It'll be Halloween soon — prime time for scary movie fans.

Some are into "The Shining," the story of a man who goes crazy from spending too much time alone with his family without alcohol. Others prefer "Friday The 13th," a movie that teaches us that the top risk factor for becoming a serial killer's victim is premarital sex.

Me, though? I don't need horror movies, for I have recently potty trained a 3-year-old.

Before I begin, a content advisory: What follows is parental gore. It's nasty, offensive and, unless you've been thoroughly desensitized, tough to tolerate.

The first thing you should know about potty training a 3-year-old is that it's already too late.

That, at least, is the perspective you'll find in the most popular potty training book, one that's long on shame and short on understanding.

You'll read the book anyway, though, through gritted teeth if necessary. Because you're trying to turn your child from someone who saunters up, with the casual ease of a kid hauling two pounds of poop in his shorts, to demand a diaper change into a person who can use the bathroom independently.

It's a transformation on par with a caterpillar becoming a butterfly: It's messy, slow and mysterious but somehow, someway, the job gets done.

Speaking of jobs, yours, as a potty-training parent, is to bribe.

Act like you're bidding for a massive city contract; if you want to make it happen, you better stuff your ethics in a sack.

This is no time for petty moralities, questions about "what kind of message you're sending" or considerations of three months from now, when your child will demand M&Ms for every bowel movement. You're setting a potty trap, one baited with candy, toys and stickers.

The next step is cultivating an ecstatic response to the smells, sights and sounds of toileting.

"Wow!"

"Yay!"

"Awesome!"

These are not words you will have previously associated with feces. That will change.

You should also prepare yourself for the inevitable and understandable disgust with which nonparents will treat the subject. It may be hard for you to remember how it feels not to be waiting, day in and day out, with decreasing patience and increasing desperation, for someone to poop.

But the vast majority of your childless friends and relatives won't enjoy hearing about the exact color, size and consistency of your offspring's excrement. When your kid insists on FaceTiming someone to show them the contents of the family toilet, Grandma's your best bet.

I also suggest you get ready for a lot of al fresco peeing. Whether you're at the park, riding bikes around the neighborhood or walking out of the grocery store, you must be prepared to immediately stop and search frantically for a bush or tree to serve as cover. Don't forget to keep an eye out for witnesses. I don't think you'd get arrested merely for allowing some light public urination, but you're certainly in danger of getting disapproving glares.

Ultimately, there are many scary and disturbing parts to potty training, among them the risk that you will one day announce to a room full of adults that you "need to go potty."

But worst of all is that, at some point, months or even years in the future, when you're sorting through unused diapers and deciding whether to get rid of the changing table, you might actually start to miss it: the diaper bags and the wipes and the accoutrements of infancy.

You'll get sad.

Because having a baby who doesn't wear diapers means he's not quite a baby anymore.

And that feels crappy.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

Photo credit: Charles Deluvio at Unsplash