Potty Mouth

If you have a low threshold for potty talk, perhaps you should wait til my next post, and I won't blame you one iota.

Personally, I'd rather talk about, read about, almost anything else, but I'm starting to panic that my 4-year-old, who TOTALLY understands what to do, who has done it on occasion, who has memorized the Potty Power song, really wants to keep his diapers, because he says he just doesn't like potties. Potties, he tells me, are gross. Hmmmm.... what does he think DIAPERS are? Wet, soiled, disgusting, diapers never bother him, unless they are being changed. He has actually screamed at me, "I want to keep my poopy diaper!!!!!!!!!"

Today I picked him up from the afterschool multiage daycare room and he told me, "Chris* says I'm stinky. Those are not nice words. I don't like it. He calls me stinky, mommy. Tell him I don't like that." I assured rooster that I certainly would have done that if Chris hadn't already gone home, and I certainly will talk to him about it, because those are not nice words. What I didn't say is that sometimes they are accurate words. Chris said it, but I've thought it. Peee --- eww.

Just like with all the other behaviors that trouble me, I do the guilt check -- you know the drill -- to see how my boy's latest issue stems back to my own failures. Is it because I tried too early to train him, or didn't try the method the neighbor swears by, or because I went for a long stretch not even bringing it up at all (waiting until he was "ready"), or because when he redecorated his room in brown (YUCK) quite a long time ago I completely lost my marbles and perhaps traumatized him more than he traumatized me?

Really, on this one, I don't care as much about the why of the issue anymore as I do about JUST GET THIS KID POTTY TRAINED ALREADY. I am bribing, and I mean wayyyyyyy beyond the candy bribes. I'm bribing like that book Eat Your Peas. (If you haven't read it, I have to tell you it's my fave among the kiddy books; the mother has poofy hair I can relate to and a familiar look of exasperation as she offers her kid candy factories, rocket ships, and a free lifetime pass on bathing if the kid will just eat the stupid peas.) I have made it clear I will take the rooster to Disney Land AND Lego Land AND buy him the remote control toy he wants if he uses the potty every day. The every day part is essential in reminding him of the bribe, because otherwise he screams at me, "I ALREADY DID USE THE POTTY." Yes, rooster, you have used it four separate times over a course of a year. I want to scream back, but obviously don't, "NORMAL PEOPLE USE IT EVERY SINGLE CRAPPY DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!" Yes, this is not a constructive thought, or a very nice use of the word "normal," but that is why I tell you, and not him. And you know what he retorts when I offer him every single thing he has ever said he has ever wanted? "I don't like that toy, anyway. I like diapers. I don't want to go to Disney Land. I like diapers."

A former doubter and skeptic, I have been converted to belief in unusual therapies since becoming a spectrum mom, and yesterday I skimmed through a book called (I think) The Boy Who Loved Windows (or something like that). In it, I read a mom's description of how a therapist showed her to rub her son's gums, palate, and teeth just so. Shazam, within weeks the preschooler could dress himself and suddenly wanted to be potty trained. Cut to: Me, daring to stick my hands in the rooster's little maw, to no avail. At least this was cheaper than the three potty chairs I bought (free, in fact, as it was a library book, and the rooster has not bitten me or caused me in any other way to need medical assistance - YET) and didn't take my whole exhausted weekend before it failed.

You see, I'm getting desperate.
Don't tell me your techniques, just send your best voodoo magic. I'm too tired for techniques, and I'm all potty partied out. (I'm a party pooper?) Kindergarten is around the bend, and I need this boy wearing the forlorn pirate underpants crammed in his top drawer before he pops right out of his 5T pullups and I become the one redecorating the (padded) room in brown.

Eww. Ick. Goodnight.