There are questions, and then there are questions which have the potential to end life as we know it.

Is it pee, or is it wee-wee?

Is it poop, is it poo poo or is it dooty?

The reason just about everyone (parents and non-parents alike) cringe at the thought of potty training is knowing what it entails. Yes, at the end you'll have a child who can control his or her bodily functions. But in the meantime, the parents get to clean pee and poop off the floor, walls and (egad!) ceiling, not to mention couches, rugs, books, tables, chairs, pots and pans and just about everything else in the house. Oh, and then there's the doubling of the water and electric bills brought on by rampant use of the washer and dryer.

Barbara and I bought Max a potty about a year ago. He used it. Once. And thereafter abjectly refused. At Christmas, we encouraged Barbara's parents to buy him a couple of books that explained the whole potty process. They got him one with bunnies and stickers, and they also gave him the classic Once Upon a Potty, a title so popular that it comes in boy and girl versions (hermaphrodite version by special order). Max loved the books, but still refused to use the potty.

We decided to hold off on full-scale training. No use making the kid scream and holler for days on end, right? This is often referred to as the "wimp" route. And, most likely, it was a mistake. After all, Max was in the deepest throes of those "terrible twos" in March and April and since he was a whining brat anyway, we ought to have chained his butt to the potty and moved the process along.

But we didn't. Then, in June, he began removing his shorts and diaper and using the potty all by himself. One, two, even three times a day. Sure, his diaper was still always wet at changing time, but he was using the potty of his own accord. That was cool. We thought it might be the beginning of him training himself. Hah! He'd use the potty most days, but there was no real progress toward actual diaper independence.

After considering all sorts of stupid ideas (buying cloth diapers to let him experience the wet and sticky reality of not using the potty, etc.) we decided to simply buy some training underwear and see what happened.

Many of our friends with older children told us that we needed to use some sort of incentive system, be it stickers or jellybeans or M&Ms or whatnot. The idea is to give the kid a reward each time he or she successfully uses the potty. I decided that this was silly, and that Max would learn from the wet and sticky reality of soiled underwear. Barbara didn't agree, but she agreed to try my way first.

Bad move. My brilliant idea flopped. Max completely quit using the potty and proceeded to pee in his underwear five, six, seven or more times a day--generally within seconds after Barbara or I asked him point-blank: "Do you need to pee?"

Even so, slowly but surely he started to get a handle on recognizing when he needed to pee. The first sign of this came one afternoon late in September. I was doing something in the kitchen--making supper, probably--and I heard his chirpy cry: "Daddy! I'm peeing on your bed!"

After muttering "I didn't hear that, I didn't hear that," to myself, I walked back to our bedroom. Max stood on top of the bed, pants and underwear around his ankles and a big, dark stain spreading through his clothes, the bedspread and the sheets. I'd like to say that I was a good parent who said "Alright, Max! You got your pants off! Good job!" because, in fact, the act of taking off his clothes was a real step forward for him. But that didn't happen. First, I scolded him for standing on the bed (something he's not supposed to do) and then I scolded him for peeing on the bed. I wrestled his clothes off him and pointed him in the direction of the potty. He ran away crying. He did not sit on the potty, but he did wail for ten minutes while lying naked on the living room couch.

There goes my shot at "Parent of the Year.".

After that epochal event, Max often removed his clothes, but he continued to mark his territory everywhere but the designated receptacle. And so, at the beginning of last week, I capitulated to the incentive plan.

The choice of treat was easy. Max has never eaten hard candy, and jellybeans are but a faint memory from last Easter. On the other hand, Max has never forgotten the day our neighbor Tempie gave him his first piece of chocolate. M&Ms were the only real choice.

We explained the procedure last Sunday night, and Max was enthusiastic. He went 2-for-4 on Monday, but even using the potty once in a day was a step forward. Then he didn't pee on Tuesday. Not his underwear or his nap time diaper. No pee whatsoever. Amazing. Come Wednesday morning, the combination of held-back pee and poop overloaded his industrial-strength diaper (we have continued to use diapers for sleeping times, in an effort to keep our utility bills down to a manageable level). Nasty, nasty, nasty. Pajamas, sheets...half of Max's room hit the wash. Oh well. Still, that was the beginning. He then peed in the potty four or five times on Wednesday, and he hasn't soiled his underwear since. On Friday and Saturday, he even got through his naps without peeing in his diaper (he didn't quite succeed today), but what's more impressive is that he's been able to hold his pee when we've been away from the house during the day. As soon as we get home, he runs to the potty and fills it.

That's real progress.

Poop is a different situation. Since going to training pants right after Labor Day, Max has pooped in his underwear once. Most often, he holds it until he wakes up in the morning or after a nap. In an odd sort of coincidence, he also has pooped in his potty exactly once--the day after we bought it more than a year ago. He obviously knows how to hold it, and he's obviously still uncomfortable with using his potty for poop. He just won't. Oh well. That part will come eventually.

I'm always wary of taking advice from other parents--even when it is unanimous. It isn't that I believe Max is unusually "special" (all kids are special, after all) or particularly different. I just have an aversion to conventional wisdom. If everyone believes something, it simply cannot be true. But, eventually, once my counterintuitive instincts have been amply discredited, I will consider a change of course. I still think handing out M&Ms is silly and shouldn't be necessary, but hey, if it keeps my bed dry, then I'm all for it.

Jon Worley does not own stock in the M&M/Mars corporation.