‘Horror ball pit’ moment had Sylvia fearing play centres

The flashbacks started the moment I stepped through the sliding door.
Horror and humiliation crept up through my body and filled my head with instant regret.
Had I made a huge mistake returning to the scene of my greatest parental embarrassment? Was I ready for this?
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The familiar smells and sounds of the indoor play centre were triggering. “Skidamarink a dink a dink I love you” played over and over and sent my mind straight back to “that” day.
We had just returned from an adventurous holiday involving planes, many trains and lots of time spent in new places where toilets weren’t always in close proximity.
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But, triumphantly, my two boys, on the cusp of their third and fourth birthdays, hadn’t had a single accident.
The spare change of clothes I packed every day remained untouched and unneeded in my backpack. Job done, I thought. They’re fully toilet trained, I arrogantly declared.
On our return to Sydney, we met up with my friend and her two sons of the same age at the play centre; a safe place for parents who are seeking at least one or two uninterrupted conversations while their children peg squishy balls at one another. Joy.
But then it happened. In slow motion. After taking my first sip of a hot almond latte I looked up to see my almost-three-year-old frozen stiff on the clear Perspex slide.
A stack of children were impatiently urging him to move so they could take their turn, but he wouldn’t budge. The startled look on his face was a red flag.
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The steady drip falling beneath him into the ball pit was the excruciating confirmation that he was not, in fact, fully toilet trained.
Several painful realisations washed over me at once.
The ball pit, on a busy Sunday morning, would need to be evacuated.
So many witnesses! A reality TV star, our local pizza restaurant owner, dozens of families who live within a short radius of us.
I hadn’t packed a spare pair of clothes.
I went immediately to the café counter to ask how I could clean up the mess but the staff had already been alerted to the disaster.
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As they systematically snapped black gloves over their wrists I felt a small dose of comfort; this wasn’t their first rodeo.
By the time I emerged from the toilets with my child wearing his mate’s spare pair of shorts (thank goodness for my more prepared friend), children were once again descending on the pit.
The affected balls removed, the slide and pit sterilised. But my embarrassment remained. How could I ever return to the scene of this crime?
But here I am, almost one year later, drinking my almond latte, humming “Skidamarink a dink a dink”, safe in the knowledge that everyone visited the bathroom on arrival.
If we make it out of here today with dry trousers then this has been a successful exercise in exposure therapy, and a potent reminder that toilet training is a long and humbling work in progress.
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