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Warning: this post contains poop. Lots and lots and LOTS of poop. I say poop several times. Pretty much every other word is going to be poop. So if poop offends you, turn away now. Poop.
———
The are times when, as a parent, I feel I’m doing a pretty okay job. My kids are all clean, well-dressed, somewhat well-behaved in public, they don’t hit me or call me names, and they aren’t that weird kid in the grocery store with the filthy face that tries to poke your newborn in the face and keeps staring at you with big beady eyes. (You all know what I’m talking about.) They can count, write letters and tell knock knock jokes. And, look! I even managed to get my kid enrolled in preschool, and got him there on time on his first day.
Aren’t they cute? Innocent? Unassuming?
I’m doing a decent job, right?
Or so I think, until Thing 1 decides to completely destroy any confidence I had in my parenting skills by, get this – taking a giant dump in a toy box. For reasons I can only assume are to get back at me or his father for what he feels is some sort of injustice to his 4-year-old rights.
Picture the scene with me for a second. Starting a month or two ago, we began randomly finding small toy bins filled with pee in the playroom. Abso-fricking-lutely disgusting. BUT, never once did I assume it was one of the kids. I placed the blame on the cats, moved them up one more rung on the ladder of I Will Murder You With My Bare Hands So Help Me God (along with many other acts of cat disobedience, including putting holes in the leather recliner and chewing up a knitting project OMGDEAD) and went about my business.
This happened two or three times, and then just stopped. The buckets o’ urine hadn’t even crossed my mind in weeks, until six days ago, when this tweet spewed forth from my fingertips with much more fury than I was able to convey:
Oh, how I’d love for that statement to be a misprint. But it’s true. Horrifyingly, disgustingly true. I had been on the couch trying to shush and sway the baby to sleep, and Sawyer kept kicking my foot rest and chattering loudly (because kids only have one volume and that volume is VERY FREAKING LOUD) and every time he did, her eyes would pop open and I’d have to start the swaying shushing process all over again. MADDENING. So, I made what I did not thing was an unreasonable request: go upstairs and play with your cars until I get your sister to sleep.
You’d have thought I had asked him to position his head behind the back tire of Uncle Rico’s van so I could test his skull’s durability, because he WAS. NOT. HAPPY. with my request. He stomped upstairs angrily and slammed his door. (Lord help me when I have a teenage girl, if this is how 4-year-old boys are.)
I got the baby to sleep in less than five minutes once I had some peace and quiet, and when I went upstairs to put her in her bed, Sawyer came creeping out of his room all guilty like and told me he’d pooped in his underwear. SIGH. He handed me a pair of Big Dogs boxers and there was just a smidge of a skid mark inside. I figured he’d been the victim of a.. well.. ya know. Shart. Hey, it happens to the best of us. (Doesn’t it? Lie to me.) So anyway, I sent him downstairs to the bathroom while I went into his room to find a clean pair of underwear.
And that is when I found it. Well, technically, first I smelled it. Then I saw it. And I really didn’t want to believe I had seen it, but there it was. Plopped strategically in the center of a small rectangular plastic bin was a giant fresh pile of dook. And obviously of the human variety, not feline. With some pee trickling around it like a moat circling a castle for good measure. OH. MY. GAWD.
I marched the defiled toy receptacle downstairs to my son who was still perched on the toilet (although I’m unsure WHY because he was obviously empty) and had to fight the urge to dump it on his head, or holler maniacally, or rub his nose in it like a naughty puppy. My teeth were clenched together so tightly I thought they might shatter, and I might suddenly be choking on a mouth full of tooth dust, and I kept picturing my mom and the way she’d get up in our face and talk to us through gritted teeth and pursed lips when we’d acted like assholes. And I always hated it when she did that but now I get it, I TOTALLY get it, because I now know that clenching your teeth into an enamel vice grip like that is the only way you can contain the infernal rage that wants to explode from your lips.
In short, I was stumped. Completely and totally clueless on how to handle the situation. No one warns you about this sort of behavior. Or hell, maybe no one else’s kid is as poop-obsessed as mine so no one would even know to warn me about this. Seriously, this child is obsessed with poop. I remember back when he was six months old, and our very first poop incident involved him chomping into some when he was sans diaper after a bath. I can still see his four little turd-caked teeth grinning back at me as I was frozen in horror. (Yes, it was as gross as it sounds.) And later, when we began to attempt potty-training, it wasn’t unusual for me to go to retrieve him from a nap and find him naked and painting a poop Picasso all over his walls. POOP. OBSESSED.
So even though I’m quite the veteran when it comes to excrement escapades, I still didn’t have the slightest idea how to go about this one. All I could think to say was “WHY?? Why would you do that?” And of course he said he didn’t know, which even further infuriated me. So time outs were doled out and threats of no school were made and lots of “You are a BIG BOY, you poop in the TOILET”s were thrown in for good measure. What else is there to do, really? Many have suggested I make him clean it up, but 1) That just makes a bigger mess for me and 2) I really don’t think it would phase him. He’d think it was fun, because poop isn’t gross to him.
I was hanging on to the hope that the no school threat would cure him of this behavior, because he was extremely excited about school and his face crumpled into a silent sob when I told him he couldn’t go if he did it again. Sah-weet, that was easy! I am a parenting genius. Or, you know, NOT. Because he did it again a few nights later, after getting angry with us for *gasp* making him go to bed at the normal time. The husband and I had just given the baby a bath, and I went in to check on Sawyer because his light was still on. The foul smell hit me as soon as I walked through the door and there it was, in the same spot in his closet. This time I said nothing, just handed the poop box to Shelby and motioned as if to say, “Your turn. Good luck with that.” He broke out his bag of tricks behind the closed bedroom door while I got the baby to sleep, and when I came out, Sawyer was happily in bed and said he was “happy again!” Great. As long as happy means not crapping in your toy box, I’m happy too.
Fast forward to last night. Shelby had been wrestling with the boys all afternoon, and was trying to get them to wind down with a break from the WWE stunts. This, as usual, pissed Sawyer off and he threw one of his regular fits in the playroom while Shelby came downstairs to throw away a diaper. Upon going back upstairs and peeking quietly around the corner, he caught our once innocent son in the act – standing on the couch, toy bin placed below him on the floor, weapon of choice cocked and ready to fire. Oh boy.
He knew we knew what he was planning to do and didn’t protest to a time out. I had another talk with him, and all I can do is hope he understands why leaving his digested lunch for Mommy and Daddy to find later is totally not okay. I suggested drawing an angry picture when he’s mad instead, and then we can discuss it afterward. I’m kind of wishing I had thought of that the first time around, but it’s kinda like middle school – it takes a few days of getting juice dumped down your shirt at lunch before you figure out that if you throw some back, you’ll both get sent to the principal and since he likes you better, you won’t get in trouble. Well, not quite like that. But, true story.
The main issue I keep coming back to in this whole mess is, how does a kid even learn to do something like this? What teaches him that a good method of dealing with his anger is to plot revenge on those who he feels have wronged him? And how in the WORLD did he decide on revenge by poo and pee, of all things? I’m pretty confident that we haven’t taught him this sort of behavior, as we’re usually pretty diligent in watching the way we speak and act around our children. We put a lot of importance on talking to our children in a grown up and respectable manner and try to teach them that the best way to deal with a problem is to talk about it. We give them lots of opportunities to talk to us, and we try to make sure they feel that what they have to say is important.
All that to say that sometimes, despite your best efforts, shit just.. happens.
If you’ve dealt with anything like this before, I’d love to hear your story and any suggestions I may not have thought of.
My crazy intelligent, passionate, sensitive, inquisitive first born. Always making sure I don’t get too comfortable on my throne.
Oh boy!! Your story actually hits home slightly. When Braydon was about that age, I discovered him peeing in toy bins, and buckets, and what-not up in his room too. It was beyond disgusting. Luckily, after confronting him (and taking away a few things), it never happened again. I’m not sure what I would do if I would have found poo in one though! I think you handled it much better than I would have!
I have no advice. We have poop around the house, but more in the “why would I go to the bathroom when I can just take my pants off in the lounge and continue watching Yo Gabba Gabba?”.
Good luck with this, hopefully it’s the end of your poop saga
Oh my God. I have never laughed so hard in my life. (I’m sure that will come back to bite me in the ass when Adam is pulling similar shenanigans in a year or so.)
[...] son”s and out of nowhere you’ve got a kid crapping on the floor for attention. Yes, again. Still. [...]
Oh bless your soul, I feel for you! While this personally has not happened (at least not from a human child)I get it. Oh and you did not hear this from me because I will deny it, but my daughter used to chomp on her wet diapers. OH MY GOD SKEEEEEEVED me out so bad. Still shuddering and she’s 14 yrs old now. She’s at a gifted HS making straight A’s. So hope that’s a comfort to you LOL
Best I could say would be to treat it very neutral. He’s looking for attention and bad attention is still attention. Might throw in some mandatory sit on the potty til you poop/pee times.
Hang in there. You will survive, and they will too.
Oh we clench our teeth so as not to bite them, like a mother lion nipping a cub for being out of line. Just so you know
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