Nothing needs hurrying up

Toilet training can take so long. Even when our kids start to go to the toilet independently, there is a very long process of back and forth, with them still needing our support to wipe their beautiful bottoms; sometimes making mistakes in their undies; nappies overflowing at night, and so on. The process is not measurable but can surely last years.

This is something great, I think. In our modern world we are encouraged to march onwards and tick things off lists. But parenting and in this case toileting, forces us to slow down. Here we must connect with circular expressions of time, and be un attached to outcome and achievement. We’ve probably all excitedly shared to a friend that our little darling has mastered the use of the toilet, only to go home and that afternoon be elbow deep in the muck.

I think toileting frustrates so many parents (me included) because there is some conditioned expectation that our kids’ development happens in a linear way. It can reveal in us an unconscious desire to ‘get through’ the early stages of parenting (not our own fault but a symptom of the goal oriented culture we’ve grown up in). But don't we also get stopped in our tracks every so often when we glimpse our children and realise how quickly they have grown? And we wonder gosh did I go slow enough during those early years, to really capture it all before it disappeared? 

I feel that the times in parenting when things are progressing slower than we’d like, are actually opportunities to savour our children's current stage. Nothing needs hurrying up. Perhaps these devotional acts of service help us to pause and delight in our children more deeply. We may share some soothing body contact with our child as we wipe their bums, feel our togetherness as we change the sheets, and we may remember that this stage of life will at some stage slip through our fingers.