HAHAHAHAHAH!!! Oh my, we have a similar tale with Moon Unit, though no Willie Mays maneuvers unfortunately! I’d let her go around bottomless (she was just shy of 3 years old, IIRC) and she wandered out of my bedroom, then back in, paused, and said “uh oh, poopy”. I grabbed her and plunked her on the potty chair sitting ready for use. Then I sniffed. Sure enough, she’d already started to poop. Then I figured I’d better go see if she’d left anything outside the bedroom. Left her on the potty chair while I dashed into her bedroom… to find two piles on the carpet. Ran back into my bedroom to find that the process had continued… and she was now coated in poop.
Put her in the bathtub, door open while I ran back and forth cleaning poop off various porous surfaces and running in every few seconds to make sure she wasn’t drowning… tossed the tissues I’d used to scoop up the big chunks, into the toilet, flushed that… and it overflowed. Yep, my darling daughter managed to stop up the toilet from 4 feet away
It was a while before I dared the “let them run around naked” method of potty training again!
No poop catching, but I vividly remember an instance when my kid was projectile vomiting and I begged her to please puke in daddy’s hands. That kind of thing really strikes home that you are indeed a parent!
I feel ya. My son once puked so hard and for so long that he tore up the inside of his stomach. Bloody puke ensued. Fast forward about 5 years. “Mom! I puked!” “OK honey, save it please! I’ll be right there!”
My husband was utterly horrified that I asked my son to save his puke so I could inspect it.
Raising your Spirited Child isn’t about cramping his internal “spirit.” The author uses “spirited” to describe certain attributes the happen in certain kids. Kids that are overly sensitive to touch (my son wouldn’t wear socks with the seams in a certain place - grew out of it quickly - these kids have those sorts of issues for years). Kids that need lots of inputs (or no inputs at all). Kids that can’t keep more than one thing in their brain at a time. These kids don’t respond to normal discipline or even normal rewards - and they can drive adults bonkers.
Two quick points: first, my younger one was a late pooper trainer, and he had to learn how to poop sitting down. That took some doing, but even once he’d learned out he was still not fond of pooping on the toilet.
So we put him on it backwards, facing the tank. That alleviated any falling in fears he had. In fact he continued to sit backwards until he was in school and got mocked for it.
Contrary, you’re the second person to mention sitting backwards. That’s interesting.
My husband just told me that our son has recently referred to the potty chair as the “baby potty”–it might be harder to get him to use it than I thought. But that’s where we’ll start.
Ha, the puking! Non-parent friends are always horrified to learn I pointed my poor little 18-month-old daughter toward me when she was barfing one dark night. The last thing I wanted to do was scrub a pukie carpet and/or wrestle a crib sheet on with a sick baby to comfort. Kid pukes on me, the nightgown goes in the wash and voila! we’re done.
Lots of good advice. Kiddo #3 was extremely difficult to potty train, much like the OP’s son, refused to use either the toilet or potty chair. I ditched the pullups and he wore big boy underwear with Spiderman, Batman etc. on them. I used: you don’t want to poop on Spiderman do you? He was horrified that I would even suggest it!
He had maybe 3 accidents. I had him throw the underwear out each time. Cleaning up Spiderman was not an option. Then discovered that he’d change into whities to do the deed, and swap back to his character undies!! I ended up replacing all whities with character underwear, and he never had a problem after that. At 6, when I introduced whities again, he thought that they were the bomb (as the other underwear was for babies who don’t go to school).
also could be more secure feeling. your feet may not touch the ground, but now they can touch the wall and the tank will stop you from falling forward.
I was incredibly stubborn about toilet training in general. My older sister had been exemplary (“honey, would you like to wear big-girl panties instead of a diaper?” “okay mommy!”), but when my turn came, I was not. (“hey kiddo, how about these cool batman undershorts?” “no, I’ll keep pooping in the diaper, thanks”).
My parents tried everything, and I would could NOT be convinced to used the toilet. Punishment, candy, shame, cajoling… I was totally impervious to all methods. Until finally, the parents pulled out the big guns: large-scale bribery.
Dad went to the toy store and bought the gigantic “Skeletor’s Fortress Play Set”. He brought it home and made me watch him assemble it. It was truly glorious. I remember it being about four feet tall and eight feet long, with little trap doors and secret passages to dissemble and divert He-Man and his friends. It was the coolest freakin’ toy ever devised by human ingenuity.
Anyway, once it was complete, dad put it on the top shelf of my closet, and posed a few action figures on it. I could stand in my closet and drool at the thing, but I had no way of reaching it.
“When you go in the toilet, my boy, and stop using diapers altogether, you may have Skeletor’s Fortress,” quoth my father.
I mooned over the thing for about three days, until I finally caved. Admitted defeat and switched to the briefs.
My sister was furious – she had never been rewarded for her obstinacy.
I have no idea if I did it regularly, but I have a distinct memory of myself at that age, sitting backwards on the toilet and deciding it was a far more sensible orientation. It makes sense, I guess. You have to realize that falling in isn’t some Freudian metaphor for their subconscious fears, but a very real possibility for a kid that size if he loses his balance. Unless the kid has the concentration and control required for balancing on a rail while shitting, he has to prop himself up with his arms (either of which can be tiring if he’s got constipation issues).
Just my two cents. His might be hesitant if he realizes he’s doing it weird. YMMV. I am not a lawyer. Void where prohibited.
