Toddler

Well this photo will look awfully familiar to those of us with little boys: Maci Bookout's 3-year-old son Bentley peeing the bushes. By the garbage cans, naturally. Maci tweeted the image with the caption, "classy..." A-yup, yup, yup, peeing in public: It's a male's prerogative the boys learn early. (And by the way, that photo is adorbs.)

Have you been there? Like potty training isn't hard enough. Once they figure out how easy it is to whip Peter out and water some flowers, there's almost no stopping them! Go indoors and use a toilet? WHY.

Why?!? Because that's what civilized people do!

Whatever. Being civilized is so not a priority to most 3-year-olds. In my neighborhood there have been long, angry debates over whether you should allow your child to pee in public. I admit, I've let my son take a discreet whizz in public a time or two when we were nowhere near toilets and he was about to have an accident. That was when he was still learning.

But I feel like once you open the door to public pee pee, it's so hard to close it! I mean, I think a mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do. And really, it's not THAT big a deal when they're so little. But once you let them do it a time or two, it just becomes too easy to resist. Next thing you know, you turn around and there he is again, hosing down your roses.

Does it help to say they do eventually grow out of it? At least my son did. He hit a modesty phase, a phase I'm treasuring. Suddenly the idea of peeing in public just became SO EMBARRASSING. Where did this sudden sense of propriety come from? It's wonderful! I hope it lasts his entire life.

So hang in there Maci and other moms. They don't pee in public forever. Well, most of them don't, anyway.

Does your kid ever pee in public? Do you think it's all right?

Image via MaciBookoutMTV/Twitter