Toilet Sitting

Abel and I have this deal: if he’ll sit on the toilet for 2 minutes, I will give him a treat. He’s been pee-trained for months, but we just can’t get him to poop anywhere but in his pants. So those 2 minutes, even if they produce nothing, are worthy of a treat – a Hershey’s kiss or two mini marshmallows.

Abel loves the digital timer I bought just for this purpose. Sometimes he even asks me to set it for five minutes, instead of two – which of course, I consent to. Trouble is, he only wants to do the toilet sit about once a week. I suspect he wants to do it only when he’s craving something sweet.

We’re at the point of toilet training where we’ve tried pretty much everything (major bribery, force, the influence of friends and elders, copious quantities of dreid fruit) and have arrived at the conclusion that Abel, who will be 4 in a couple months, is in charge here and that he will simply change his mind one day and do it.

When. He. Wants. To.

Until then, I’ve horrified myself with entreaties (after days with a son with a tummy ache due to constipation) such as “Go ahead and go in your underpants, sweetie – I just want the poop to come out of your bum!”

So last week, while I was distracted with cooking dinner, Abel asked if he could do some toilet sitting.

"Of course."

I heard the bathroom door open, heard the toilet ring land on the toilet seat, heard the timer turn on. And two minutes later it went off and Abel came into the kitchen and asked for his treat. Which I gave him. And he ate it. And then he promptly confessed that he hadn’t sat on the toilet at all, but rather in his father’s big chair. Fully clothed. With no yield.

So tonight, we have just finished eating dinner and Abel announces that he’d like to do the toilet sit. I oblige. He leaves the room, gets the timer, waits a little while, and then calls to me to say that he is ready for his treat. I am about to argue that it hasn’t been two minutes, when I notice that the voice I am responding to does not sound as if it is coming from the bathroom. Abel is attempting to fool me again. Indeed he is sitting in the big chair.

I tell him I won’t fall for it. He thinks I will. He spends the next 15 minutes arguing that he is entitled to a treat, because he sat in daddy’s chair with the timer, expecting that somehow I will change my mind. I will not.

Earlier today, my mother got Abel to sit on the toilet and listen to the story about the last day his mommy popped in her pants. It was in the backyard, and my friends Jennifer and Michael Smith had come over to play. I went over to my favorite pants-filling tree and did my duty. They laughed at me. “Only babies poop in their pants!” And that was it.

Abel listened thoughtfully to the story, announced that he was done with the toilet sitting, and went back to playing with his toys. A few hours later . . . he went to his favorite corner at my parents’ house and filled his pants. While I was cleaning him up he told me that he’d thought it over and he does plan to poop on the toilet. When he is four.