To Pee or Not To Pee

I woke up this morning at 3am to the sound of someone peeing on the floor next to my bed. At first I thought it was the dog and was ready to yell “bad doggie!” Imagine my surprise though when I turn on the light and I realize it’s … Christopher. Say what?

I’m half asleep and not at my most patient. So I yell, “WHY ARE YOU PEEING ON MY FLOOR? STOP PEEING!” So he stops. Thankfully.

Now I need an answer to my question. Why were you peeing on my floor??

Christopher was afraid of the dark and he didn’t want to go to the bathroom all by himself. So he chose to pee on my floor instead. The logic of this escapes me but I’m not a five year old kid afraid of the dark so who am I to judge?

I’ve now upset him with my yelling though and so I need to stop and calm down. Christopher asks me, “do you still love me”? It breaks my heart a little to know that he’s afraid he wouldn’t be loved anymore for one pee incident. So I hug him and tell him, “of course I still love you. I just don’t *like* that you peed on my floor”.

This makes him stop crying, thankfully. And at this point I give him a roll of paper towels and tell him he’s got to clean up the mess. He’s five years old and needs to understand the repercussions of his impulsive actions. He did a half-okay job and I did the rest. I mean hey this is my bedroom and I do not want any pee left on the floor. Ewww.

Potty training has definitely been a challenge for this kid and at the age of 5-1/2 I thought we were done but as last night shows, we’re not quite done yet. We were only able to stop wearing pull-ups to bed last February and we only stopped them then because there had been a huge snow storm and I couldn’t get out of the house to buy another pack after running out. Since then, Christopher has often been up two, three, four times a night to pee. This is because he had the sensation of needing to go, even if he didn’t really have to. I actually took him to the doctor for this and he ran tests and found nothing wrong. I had a test scheduled with a radiologist at Children’s Hospital but as it took several months to schedule the appointment, Christopher’s need to constantly pee had subsided in that time. I really do think it was just a potty training issue.

The way I look at it is, with Christopher some stuff will just take longer since he had such a traumatic history. Potty training is one of those things. And so I need to remember that next time Christopher pees on my floor at 3am. This of course isn’t easy to do when I’m exhausted and trying to sleep but I do the best that I can.