5 things I learned being the toilet training sailor
About three years ago I helped start a company called Creative Homes. We’re a group of creative people (storytellers, dancers, performers, musicians, designers, chefs, etc) that work directly in family homes with children under 5, using playful solutions to help families who are really struggling with daily routines like tooth bushing, toilet training and fussy eating. We do this by becoming characters that visit families in their homes and lead them through a range of fun ways to play around that part of their routine that’s causing tension.
If you’d have told me three and half years ago, when I was finishing my design degree that I would be regularly dressing as a sailor to help toilet train toddlers, I would have been…surprised. But hey past me, look how much we’ve learned:
- Play can open a lot of doors
We do most of our work with families living on social housing estates in South London. We’ll run an 18-week project on a specific estate (funding by the housing organization who owns it) and offer our playful services for free to any resident with children under 5 who’ll have us.
When we start we usually don’t know where most of the families live so a big part of the first phase of the project is knocking on doors and figuring out where families are. People always ask me if we get a bad reaction — “What you just knock on people’s doors and tell them they need to be a better parent?” — but if you get straight to the point, which is: “we’re a service offering free play and fun activities for you and your kids”, it doesn’t take much more to get invited in. We also bring little craft activity packs with us so if a parent comes to the door with a two year old clinging to their legs we can squat down to the child’s level, blow up a balloon or take out a toilet roll bus and play on the door step. It just helps to show them then and there a bit of what we do and how much the kids enjoy it.
Of course what we do isn’t right for everyone, and some people need more time to get used to the idea of a tooth fairy entering their home (we also run play sessions to get to know people in group settings first), but very often all I say is “would you like us to come build a den at home with you and your kids for an hour?” and we go from there.
2. A good way to make friends is through a shared sense of purpose
It is certainly a surprise to have a sailor and their pet parrot turn up on your doorstep, so you can’t blame the kids if they’re sometimes a little unsure of how to react to us at first. I explain that Polly the parrot and I have been out at sea for ages and Polly really needs a wee, then I ask if it would be all right for her to use their toilet. Now we have a clear reason for being there (there’s no toilet on our boat of course) and a goal we both need to work together to achieve. We’re on a journey to find Toilet Island and there isn’t much time left before it will be too late. Every child knows where the toilet is in their house, even if they aren’t using it yet themselves, so it isn’t long before Polly is relieved and the ice is usually broken.
3. Sing your way out of a difficult situation
As you would imagine when you’re toilet-training toddlers, there can sometimes be a few ‘accidents’. The first response might be to pull a face and back away is but is that what a sea-worthy sailor would behave? A scrub-the-deck song on the other hand shows children, and parents, that accidents and cleaning them up are all part of being a good sailor. Singing enthusiastically about how fun it is to wipe up wee is a good way to convince yourself as well.
In my experience this isn’t just true for toilet training but for almost any situation. When a young child becomes worried or upset or just needs a reason to do something my first response now is to sing, and it usually works. A lot of the time it’s true for adults too.
4. Stay in character
So why do we go into family homes in character, what’s the point of dressing as a sailor? The most obvious reason is that it’s memorable. In most family homes adults come and go and they’re all pretty similar when you’re looking up from knee height. A real-live sailor and their bright red parrot on the other hand is something you don’t see every day, at least not on an inner city estate. But it’s more then just that. Becoming a character allows you to operate on a different plain of logic to every day life, one that’s more playful and closer to the way children understand things. I could turn up to a house in my jeans and t-shirt, introduce myself as Helen the designer/illustrator and suggest we search for Toilet Island but it wouldn’t have the same urgency or authenticity. Sure, in every day life I’m not really a sailor and the toilet isn’t really an island but if I’m in character and the child believes in that then we’re in that imaginary world together and our interaction is genuine. We enter that world and can really explore it, count the sharks swimming in the bathtub, hear the screech of the seagulls flying over head, smell the salty breeze and feel the warm sand in between our toes.
From then on whenever I see that child I am Sam the sailor, if I bump into them walking across the estate I’ll ask if they know where Toilet Island is and they’ll point excitedly to wherever the think the nearest toilet might be. I’ve even gotten Christmas cards addressed to Sam the sailor.
So when you have such a memorable and positive experience associated with using the toilet, when there’s a friendly character who’s story makes sense and I song that reminds you to go, and when your parents are a little more amused and therefore a little more relaxed about the whole thing, then its more then likely you’re on a good course for regularly returning to Toilet Island.
5. Involve the rest of the family
Because we work with busy stressed out parents, you’ll sometimes see them edging out of the room to go do something else as soon as the kids are settled into an activity. Or in other cases the parents don’t feel confident playing themselves and sit watching from the sidelines. It’s easy to think that because what we do is focused on the child the adult doesn’t have to be in the room. Or to not know quite how you fit in as a parent when a singing sailor has suddenly entered the room. But these songs, stories and activities we do, if used and repeated by the adult, are really effective tools for them to communicate with their children. It’s not enough for me to lead the session entirely focused on the child and then at the end say to the parent, ‘right just copy all that every day and your problems are solved’. They need to be invited into the play as well.
If they’re there with us they can see how quickly their child enters our imaginary world and how easy it is for the child to understand why a sailor and their parrot would care so much about searching for Toilet Island.
What we are trying to do is achieve lasting change in the frequency and quality of a family’s routine through play. Due to cost, we can usually visit a family two to four times. We provide the starting point but for lasting change the parent really needs to commit to play as a way to solve problems. It may seem like a bit more work to begin with but once you start it’s just more fun. Toilet training suddenly means sailing towards the toilet with your child singing a song rather then dragging them there after it’s too late or because they’ve become cared of it. Or even if it never got that bad, now you having songs and stories to introduce your child to the toilet rather then worrying about how it’s all going to work.
When the toilet training sailor arrives the kids go on a journey but so do the parents. At the beginning they often don’t appreciate the value of play but by the end they often realise that they’d forgotten how until our visits gave them the permission and the tools to play again. It’s easy to be the fun sailor who comes and play with kids but if you don’t involve the parents and really include them in that experience then nothing will really change. And once parents understand the value and power of play they start to incorporate it into the rest of their family lives and that’s when things get really interesting.
For more sailor fun — www.creativehomes.co.uk
