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Potty training is going relatively well, but trying to convince TJ that it’s okay to poop in the toilet has been a nightmare. He screams bloody murder when he has to poop. This morning, he started going in his big boy underwear, and he screamed. “Mommy, I poop!”
I ran him into the bathroom and tried to get his shorts off, but he was holding onto the waistband screaming, “No, mommy, no!” I pried his fingers off, got the shorts off, and got his undies off. I set him on the potty. He wouldn’t stop screaming and crying. He was so upset, and he refused to go anymore. I sprayed his undies with pretreater, threw in a load of his laundry, and got TJ off the toilet to wipe him.
That was also quite traumatic, leading him to refuse to wipe when he peed an hour later.
I’d talked to my psychiatrist about this yesterday, and he said that a lot of children are terrified of pooping because they feel as if they are losing part of themselves. They know something is coming out of them, and they don’t know what to make of it. All we can do is support and encourage them, and let them know that it’s good to poop because our body’s need to get rid of things.
Try reasoning about it with a [nearly] three-year-old, though.
We went out to lunch. After we came home, I asked him if he had to go potty. He said no. I said that I did, and I started upstairs to use the bathroom in my room. He usually follows me up the stairs. Instead, I had one foot in the bathroom when I heard a terrible cry.
“Mooooom-myyyyyyyyy!!!!”
I ran back down, wondering if he’d somehow hurt himself. As I tried asking him what went wrong, I was able to discern the word “poop.”
I scooped him up, carried him the rest of the way up the stairs, and fought with him to get his shorts and his Pull-Up off. Grossness ahead: the poop wasn’t all the way out when I set him on the toilet. It came out and fell in the water as I set him down. As I was making a big deal about it, clapping and telling him how proud I was that he went poopie in the potty, another piece came out.
And he smiled. The next few minutes were a blur of “Yay TJ!” “You did it!” “I’m so proud of you!” “I knew you could do it!” and “High five, buddy!”
Then he said, “I did a poop. I get a big boy poopie sticker?”
We hadn’t done big boy potty stickers in a while, but if there was ever a time to start again, it was now. After getting him into some clean underwear, I dug out some special foam stickers in the shapes of jungle animals, and I let him pick out two of them (for two poops) as his big boy poopie stickers. He chose two monkeys to stick on his art desk. Awesome.
Not long after that, TJ suddenly stood with his legs apart in the living room, and I heard a sound like a faucet turned on full blast. TJ was laughing hysterically as he peed all over the carpet in front of the sofa, including a door mat he’d been playing with.
I was very angry. I scolded him as I carried him into the bathroom to sit on the potty. I left him sitting on the toilet, in tears because Mommy yelled at him, as I cleaned up the carpet and went on a search for a clean pair of underwear.
When I came back, he said, “Mommy, I poop in the potty!”
Sure enough, he did. I made an executive decision. Making a big deal over him going poop was far more important than being angry about him peeing on the floor, so I showered him with praise for his pooping prowess. He chose a giraffe for his next big boy poopie sticker.
He called his grandma to tell her about pooping on the potty. We’ve turned a corner. He’s not afraid to poop anymore. He wants to do it all the time to get more stickers!
As long as he doesn’t follow his cousin’s example of straining so hard he causes internal bleeding, I’m gonna run with this. My boy’s gonna be potty trained by the time school starts!
That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.
