This week, Andrea has prompted us with "the struggle is real." Unfortunately, my biggest struggle right now deals with potty training. So, if you're not a parent and/or get grossed out by talk of poop, you may want to skip this post.
My littlecjc actually started potty training in January 2016. I thought we did great. We stayed home for three days where she wore her big girl underwear and no pants. By the end of the third day, she had it figured out. We still put a diaper on at night and during naps, and I was fine with that, as I had learned there was a difference between being potty trained and making it through the night dry. So why is it that potty training is my struggle now, 17 months after being potty trained? Well, she won't poop on the toilet.
I understood at first and felt that I was very patient, but now I'm starting to loose it. I guess pooping has always been a bit of a struggle for her, as she has always made the biggest poops I've ever seen. Seriously, we keep a plunger right next to the toilet just because of her. At first, I figured it was part of the potty training, that she didn't want to go on the toilet so she held it in too long. As it more often than not, went on for too long, I would be okay with her running off and hiding, just because I wanted her to get it out, whether on the toilet or not no longer was a concern. (It's also not so hard to clean up poopy pants if it's just a big solid ball you can dump in the toilet.) My first action to remedy this was to have her help me dump her poop in the toilet and wash out her panties. She never really cared one way or another about either of these tasks. One parent shared with me that she had read where kids don't want to flush their poop because it's a part of them, but Littlecjc didn't seem to care as she waved and said "bye bye poop."
It seemed like we'd go through stages where we would try forcing the issue for a while and then we'd back off again. We tried getting a poopy stool for her to put her feet on, which she didn't like. We tried bribing her with candy and new toys that she picked out, but she eventually gave up on getting them, after throwing several fits. At one point, we bought a set of paw patrol characters, and when we'd rush her to the bathroom or if the poop just fell from her checks into the toilet we'd let her pick one out. There are still two sitting above the toilet that she never earned. She just wouldn't poop in the toilet. One time we tried taking toys away. I really hated this one, but Daddy started this, so I tried. This didn't work either. After taking away several items individually, I asked her what I had to take away next and she simply replied, "Daddy said all my toys." I was at a loss. She completely understands what she's doing now, which makes it so frustrating. It's almost as if she's proud that she poops in her pants.
This struggle has been even more present on my radar since about April. As I said earlier, for the first year we didn't push that hard, or at least would try for a while and then give it a rest, and it really wasn't that bad. I think we maybe pushed a little too hard in April though before our last Disney trip. We tried telling her we had to go back to diapers/pull-ups since she wasn't acting like a big girl. This was a big mistake, because then she just got lazy and started peeing in these. We of course stopped this right away going back to true underwear, but we've also had more accidents then we ever used to as well. She's usually fast to show us her puddle, but I just don't understand. Most of the time, I think she has these accidents when she's trying hard to hold her poop in, but loses control of her bladder. Lately, she's had smaller, more consistent poopies, but she still won't go on the toilet. This past weekend was awful and confirmed that this was what I needed to write about for this topic.
We're now at the point, that she poops little poops all day long never really allowing it to fully come out. I literally changed so many poopy panties this weekend, that I ran out of clean underwear even though I had just done laundry. I've obviously tried making a big deal about this, and I've tried completely ignoring it and nothing seems to be working. I guess I'm just going to have this struggle until she finally decides she want to poop in the toilet. I'm just praying that it is anytime soon! If you have any suggestions for us to try, please share.
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