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When is it acceptable to pee on the side of the road?
I've got 4 small kids (3 boys + 1 girl; only the girls is in diapers). We do a 2 hour road trip down to the grandparents about every other weekend. We always make them go to the bathroom before we leave, but we still have pee emergencies pretty much every trip.
For us, peeing on the side of the freeway is basically a must. If we try to find a proper bathroom, that's easily a 20+ minute detour. Driving to the bathroom is maybe 5 minutes, but then wrangling the problematic kid(s) is much more difficult in a dirty garage bathroom than on the side of the road. (I can't count the number of times I've had a kid wipe their junk on a public restroom toilet and then I have to do a serious disinfection...)
So my policy for side-of-road peeing is:
It has to be safe to stop.
There shouldn't be pedestrians around that can see us. (So this means no peeing on non-freeway type streets, and certain sections of freeway are also off limits.)
There has to be "nature" to pee on. Some amount of grass/dirt is okay, but a tree is best. If we're on the stretch of the I5 in Irvine, where there's concrete everywhere, we won't stop. (This is partly related to pts 1+2.)
I realized on this week's roadtrip that I've never seen another car parked with the kids out peeing. Am I breaking some sort of major taboo here?
I'm also not sure what I'll do once the girl isn't wearing diapers, and whether I'll allow / force her to pee on the side of the road.
I have a daughter and a horror of many gas station bathrooms. We traveled (5-9 hour trips. Bathroom stops were required) with her training potty until we could be assured she could hold it long enough for us to find an appropriate bathroom. A girl sitting on a training potty on the side of the road with two car doors open is pretty much invisible to passers by.
I was taught to pee outdoors similarly to my older brother. Walk off the path / away from the road. Drop trou, squat and pee, paying attention to where your shoes are. If you need to, use a tree for balance. The annoying bit is packing out toilet paper. You really aren't exposing all that much when you do this. But if it really bothers you keep your daughter in dresses or skirts and teach her to squat, pull aside her undies, and go. Nothing gets bared. Girl swimmers are fantastic at this because taking off a wet racing suit is annoying.
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