Potty-training

No, no pictures this time. Pictures of potty training wouldn't be pretty.

It really, really stinks to be a baby. It stinks to be unable to move unless someone moves you, to be unable to see properly unless someone props you up and turns you in the right direction. A good portion of babies' crying is nothing but frustration at how helpless they are, until, little by little, they master their equipment, and become capable of moving themselves. Then all that pent-up desire and curiosity comes gushing out like a fire-hose, and that's what we call the terrible twos. Speaking of gushing out like a fire-hose, that's right around the time for potty-training. True, for some kids, all of that plays out prior to their second birthday, but I worked in a church nursery with two-year-olds the entire time I was in high school, and nearly all of them had at best a sketchy mastery of potty usage.

So, I got to thinking about potty-training this morning. A few things occurred to me.

• For the parents, it obviously can be a frustrating time: lots more messes that are gross, a fair measure of embarrassment, and the maddening reality that the kid may not be in any hurry to complete the changeover.


• For some kids, the prospect of potty-training is downright scary. Some find that big ol' appliance in the bathroom just a little intimidating. Some are troubled by the flush.


• For some kids, it's clear what to do and how to do it, but it's just too much hassle. Because they're still very new at getting from place to place and manipulating their toys in the proper fashion to have fun, it's a major investment of time to hike off to the bathroom and go through the proper motions for a mess-free defecation, and sometimes they just don't want to sacrifice.


• And really, all that's available to the parents is helping the child understand how it works, and then encouraging and reminding, all the while applying a light touch. Getting worked up or heavy-handed has two problems: it's equally likely to backfire as to succeed, and even if it does succeed, it leaves unwanted trauma in its wake.

Strange thing to be thinking about, I agree. But it floated into my head and stayed for a visit because of its uncanny resemblance to a struggle that virtually all college students have.

College students are a lot like toddlers. They're mastering their equipment, so when they try to carry out normal adult tasks, many times their efforts are slow, incomplete, sloppy, or not very well thought out. But at the same time, they're operating off this huge, pent-up gush of frustration and desire for autonomy that goes back years and years, all the way to, well, toddlerhood. Now that autonomy has (mostly) arrived, they're giddy with it, which means that sacrificing even a little bit of it for a clean and orderly outcome can seem like too much. Plus, the work itself may seem intimidating or scary, and procrastination works as a turning away, a refuge. Not a safe or permanent one, but one that's easy to hand.

All the while, we who work with them wait impatiently for the discovery that procrastination is not what people who want to succeed, or even just want a low-stress life, should practice. While they labored under the supervision of parents and high school teachers, the tempo was set for them: daily homework, daily parental insistence that they complete it before turning their attention to anything enjoyable. Effectively, the parents and teachers changed their diapers. Then, they arrived at college, and it was time to get potty-trained in a hurry.

And I know that I'd get better results if I could follow the advice I set down above for potty-training: if I could model the behavior, explain its benefits, and then wait for them to grasp on their own how much better their lives could be if they applied responsible, well-paced effort to their assignments. The problem is, the calendar is the boss of all of us. Pediatricians can tell young parents, "Don't worry; the child will pick up potty training on her/his own at the right time. They're not going to have to take their potty to college with them." Sound advice. But when I've only got fifteen weeks to deliver content and measure their mastery of it, there simply isn't the luxury of surplus time for them to mull over the merits of planning far ahead and distributing large tasks over many work sessions. Instead, I have to rig the classes to reward those who do, and leave those who don't defenseless against the consequences they heap up, and then dig in my heels and be ruthless about carrying out what I've constructed.

But it's the perennial struggle. If I, or anyone else, ever finds a way to help college kids tackle their work and do it in manageable bites, instead of bragging to one another about how cute and charming and awesome it is that they wait and pull all-nighters to get uncomplicated projects done, then the biggest portion of their stress will fade, and their biggest waste of effort and energy will be channeled into something more productive.

And, of course, I'm over-romanticizing. If I didn't have this problem to bash my head against, it'd be something else. That's simply the way the world works.