“You know better than to use language like that, young man! Your little sister and her friends heard you! You actually made them pee, you scared ’em so bad!”
With that Kaya’s dad entered the room with Luke right behind. His shorts seemed to be hanging lower on his waist. Kaya realized that his diaper was soaking wet.
“What happened?” Kaya’s mom asked. Dad looked to Luke and waited. Luke took the hint.
“I had to go…” Luke explained, “I had to pee, and I ran to the toilet. But I didn’t make it in time.”
“Luke.” Kaya’s mom began, “We’re sorry you didn’t make it to the toilet when you needed to. However, that in no way gives you the right to curse the way you did. Like your father said you scared your sister and her friends to death with that stomping around and yelling.”
Luke looked down at the floor, but was silent.
“There will be no more potty training for you this week.” Luke’s head shot up to say that wasn’t fair, but the look in his mother’s eyes shut him up quick, “Consider it a reminder to be more patient about this. Learning the toilet takes time. I, myself, didn’t get trained completely until I was nearly twenty years old!”
Kaya’s father stepped out of the room and came back in a moment with a diaper in his hand. Against Luke’s objections, Kaya’s father took off his shorts and made him lay down on Kaya’s changing table. Kaya couldn’t believe what she was seeing as her friends watched the diaper change. Luke kept his face turned away. Though Kaya got a brief look at it and he looked both ticked off and embarrassed. Kaya wasn’t sure why, since being changed around others and watching others get changed seemed to be no big deal to Jonathan or Cindy. Perhaps it was just that Luke was being changed in front of others who were several years younger than him. Or maybe the modesty that seemed to be lacking in Kaya’s friends developed around Luke’s age.
While Luke got cleaned up, Kaya’s mom walked over to the three kids.
“I’m sorry you all got scared like that.”
To Kaya’s slight surprise her mom gave Kaya a small kiss on the forehead. She did the same for Cindy and Jonathan. Kaya remembered the talk with her mom earlier that day, too, when she had hugged a distraught Kaya. It was another difference between the two worlds. Kaya’s parents were busy people. While they were home often enough, they usually focused on their work and allowed Kaya and Luke to live their own lives. They talked, but it was somewhat awkward at times. As Kaya got older she and her parents become more and more detached. But here, it was a whole other story.