Number Two is the Number One Worst Thing About Potty Training

Once upon a time, I used to think poop was funny – hysterical even.  I would make poop jokes, witty poop references and poop puns whenever the occasion would arise.

Yeah, I know…potty humor is one of the lowest forms of comedy.  But what can I say, it’s just darned hilarious.  At least it was until I had kids.

Somehow being barraged by poop on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis in your everyday life takes all the joy out of irreverent dookie jokes, because it just hits too close to home. Or your arm.

From the moment we brought our newborn son home I quickly realized poop was on the schedule all the time.  And when I experienced a projectile poop stream during what should have been a routine diaper change, I learned to fear and respect the duty of handling the doodie.  I’m pretty sure the projectile poop is a rite of passage for all new parents — I refuse to believe I’m the only one this has happened to, and it gives me great comfort to think that other parents out there are suffering the same poo-miliation that I am. Ooh, I guess I’ve still got it after all!

Now that I’m three and a half years into motherhood and have seen the dark side it has to offer, I’m ready to write my own movie script called “Poop Actually”.  Because as it turns out, when you’re a parent, poop is all around us, actually.  And it’s tired of living in the shadows.

I’m not talking about the garden variety diaper changes that become a part of your daily routine.  No, no, no, poop will not be relegated to the easy, predictable, mundane role you expect of it.  It reveals itself in many ways:

Sometimes it’s the surprise poop leak as you bounce your baby on your knee at a new friend’s house.  On her beige couch.

Other times it’s when the dog decides to grace you with a deposit on your fancy rug because you dared leave the house for an hour.

Perhaps it’s the perfectly timed diaper blowout your infant has in her car seat on the way to the airport.

And occasionally it’s an unholy union of the dog and kids teaming up for an unforgettable apoopcalypse:   Like the time our family returned home from brunch to discover a poopy diaper murder scene in our son’s room.  Turns out our sweet pup, Bentley (who, btw is always super generous with puppy kisses), has a thing for shredding dirty diapers to tatters and then devouring them.

The list goes on.  Poop is actually – and sometimes, literally – everywhere.

And it all comes to a head with potty training. Yes, I’m talking about that evil invention that society came up with to knock newbie parents down a few pegs, just when they start to feel they are really rocking this whole parenthood thing.

On the surface, potty training seems like a great idea. It’s awesome for the environment (no more diapers in landfills), it’s a step toward independence and a self-esteem boost for your little one, and most of all, it makes your life a gazillion times better when you don’t have to deal with diapers anymore.  Gone are the days of diaper bags and searching for changing tables in public restrooms. My goodness, there are so many pros to potty training!  This is a total no-brainer, right?

When it came time to potty train our son, I diligently did my Google searches and found 3,208,628 opposing methods for how best to teach your tyke to lose the diapers.  I decided to go with the approach where you wait until your child shows interest, mainly because I was avoiding it and I hoped I could delay the inevitable for just a bit longer.

It’s a noble strategy, but you don’t want to wait too long.  Because if you do, you’ll start to get the ever-so-slight eye flicker that other parents involuntarily make when your child is over two and a half years old and you admit to them that Junior still doesn’t use the potty.  Alas, the training had to begin.

I bought a mini-sized potty chair that has a tiny flusher button with sound.  Did I mention it’s a Game of Thrones themed potty that looks like a pint-sized version of the Iron Throne and when you flush it, you hear “In the game of potty thrones, you flush or you cry”?  Ok, fine, there is no such thing.  It’s just a regular ol’ potty seat. The world isn’t ready for my genius toddler GOT merchandising vision. *sigh*

So yeah, I bought the cute potty for our kiddo.  The hubs and I hunkered down one weekend, removed our son’s diaper and came up with a Grammy-worthy potty song to sing every time he made it to the potty to relieve himself. Sure, there were some accidents along the way, but soon our little guy got the hang of it and was consistently running to the bathroom whenever he had to pee. Boom! We were potty training masters! Total success story, right?

Oh…but you forgot about the poo.

It’s a bit of a mystery as to why pooping on the potty is such a big deal to our son, but he full on freaks out if he has to go and isn’t wearing a pull-up. There’s a whole evolution to the poop behavior that we’ve been living with for the past 6 months.

When he still wore pull-ups regularly, he would hide behind the sofa in the living room and if we happened to approach within a 10-foot radius , we were met with an angry “Don’t tell me that!!!”  Even though nobody was talking.

We had a seemingly huge breakthrough early on in our potty training adventures when our little dude pooped in the toilet with a potty seat on top. I lauded him with fanfare and rewarded him with an awesome toy truck the next day, which he adores. But after that, he went right back to his no pooping in the potty policy.

I’ve tried the no-undies method, which came to a swift end when a poop fell out of his shorts onto his baby sister’s bedroom carpet.

Then there was the “Caddyshack” incident during bathtime.  I left for a few seconds to check on his baby sister and when I returned – voila! We had a floater in the tub. And no, it wasn’t a Baby Ruth bar.

Despite bribery, the promise of awesome toys, reminders that big kids are old enough to poo in the potty, a rewards chart with poop emoji stickers, reassurances that nothing scary would happen – we got zilch when it came to turds actually making their way into the toilet.

There was another short-lived win when I noticed my kid was about to poop in his pull-up and I ushered him to the toilet. He did the deed and I showered him with adoration and got him back into regular undies.  30 min later he did a Number Two sequel (super meta)…right in his pants.

We’ve moved on to undies during the day and it works wonderfully for going No. 1. Our kid is a rockstar at peeing in the potty and his teachers at pre-school agree. But now our son has timed his poops so that he goes either at night or in the morning when he is still wearing his overnight diaper.

Why don’t we just throw the diapers away completely, you ask? Well…we thought of that one too, and it turns into a matter of our child either pooping his pants or holding in his poop until he feels physically sick. Really.

One day, when my son neither dropped a deuce the night before, nor in the morning, I had this ridiculous notion that the boy would miraculously go while he was at school. Instead I got a call from the admin office that he wasn’t eating all day and was complaining that his belly hurt and he was acting super lethargic. I had to pick him up and when we got home, he weakly asked for a pull-up.  I changed him out of his undies and popped on a pull-up.  He pooped immediately, and swiftly turned into his normal, rambunctious self.  I may file this under “genius ways to get out of work”.

The crazy thing is that for somebody so opposed to pooping, he is equal parts fascinated and disgusted by it. When we walk the dog, he yells “Show Me the poo poo!” like I’m in some warped Jerry Maguire reality. It’s always followed by a dramatic “Ewwwww, YUCK!!!”  I’m sure passersby think I’m the world’s grossest mom.  They aren’t wrong.

And of course he loves to barge in on me when I’m in the bathroom.

3 year old: “Hi Mommy? Are you going poo poo? Is it out? Can I flush?”

Me:“Um, uh, no, that’s not really necess—“ *FLUSH!*  

Cool, cool, cool. Thanks for the mini bidet, son.

To take away the mystery of pooping and to show how normal it is, we turned to kids books that are all about doin’ ya business. A fave is “Everyone Poops” by Taro Gomi.  He loves flipping through page after page of drawings of animals and their different sized poops. We’ll get to the illustrations of kids going potty and my kid will pointedly state “But I still go in a pull-up.”

At this point I’ve resigned myself to letting him decide when he’s ready rather than trying to push it. The hubs and I still give words of encouragement to try and coax him into channeling his inner Queen Elsa and just “Let it Go”, but you can already guess the success rate we’ve been having.

Sure, I’ve had the fleeting vision of dropping him off at college and whispering to his roommate: “This is your problem now,” but I’m working on putting things into perspective. I keep reminding myself that it’s just a phase, and he’ll figure out when it’s the right time for him to face his toilet demons or whatever is holding him back. My mantra:  This, poo too, shall pass.

For now, my only hope is that he’ll start to feel some peer pressure from his pre-school classmates and finally realize that he’s ready to poop in the can like a big kid.

When that day comes, the heavens will open and just as I start to ascend toward supreme parenting awesomeness, I’ll get jerked right back down to earth by No. 2 – child No. 2, that is. Our baby just started taking her first steps, which can only mean one thing:  Potty training isn’t far behind. Crap.