothers, clueless as to the logistics of how to pee standing up, since fathers often have the attitude that potty training and child rearing in general is women's work. I'm going to take the bull by the horns then and teach him mastery of the skill that the other gender could never perform. That other gender may be playing pro basketball (without dunking) or even playing high school football (only kickers, snicker), but they will never pee standing up! Huzzah!

As an aside, I want to share with all of the ladies out there the secrets of male genitalia/bathroom oddities that my wife had never discovered before having a boy at home.

1. Pushing it between our legs when we have to go number two. Unfortunately, the muscle that governs the pee reflex and the poo reflex is the same, and sometimes it's hard to control which comes out when. Women know this when they go, I'm sure, but they don't have to push their junk between their legs when going like a transvestite prostitute trying to convince an in the closet married guy that he's actually picking up a woman (wink, wink).

2. We can't control it once it starts. When my son has an accident, my wife doesn't understand why he suddenly can't stop it and then hold it until she can get him to the potty. You see, it's like closing the barn door while the cows are on their way out. Or it's like closing the dyke while the water is flowing out. Or it's like...I'll stop with the similes. You get the picture. It isn't happening. Especially when you get to be in your late thirties, you REALLY have no control. Once I was in the bathroom while my son was crying, and my wife wondered why I couldn't stop and go to check on him. "I just can't," was my response. She didn't understand.

3. Because it's there. The explanation as to why males from one year-old to ninety year-olds pull, adjust, scratch their junk. The only limitation is that if it hurts, we don't do it. Except if that turns you on.