Toilet woes

After my last post, bemoaning Bea's lack of interest in toilet training, I thought we were on to something when she hopped out the bath, sat on the potty and produced a poo! This is the first "sign" that she has awareness of needing to use the potty for a poo, she is pretty good with wees. Sadly I was wrong. After wrangling her into a nappy last night (she was insisting on big girl knickers which would have been a disaster, she isn't even dry during the day let alone at night as well!) and buying my way out of a confrontation by offering to let her wear knickers OVER her nappy, she insisted on wearing knickers to nursery this afternoon. I was a little reticent, but she insisted she would use the potty or toilet and had chosen a special pair of knickers, so I gave up and sent her with a couple of changes of clothes. When I went to collect her I could tell there had been an "incident" - she was in different clothes, which is always a tell tale sign. Oh well, guess we've got a while to go.

James meanwhile is a LONG way off being out of nappies - he has no awareness of what's going on, no desire to not be in nappies (which I think is going to be key, once he has decided he no longer wants to wear nappies then I think we might be on to a winner), he can't communicate his need to go to the toilet, he can't communicate that he is wet/soiled and he probably hasn't appreciated that if he DID communicate his needs to us we could do something about it. Unfortunately, he has some awareness - he doesn't like having a dirty nappy on and rather than complain or moan, he sticks his hands in his nappy. I used to hear about children who would smear, and it just made my heart ache for their poor parents. Imagine living a life controlled by your child's bowel habits - fearing going out in public in case they have an "incident", living in a house that is constantly smeared, cleaning up the mess several times a day. No overnight stays with friends, no spur of the moment trips to the zoo, no chance of holidaying in a hotel. I never dreamt that I would be stuck in the same situation, praying that James would poo when we were around so we'd be able to do something about it immediately. It feels as though we are constantly on red alert - when we go out, we have to have an emergency pack, with wipes, nappies, change of clothes, antibacterial wipes and antibacterial hand foam. It's like a military operation, making sure we are fully prepared for every eventuality. Luckily, preparation seems to be sufficient - as long as we're prepared, disaster doesn't strike. Usually, disaster occurs when we're preoccupied, unable to give James our full attention. So on Friday afternoon, while I'm preparing dinner, we had one of our "incidents" - the children had been having fun in an enormous cardboard box that had contained some goodies from GLTC. I was in the kitchen, when I heard a cry of "No! James, that's POO!"from Bea. Sure enough, I run through to the playroom to find James crouching in the box, hands covered. At least she warned me this time!

The other night we had a rather unfortunate incident in the bath - I had decided to be reckless and bath the children on my own, but neither of them wanted to co-operate. I ended up putting James in the bath and going to Bea in her room. I had just undressed her when I noticed it was rather quiet in the bathroom (a bit of a tell tale sign that James is concentrating on performing....) and sure enough there was a rather loud splash! Mayhem broke loose, and some of the shouting that occurred would probably have caused most neighbours to call social services. Actually, I'm amazed how little shouting actually occurred - especially as Bea was freezing cold, James was sick from laughing whilst sitting on the toilet and I was covered in poo...

So toilet woes continue to rule my life for now. Maybe Bea will give up and toilet train herself in summer if I don't bother to try anything else....