Tales Of Potty Training (Part 2)

I don't like to poo in front of others, so why should my kids? For the longest time, the three year old would refuse to poop on the toilet. After she would 'try' to go, she would sneak off into some dark shadowy corner and finish her business. This happened time and time again, so eventually we quit buying pull-ups.

Then came the refusal to go at all. You can imagine what this was doing to her insides. Meals began to pile up in her belly, and my wife and I knew that if we didn't do something, we were going to be in real trouble. We wanted to avoid having to shove anything up anyone's butt if at all possible.

Unfortunately, the three year old continued to have a fear of the toilet, which lead to some major constipation… and enemas were gently inserted into her tiny hiney. That process in and of itself could span multiple posts, so I'm going to skip to the lessons learned, and save the smelly details for another day.

Being a man, by nature I feel the need to fix stuff. This is no different with my kids. This resulted in hours spent in the bathroom with the three year old. Many of her tears were shed as I attempted to be the remedy all the pooping problems. After all, the solution was so obvious. She didn't want to poop on the toilet, and I had the ability to sit her on the toilet, and wait…and wait… and wait until she pooped. But nothing happened. She still wouldn't cooperate.

What I found is that forcing the issue didn't help one bit. She just prefers to poop in private, and I don't blame her. So now I try to just leave her alone. At first this was difficult because of the tendency for her to still sneak off and poo in her britches, but after a while this approach proved to be much more effective.