Recently, my son had stopped pooping daily, and at one point did not for several days. I was mystified. One evening, after he’d been sitting on the toilet insisting the poo couldn’t come out, I told him if he wanted his bedtime snack, he needed to poop first. Voila! Out it popped. Every single day since, I’ve simply noted that if he wanted a given reward (snack, playtime, whatever) he needed to poop first. He is now pooping quickly and easily every day, with no more discussion or angst on anyone’s part. At some point, he explained to me that he did not like (a) the time pooping took out of his playing, and (b) wiping afterwards. This then, was not a gut issue but simply a matter of being a kid. A simple reward system, then, was the correct fit.
One friend found her son wet the bed until he started sleeping naked -no more wet beds! Another friend said his own son wet the bed until his son started wearing warm pajamas – Dad figures his little boy was reacting to the cold. A mom on our support list was frustrated by her child’s bedwetting until a simple alarm system resolved the matter.
Similarly, what looked like residual auditory processing issues in my son were suddenly resolved after I implemented a suggestion by a Parenting Outreach Worker to consistently give him two chances to hear me before placing him in a time out. My son is suddenly doing things that two weeks ago had simply seemed beyond him. He is happier, more relaxed and very responsive.
Pooping, bedwetting, listening and responding are major topics in families with children with compromised guts. Issues related to these often resolve via GAPS, so I do believe that diet is the most critical place to start. As many GAPS families can attest, while a medical issue is present, behavioural therapies not only do not help a child, they needlessly frustrate them. However, once substantial healing has taken place in a child’s body, we need to start looking at any remaining issues through a variety of lenses and incorporating a range of strategies wider than simply diet.
I use rewards for pooping all the time. Or I say, if you don’t poop, I’ll have to give you an emena. That’s usually works.
xDDDD
I bet what happens with kids that have a certain impediment is, you give them a break for the things that are hard for them, and they take a little advantage of it, and when they are better, they have no more excuse. In the case of pooping, he probably has a lot of bad pooping memories, too. He had serious stool problems for months, right?
I know one kid that can’t really hear well, and sometimes he chooses not to “hear” things. Hey, who can know? I know that as a kid, I would sometimes make myself either have an asthma attack or just “fake” one. I would cough and cough and cough until my mom would check me out of school. I knew if I kept coughing, my mom couldn’t hear if I was wheezing or not. I remember once she took me to the ER, and my lung capacity was 98% by the time we got there