TMC:
My very dear friend taught her sons how to pee sitting down. She was a single mom and didn't know how to teach them standing up. They are now adults and from what she hears (most moms don't ask their adult sons how they piss) they can pee standing up just fine.
Uncle Brett says:
Kudos to this mom. I strongly advocate teaching boys to pee sitting down. I pee seated most of the time myself: it's relaxing. But besides its leisure benefits, I think it's also advisable for the following reasons:
1) It's a consistent approach that leads more naturally to the act of pooping sitting down, a transition with which some boys struggle based precisely on this artificial division.
2) It diminishes worries about aim. Little boys have a hard enough time getting their foot into a shoe or their hand in a mitten, and that's pretty much a direct one-to-one match up. Why give them carte blanche to freely wield their highly inaccurate urine gun--with the safety off--all over a room and fixture you're going to have to clean?
3) Not that I'm a doctor, or put total faith in the medical establishment, but I've seen some studies that claim that peeing seated is easier on the bladder.
4) If this practice were universally adopted, it would finally rid us of that tedious seat-up/seat-down struggle that every sitcom writer seems to think is the pinnacle of comedic genius.
5) The penis is seductive enough to a young boy. I promise you that they'll figure out how it works and discover the pleasure they can derive from it without giving them an open excuse to fondle it five times a day.
Brett Berk, M.S.Ed has worked with young children and families for over twenty years, and is the author of The Gay Uncle's Guide to Parenting (Random House, 2008). Visit him at www.askgayuncle.com
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