Sh|t or get off the potty

Mommy, wow! I'm a big kid...soon

Sometimes readers write in asking me to share a conundrum they’re handling with other witchy types for the experiences and advice, and here’s one I got not long ago:

 My daughter is 5 and pretty amazing. AND YET! She’s not completely potty trained yet. SHE WON’T POOP ON THE STUPID TOILET AND IDK WHAT TO DOOOOOO!

Our doctor suggested going to a occupational therapist but I don’t see how that would help. I bought her “It Hurts When I Poop” and all she got out of it was that it’s ok to wear Pull-Ups. IT IS NOT OKAY AT ALL!

I tried to take the Pull-Ups away cold turkey and I tried a countdown method, both failed. I’m too afraid to just withhold the Pull-Ups because then she’ll just hold it all in until she’s constipated and I don’t want that to happen either! 

Anyway. A rant. Sorry. Help. 😭 someone in the witchy community has to have gone through this!

What I hope makes this reader, and anyone else in this situation, feel better is knowing how many parents went or are going through something like similar with later-stage potty trainers. I got a lot of responses to this question from a variety of parents, from parents of children who are neurodivergent and struggling with this exact same issue right now to parents whose kids are now happily pooping in the potty in college but still remember the trauma of the stage. As always there’s a wide variety of experiences and strategies. If there’s a general takeaway it’s that potty training can take a much longer time to complete than one assumes/hopes/expects and this can be very difficult on parents and kids, especially if the child’s peers appear to have mastered potty training already.

Here’s a good sampling of the input I got:

“Our kids didn’t like pooping in the toilet at first because they couldn’t touch the ground with their feet. They didn’t trust the toilet without being able to push against something. We got a stool (no pun intended) that was the right height for them to sit on the toilet and have their feet on it. It helped them feel secure while pushing and like they weren’t going to fall in.”

“I think you just have to crack the code on each individual kid. My daughter would only poop in her Pull-Up till she was like 2 or 3 (totally potty trained in every other way)... She’d squat inside her closet in the Pull-Up for pooping time. We tried M&Ms, rewards, etc. Finally we put up a stupid fucking star chart and she's such a virgo perfectionist that she was like ‘Ooh! A chart!’ and never had a single accident or wore another Pull-Up.”

“This is an area of clinical expertise for me, and my oldest would poop in his pants during nap at day care. He did it three days in a row. After the third day, I bought him a Whoopie pie and sent it in to day care. I told them to tell him that if he pooped in the potty, he could eat the Whoopie Pie. Problem solved. It’s not always that easy but this is a reminder that sometimes we can reinforce the behavior we want to see, and that replaces the one we don’t want to see.”

“OK this story is bonkers but it worked for us when the kiddo was 4 1/2. Stage one: he had to request a Pull-Up when having to poop. Stage two: we made him poop in the pull up in the bathroom. Stage three: pooping in the pull up while sitting on the toilet. Stage four (this is where we felt like we were losing it but had to try something): we cut a hole in the bottom of the Pull-Up. The poop fell in the toilet and we celebrated and made him feel good (but appropriate for a kid who didn’t like a big fuss). Essentially we tricked him into pooping on the toilet and when he had done it once he had the confidence to do it again. All the support to the parents.” [I am actually told by the child psych witch quoted above that this is actually an empirically-validated method.]

“Toileting is an activity of daily living, which is what OTs do. There’s not always great communication to the public around ALL of what OTs and (SLPs like me) can address. I’ve definitely encountered ‘Oh, it’s OK’/ ‘Oh, it’s BOYS/ ‘Oh, my cousin’s kid didn't speak until they were 4, and they’re FINE,’ etc in lots of parent culture, from self proclaimed free-rangers and attachment parents to Evil Witch-types. I don’t know if that’s part of a general disrespect for expertise or a misplaced but reasonable pushback to schools requiring things of kids that aren’t age-apporopriate (and therefore pathologizing age-appropriate behavior), or a combination or what.  I am a firm believer that (if they can afford it) it never hurts to go and see. The pro will either tell you your kid is normal and may suggest some of these pretty good options above, or they’ll let you know there’s something wrong and propose a plan of care!”

“I don’t know that I would do this on purpose, but what worked for us was public shaming. We were at the doctor and the nurse was like, ‘HE'S NOT POTTY TRAINED?!’ He was embarrassed, but the next week I told him, ‘OK, you won’t have to be embarrassed if we just stop using diapers. The day before we ditched them, he and I went on an undies shopping spree together at Target so he would like all of the choices. I told him it would be OK if he had an accident because now we had SO many underpants. Then we went cold turkey with the promise of an M&M for each poop in the potty. It took about two days, but he's only had maybe two accidents since. He was/is four. Now we’re dealing with secondary pooping issues because he doesn't like going at daycare, but we’re working on that by talking through the fact that the ladies there are super used to helping kids poop, so he doesn't need to be embarrassed. Honestly I think for me part of it was getting up the mental strength not to give up just because he was having accidents.”

“We had an epic journey on this with my daughter. She was pooping in her underwear every day or holding it for her bedtime Pull-Up because she refused to go on the potty. [She was dealing with unrelated] medical trauma but it was definitely about needing to control her body in a major way that defied all logic. The therapist did a lot of physical play work with her that felt very unrelated, but seemed geared towards making her feel more empowered in her body. They would run around and throw big bouncy balls and jump off things. One day she herself came up with the narrative that all the bouncy balls were trapped in the corner of the room and only she could push them out the door. She opened the door up a tiny bit, and worked for like 20 minutes to shove these bouncy balls through the narrow opening. I SWEAR WE NEVER EVEN TALKED ABOUT POOP IN THERE. But that day, I tried to give her a Pull-Up to poop in and she said she would do it in the potty. It took a couple of days for her to actually do it, but completely solved that problem. SO, kind of woo-woo answer but if the mom thinks there are underlying anxiety/control/psych issues, definitely get a good play therapist.”

“Mine is almost 4 and absolutely refuses to sit on the potty. Once she held her poop for 13 days. 13!  We had to take her to the doctor who just told us she was especially stubborn and nothing was physically wrong.”

“Mine regressed during my wife’s chemo and it took a year of accidents. It was so rough. She lost daytime diaper first, then nighttime (cause she saved poop for the night dipe). Then she got constipated. We started fiber gummies 2x per day and bribed. It was hell.”

“​​Mine finally agreed to poop on the potty (at almost 5) because she got very badly constipated and the Miralax meant she had to when she had to go (it was during virtual school). And it was a bad bad day of the constipation. She was not happy. She cried. But we had tried bribes big and small and nothing. She was physically able and mentally unwilling. When she finally did go (constipation emergency), the next day she was all ‘mom, did you know that it is better to poop in the potty?!’ as if it hadn’t been my life goal for 2 years.”

Good luck to all the potty training parents out there. It’s…humbling, and being humbled, especially in such a way that you have poop on your hands because you had to throw away a kid’s underwear at the playground and you brought no wipes… sucks.

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