Diagnosis: Poop

It’s been a while since I’ve written about the Monster’s efforts at toilet training.

Most of the time, we’re going alright these days.  He’s actually transitioned to cloth underwear during the day, and he’s more often successful than not at warning us that he needs a bathroom break, or holding it until we can get him to one.  I can’t really recall the last time we had a daytime accident, save for when it’s felt like he’s done it on purpose.  (Mostly when I send him to his room for getting to ‘3’ in the 1-2-3 Magic system.)

Nighttime, though, is a different issue.

I know that training a child to go use the bathroom at night is a longer process, and it’s the only time of day that we still distinctly put him into a pull-up.  I have, at night, heard him making noise in his room, so I know that if he were to come to his gate and call for someone to get him, I could get up and come get him going.  Plus, there’s a bathroom right next to his bedroom.

The real problem is that I don’t know a couple of things:

  • If he’s waking up with a need to go to the bathroom yet, or if he’s still going in his sleep
  • If it would occur to him to open his door and call for us

The biggest thing – getting him to go by himself during the day – hasn’t happened yet.  Once he’s doing that, I’d probably transition more to the idea of leaving the gate to his room open and putting another gate at the top of the stairs so he doesn’t fall down them in the dark.  (I still have the gate across his doorway so we can put him in there when he’s in time-out.)  He has, however, taken to opening and closing his door in the morning, so I’m loathe to leave him loose for fear of his coming down and bothering us at whatever hour, since he’s figured out how to open the door despite the child-proof knob on it.

So there’s this quandary.  What do you do about a child who hasn’t yet progressed to going to use the bathroom by himself yet, but obviously needs to go during the night?

Worse, of course, is the fact that I’m fairly certain he’s coming down with something, probably caught from a classmate or R.  (R is still sniffling and coughing a bit.)  While he’s not showing very many other signs of being ill, and is being rather Monster-y as always, I’ve been getting treated with soiled pull-ups every morning before I’m getting him ready.  This would be a second issue at night – getting to him in time to get him on the toilet before he makes that kind of a sticky mess…

Well, that and having changes of sheets and pajamas close-by.  And Fabreeze.

And while I don’t know that I’d relish the idea at the moment of getting woken up every time he needs to go use the restroom, just to have an adult with him, I think I’d prefer that to what I’m getting in the mornings as it is, or trying to wrestle him into the shower afterwards to get him cleaned off.  *sigh*

Well, one step at a time.  First things first – getting him to use the bathroom himself…

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