"I'm all for making parenting easy but this is just not on."

In my books, this mum went a step too far in lazy parenting.

I am all about making life easier for parents – we work bloody hard and deserve a break occasionally. But there is one area in life where I think common decency overcomes convenience – the toilet.

Obviously, there are times when necessity takes over but at other times, to be honest I simply just feel that parents are bone-lazy.

I will set the scene for you before I rant.

There I was last week, a warm morning waiting outside my daughter’s ballet class. There were children running about in tutus, a warm wind blowing the tulle. There were mothers on their iPhones and laptops quickly finishing up some work or checking Facebook. There was a grandmother reading a faded copy of Woman’s Day.

It’s a largish ballet centre in a busy complex with all the amenities.

Get that – ALL the amenities, coffee, cake if you want it, a newsagent, a butcher should you need lamb chops and toilets.

Toilets.

So it was to my surprise that a mother appeared before me while we were waiting for our daughters to finish and out of her bag popped a plastic device.

“Hold on Elise,” she gaily cried. “I’ll just get Mister Pot Pot out”.

She constructed this chamber...procured a plastic bag to its rear - in dog-park-doggy-bag-fashion - and whipped off Elise’s knickers in front of a bunch of astounded mothers.

There Elise sat doing her business in the waiting room while half a dozen onlookers tried to avert their eyes (and think happy-smell thoughts of roses, and cinnamon scrolls and the scent of freshly sprayed clean-and-wipe).

Did I miss this chapter in my years of toilet training three kids?

Since when did we take portable potties around for our kids to poop in?

I always just thought a toilet was a better option? I am now second guessing myself, perhaps all those years of quick let's find a toilet were moments in time I have wasted.

Minutes that I could have spent reading Facebook or standing in the line for coffee.

Huge swaths of time spent walking to the toilet when low-and-behold I could have actually just been carrying my own device on my person the whole time.

What have I missed?

When little Elsie was all done and dusted mum merrily de-constructed the device, neatly twisted up the plastic bag and popped it in her handbag along with her other purchases.

Oh the thoughts racing through my mind.

Gosh I hope she remembers to remove it later. I’d hate for her to mistake it for the sausages for tea.

How far will she carry it?

What if it explodes inside her Kate Spade bag?

Does she carry multiple bags all day or just the one?

This is what I want to know – since when did we get so lazy that it’s okay for our children to just poop in public?

I know toilet training is difficult, I know some kids just have to go when they have to go, but surely surely there is a place for discretion.

Portable potties have their place I understand that – though I have managed to toilet train three of my kids without one – I can see they might be necessary for long outback car trips, or for kids with special needs. I can see that there may be market for them if you were say, camping in the remote Northern Territory.

But not in a public shopping centre, with toilets galore.

Parents have gone too far in their quest for convenience. We need to step back Mums and remember that life goes on around us despite our kids. They need to learn that a toilet has a place, a reason, a function.

I can forgive your child having an accident in front of me. Heck, mine have done it a dozen times. Carrying some spare clothes is simple and easy. What I can’t forgive is lazy parenting.

What do you think? Lazy parenting or a genius invention?

Want more? Try:

Why we should give up on toilet training.

Toilet training made easy.