Potty Training Sucks by Joanne Kimes & Kathleen Laccinole

Author:Joanne Kimes & Kathleen Laccinole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2010-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

the scoop on poop

Many of the books and so-called experts on potty training tell you that your child will learn to poop in the potty long before she learns to pee. But my own unofficial, unscientific, and completely unproven poll of real experts (a.k.a. my friends and other actual mommies) indicates that poop training follows pee training approximately 99.9 percent of the time. (Actually, it was 100 percent, but I have to leave a little wiggle room so I won’t get sued for passing on false data.) Poop smarts can be a far greater challenge to learn, for various reasons.

It’s true that your little pooping machine has an easier time recognizing the sensation of needing to have a bowel movement, so that part’s a cinch. You may also have the added benefit of knowing when your toddler has to go poop because their bowels tend to have Swiss-timing accuracy. For these reasons, you’d think that poo training would be easy-peasy, light and breezy. But think again. There are still plenty of hurdles to overcome when trying to get Junior to move those bowels into the potty. In fact, going number one is a cakewalk compared with going number two. And if you’re like most of us real moms, you’ll find yourself fighting for poop training long after tinkle training is achieved.

Why is this? It’s anyone’s guess. It could be because kids only poop once or twice a day, so they don’t get the same practice time that they do with tinkles. Problems could also stem from the complex act of wiping that, let’s face it, can be overlooked with pee without much fanfare. Immaturity, emotional issues, control, fear, or just plain laziness can also cause the poo-poo lag. But probably the number-one reason for the number-two difficulty is that poop is simply harder to deal with. It stinks, it smears, it stains—it’s (dare I say) just plain shitty.

“They” tell you that you shouldn’t show disgust at your child’s feces for fear that it might hurt your wee one’s feelings. After all, the stinky poop that makes your eyes water and burns the hair in your nostrils just came out of your little pride and joy. And if you respond to it negatively, “they” feel that it could send a negative message to your child and affect her self-esteem. While I understand this on an intellectual level, we mommies live on a practical level, and it’s really hard to do in real life. Yes, you love your child unconditionally, but isn’t there some loophole that says you don’t have to love all of her bodily functions, in particular the Olympic gold-medal winning doo-doo that just filled her diaper and leaked all the way up to her neck?

“They” also say that boys can be much more difficult to train and take far longer to learn than girls. But why, you frantic mothers of boys might ask? Perhaps it is the emotional immaturity of boys. Perhaps their bowels and intestinal systems develop more slowly.

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