Annie

This is timely for me, as we’ve also been struggling with this recently. Our 4-year-old has been ready to potty train for ages, except that he has been almost completely resistant to the potty/toilet. He knows when he needs to pee or poop, and will take off his clothes (including his shirt!) and get himself to his preferred location outside. He can hold it for a while if he needs to, and can go months without wetting the bed. But he’s really strong-willed, and met every suggestion of using the potty with a hard no, with the exception of a spell last fall when he got interested in pooping there. After a week of that, the resistance came back in full force. He’s never been able to articulate what it is he doesn’t like about it.

The standard advice seems to be to remove all pressure to use the potty for a few weeks when your kid shows resistance, but 2.5 years of that strategy didn’t get us where we wanted to be. We finally told him he couldn’t poop outside anymore, and my husband put him kicking and screaming onto the toilet. We went through about four days of tearful bathroom sessions, poop withholding, and pooping in the living room (thank goodness for tile), supplemented by “toilet practice” with me sitting on the toilet behind him and then standing behind him while he sat. And then one evening with no fanfare, he excused himself and went and pooped in the toilet by himself, returning with the nonchalance of someone for whom this is absolutely No Big Deal. It remains to be seen how long it will take before he makes this a habit; today he pooped on the bathroom floor, and I have to remind myself that two steps forward, one step back is still progress overall.

Melinda Wenner Moyer posted an interview with a child psychologist earlier(https://open.substack.com/pub/melindawmoyer/p/why-rules-and-limits-foster-growth?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) who argued for stricter limit setting around these issues. I found it very uncomfortable to read, because my natural instinct is very much to let the kid move at their own pace. But to the extent that I can read it as “Here’s an alternate approach” rather than “You’ve been doing things wrong all along,” I found it a valuable perspective.

There are a lot of opinions about the *right* way and time to potty train, and even the admonition to just do whatever works feels hollow when it seems like nothing works. I would have liked to hear someone say that, in the absence of medical issues, (1) it’s okay to decide that it’s non-negotiable that he eventually learn to use the toilet; (2) it’s okay to decide that “eventually” means “now,” whether or not there are external pressures like school requirements; (3) it’s okay to abandon the strategy you most wanted to use, and it’s okay to feel sad about that even while acknowledging that your next choice option may work better. I do have faith that this will someday be a non-issue, probably quite soon in the scheme of things; I just wish that getting to that point didn’t leave me feeling so much like a failure.

I’d start by trying to identify what your first choice resolution would be, and then make a brief, friendly request and see what happens.
– If the main thing you want is for the behavior to be addressed, you could ask, “When [your kid] gets rough with [my kid’s] toys, is it okay if I say something to them, or would you prefer to?”
– If the main thing you want is for the parents to “make things right,” you could ask, “[My kid] loved that toy that got broken today. Would you mind replacing it?” Don’t make it about every toy that’s ever been broken, keep it to that day’s casualties.
– If the main thing that you want is an apology, you could ask, “[My kid] is pretty upset about the toy, could I see if [your kid] wants to say sorry to them?”

I’m very conflict-avoidant myself, but keeping things as brief as possible, while still being direct, and keeping my tone of voice in the “this is no big deal!” register helps reduce the awkwardness a little.

On the topic of statistical significance, Emily Oster wrote: “When it is used in common parlance, I think people often read [the phrase ‘statistically significant’] as meaning ‘true.'” I would guess that another common interpretation is “important.” If the media says, “It was found that taking ballet lessons increases a child’s risk of concussion, and these results were statistically significant,” it may be that the result really is true but that the effect size is extremely small, and it’s a problem if what the reader takes away is “ballet lessons have an significant effect on concussion risk” (especially if they then trade ballet lessons for something which actually carries a larger risk).