franchising opportunity?

There's a woman in my ward who has quadruplets. A couple of weeks ago, during the "good news minute" this friend shared that during the previous week she had successfully potty-trained all four of her toddlers.

Over the last week I've been not-so-successfully potty-training my own toddler. It hasn't been altogether unsuccessful. He is peeing in the potty most of the time, provided, of course, that I initiate carrying him into the bathroom and putting him on the potty over his protests. He hasn't pooped in the potty yet, but the last two times he pooped in his underwear he came and told me before he either sat in it or spread it all around the bedroom floor (that happened on Monday, with a repeat on the playroom floor on Wednesday). And his bum looks darn cute in his little underpants.

But I'd be lying if I said that it's been an easy, unruffled week. It is easier this time around than it was with either of my other kids, and maybe that's just because I'm less personally invested in it (I thought Bryce's relatively late potty-training reflected horribly on me as a mother). But potty training stinks-- sometimes literally.

So I've been doing some musing on both the success of my friend with quadruplets and the frustration most parents feel about potty-training their own offspring, and I think I've come up with a great idea, which could become a perfect franchising opportunity for a brave, intrepid soul (not me).

Imagine this-- a shop in a strip mall in any upscale American suburb. The inside looks like a toddler day care center, except the television plays nothing but "Potty Time with Bear" and "Elmo's Potty Time" (you can even borrow them from me-- I own both of them). There are stacks of books including Everyone Poops, Too Big for Diapers, The Gas We Pass (A Story of Farts), and, of course,  Once Upon a Potty. The walls are covered with sticker charts, detailing how many stickers each child needs to earn until they receive the coveted Thomas train or Star Wars action figure. There are lots of liquids being passed around to keep the kids well-hydrated. And then, of course, there are the potties-- just like the ones at the nursery at church.

The idea is that parents would bring their kids for eight or ten hours each day to the potty place, and the people there would train your kids for you! Just think-- if your kids are like mine, they take instruction much better from a person not their parents, so they'd probably learn more quickly. Parents wouldn't feel so guilty about not being successful at getting their kid to pee in the potty, and would probably be willing to pay a lot of money to have someone else do it for them. I'm guessing that in the right location, you might be able to charge $1500 or so for a two-week potty-training indoctrination.

Would I pay $1500? If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said no. But since my laptop got peed on today? I think $1500 sounds like a bargain.

--originally published 5/28/07