Manipulating via Poop
Henry’s gotten pretty good at telling us when he has to poop.
“I fart,” he says, and we shuffle him over to the potty.
While on the potty, Henry, like most males of our species, enjoys a book or magazine. (My mother got him a subscription to a kids’ animal magazine, and he likes looking at that. I’m trying to teach him how to tuck it under his arm on the walk over.)
Well, on Wednesday, as I was getting ready to put him to bed (Kristen was taking a well-deserved night off and was having dinner with friends), Henry said, “I fart.”
Now he usually isn’t a late-evening pooper. He’ll go in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon (right after his second nap — did you know he still takes two naps? ugh), but rarely at night. But he said he had to go, so I took off his pajama bottoms, took off his diaper, and he plopped down on the potty.
“Book!” he yelled. “Shovel!” (Which is what he says when he wants to read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.) So I get it for him and we start to read it. We go through the whole book (it’s not short), and I’ve noticed that he a) hasn’t urinated, b) hasn’t passed gas, or c) hasn’t pooped.
I was duped! I was poop duped!
Henry didn’t have to go to the bathroom! He just wanted to read! So I picked him up and put his diaper and pajamas back on (oh, he was not happy about any of it), and I rocked him and sang to him and put him to bed.
At first, I was a little annoyed. How dare he use his pooping to stay up and read! But then I realized that it was sort of ingenious of him — he’s learning to get his way. And thankfully, he’s not doing it with temper tantrums. I’d much rather be tricked into reading him another book that way than by having him on the ground kicking and screaming. Although I suspect that’s coming up soon, too.
