Tot School - Wonders of the Bathroom

(Bubby is 33 months old)

This is the most interesting thing Bubby has picked out on his own. He loves to have me open the lid to the toilet tank and tell him about how it works!
He has a book called What's Inside? Great Inventions which has an illustration of the inside of an old-fashioned toilet tank, and it explains how it works. I don't know how much he understands about it, but he certainly does like to see all the parts and compare them to the picture. You can see the book lying open in the photo above.

His older brother, now eight, loved the very same thing when he was two. In fact, that is how I potty trained him. His reward for "good work" was that I would lift the lid to the tank and tell him about everything inside before he flushed. I couldn't get little Bubby interested in the same thing while we were potty training, but now that we are almost to the end of that road, he is very interested.

Usually he will ask twice a day if he can look inside the tank. We go in the bathroom and I stay with him until he has seen enough. He asks for the names of the different parts (I don't know what everything in there is called, but I do my best) and we talk about what happens when you push the handle. Then at least once he needs to get down on the floor so he can see the water pipe coming from the floor and entering the tank.

I have never heard anyone else say that their kid was this interested in the workings of a toilet tank, although since both my boys have been so big on it, I am assuming there are other kids out there that like to see what is going on in that tank. One of the hidden mysteries of life!