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Daycare Center and Family Home Forum>How to Respond to Child Who Constantly Says They've Pooped
Pestle 12:00 PM 02-09-2021
I have a chatty nearly-two who reports all day that they've pooped. They come over and wait for me to check. This will happen several times in a continuous row (as in, in under a minute), then stop for an hour or two, then happen every five minutes for an hour, and so on. This started at enrollment late last year and it's increasing. (Five times in the length of time it took me to type these three paragraphs!)

They seem to have typical bowel movements, and they use other learned phrases to redirect or to avoid things they don't want, like naptime, so I'm inclined to think this is more emotionally- than medically-based. They are dry when I check, so it's not an issue of confusing #1 and #2, and their digestion seems normal and painless.

That said, is there a way to extinguish this behavior without being a negligent authoritarian jerk about it? I can't honestly say "NO, you have NOT pooped," because once every day or so, they actually have. And unlike one of my kids, what they're producing isn't super-whiffy, so I don't feel comfortable telling them to wait until an activity ends for me to check, since, again, once every day or so, they really would be sitting in their own mess while they waited.
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Rockgirl 12:26 PM 02-09-2021
Maybe the child is ready to use the potty, and is telling you they need to poop?
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Pestle 02:01 PM 02-09-2021
They won't sit on the potty for me… But mystery solved. The parents told me at pick up that the child was horrified when they did produce a poop on the potty a while back, and recently pooped in the shower and now they are kind of obsessed with pooping and worried that a poop might happen on the potty. They just really don't want to poop there.
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Tags:complaining child, complaint - false, pooping issues
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