The Art of Negotiation

For the past week, we've been trying Otter to poop. We have explored all the obvious avenues, from bribery...

("Every time you go, you'll get a sticker!")

to story-telling...

("All the animals go poopy, every day!"

"The doggies?"

"Yes, the doggies."

"The penguins?"

"Yes, the penguins."

"The maned wolf?" Really? The maned wolf???

"Yes, especially the maned wolf.")

to reason...

("If you don't go, your tummy will hurt. It won't hurt if you go every day.")

to mildly veiled threats...

("If you don't go yourself, I'm going to have to use medicine. Now I'm not telling you this to scare you, but just to tell you that's going to have to happen...")

Negotiations are not going well.

But perhaps this is because once again, we've under-estimated our opponent. The other day, SB was playing with a stuffed hamster/mouse and, in the course of their morning had him "go poop." I thought we were just a hop, skip and a jump away from her following suit. Instead, she demanded a sticker - on his behalf.

And somehow got it.

Everyone Poops

WARNING: In the interest of full disclosure, I must begin this entry with a warning. What follows may be may be WAY TMI for some of you. But such is my life of late, that if I didn't over share, I'd have nothing to share at all. So, if you're feeling a bit squeamish, or just aren't interested in reading up on Otter's potty habits, move along. There's nothing to see here. Even though you'll be missing out on some terribly clever and humorous writing.


Everyone poops, or so the book would have us believe. What this enlightening text fails to mention, however, is that when the "everyone" happens to be the 2-year-old living in my house, the pooping may be less a "gimme" and more of a power struggle/test of willpower and patience with a dose of medical condition thrown in for good measure.

In brief - for reasons known only to her (as she refuses to explain this current trend), Otter has decided that bodily functions that the rest of us find involuntary are merely optional for her. This has had several results:

Stomach aches, which lead to...
Daily 5am wake ups, which lead to...
HIGHLY unhappy parents and child, alike.

On the upside, we are saving on diapers.

The battle came to a head, so to speak, 2 nights ago, when Otter decided to finally answer Nature's call, only to discover that her body was being less than cooperative. What transpired was 45 minutes of child screaming, parents coaxing, Internet searches, calls to the doctor's answering service (after hours, of course), hugs, tears, crazed attempts at any viable remedy, all culminating in partial success and exhausted collapse in sleep by all of us, only to repeat the following morning.

By the next day, Operation Poopy Otter had been hatched. New menu guidelines were drawn up. Words of encouragement were uttered. Bree was dispatched for mysterious medicines that, at best, looked mildly menacing. SB was going to poop if it was the last thing she did.

To take a soft left turn here... Have you ever noticed how utterly unhelpful directions on children's medicines are? They all claim to offer useful suggestions on how to best administer said remedy, conveniently overlooking the fact that no 2-year-old is actually going to cooperate with their instructions. For example:

Have child lay on their left side bringing up their knees and relaxing their arms.

The rest of the drivel is irrelevant, as the battle of medicine vs. toddler was lost at "have child lay." What 25-month-old is going to stay still, let alone lie down, for over 5 seconds without first being seriously sedated? And how am I supposed to administer the downers to begin with?! Perhaps the phrasing should have been:

Gather medicine, your iPhone, and 2 other able-bodied adults. Convince toddler that you're going to be looking at 'mommy's phone." Lay child down on side as best as possible. Have Adult #1 sit on the phone side of the configuration, distracting toddler by shaking the phone, talking about how much fun this is going to be, while simultaneously positioning him/herself to control flailing arms and legs. Adult #2 should be positioned on the opposite side, on the ready for when Adult #1 inevitably loses his/her grip. Grab medicine, and work gently, yet with lightening speed to administer before your child breaks free from all restraints and runs for the hills.

Sure you may need a bigger box to fit it all, but THAT would be helpful, and far closer to what actually happens.

Still, I am smarter (or at least stronger) than a pre-schooler, and after two mornings of hand-to-hand combat, we seem to have won the battle, if not the war. But perhaps I shouldn't be so self-congratulatory quite yet, as SB seems to have already parlayed her digestive issues into a new scheme of extending her bedtime. Last night, she waited until she was already in her crib and ready for lights out before announcing, "Want to poopy. Poopy on bed."

After all we've been through, how can I say no?

Potty Mouth

Apparently, I was potty trained with ease and at an incredibly early age. By 18 months (as my mother's oft-fuzzy memory serves her) I was peeing and pooping into a potty with wild abandon, and, to hear her tell it, enjoying every minute of it. And, being parent to an only child, my mom has little else to compare this experience to, other than that of her friends, who's lazy, slacker children ran around in all states of incontinence well into their second and sometimes even (heaven forbid) third years.

Unwilling to play grandmother to such a slothy kid, my mother's single-minded mission in life has become to get her peeing in the potty ASAP. A mission which she plans to accomplish from 3ooo miles away by asking everyone who's ever borne a kid for advice on what I can be doing better to hurry this potty training thing the f up.

Each of our conversations now begins or ends with some tale from the streets of one child or another and their pooping habits, along with helpful pointers on what their guardians did to accomplish the Herculean task. "I asked _________ (fill in the name) what (s)he did, and they __________ (fill in helpful hint)."

"That's great mom. I've heard about _______." In fact, we've probably at least attempted some version thereof.

Here are the problems:

Otter is 18 months old, and apparently not the potty prodigy that I was. Her interest in the potty is limited to shoving her dolls into it, taking it apart, or inverting the basin over her face in an attempt to drink (?) from it.

She refuses to sit on it for more than 30 seconds at a time, and I see no way to rectify this short of tying her down to the toilet, which I'm told is illegal.

That helpful potty book we got? SB's mostly exclusively interested in the last page, where Elmo gets his big kid underwear (a current obsession). and much less so in how he got to that elevated state.

The desire to be dry and clean so vital for one to have a stake in going in a potty vs. the convenience of pooping right in your pants? Otter cares not...

So we're left with little to do but wait for nature to take its course and SB to come around to the idea of peeing like a big girl. I can live with this. My mom, having a bit more trouble.

"I really can't do this any more," I told her during our last potty stand-off. "I'm not worried. We have plenty of time."

"That's all relative," came the curt reply. "Some people are ok with their 5-year-olds running around in diapers."

I have reason to believe that potty training may not go exactly according to plan...