Larry wrote:
Two boys, about 3 1/2 yrs old. M has pooped on the potty many times
but right now mostly not. R has pooped on the potty I don't recall, but
once? It's in the single digits anyway.

My wife, who has to deal with most of the "fallout" is about to start
chewing down phone poles out of frustration. She is starting to give
the kids lectures in a very stressed out voice about how she is sick
and tired of cleaning poopy underpants and I don't quite know that they
have any idea what she is talking about or whether this borderline
punitive approach is going to help, hurt, or indifferent. Now she's
ready to have them go back to wearing pullups all the time even though
they've been in undies for, man... 6 months? So we've had more
progress on one side, definite regression.

R just had surgery on his eye muscles which we anticipated would cause
problems, but my tale here essentially precedes that. He's recovering
pretty well but yes I'm sure all the eye drops are making him uneasy so
whatever situation we were in prior to the surgery is just made worse
for awhile. And his brother I think was also affected by this
incident, at first because of all the attention R was getting.

Most of the time the boys are just fine to sit in their poop, they
don't care, don't ask to be changed. They also will just sit there and
pee on the floor or at the dinner table even though they fully know how
to pee in the toilet and do so when cajoled or given an ultimatum of
the form "you can't come with me in my truck until you go pee". But
"let's go pee" is a good way, especially with M, to start a cascade of
screaming or at least running the other way. Often they are both
defiant to go to the bathroom even to try.

This last weekend we made it the project of the day, including some
motivation of going to the toy store to buy something if everyone
pooped. When I said this, R within seconds was sitting on the potty
for a LONG time but nothing happened. My wife started to read him a
book there.

I think maybe the thing to do regarding the reward is simply to have it
RIGHT THERE and something cheap enough that we can give it to him each
time. Somehow this "we'll go to the toy store" reward seems just too
intangible plus we can't do it every single time anyway.

We tried the sticker charts for awhile and that was OK, but then they
became obsessed with ripping them up, or pulling the pushpins out of
the wall, or screaming for more stickers when they hadn't earned them,
so my wife said "no more charts".

The typical advice to "wait until they are ready" would seem to
indicate that you shouldn't do ANYTHING other than make sure they know
where the toilet is and what it's used for. I am certain they are both
fully aware of that.

Old and tired topic, but... looking to keep my wife from going over the
edge primarily - and if we could get them trained before they turn 4,
so much the better. I'm wondering if we are doing something obviously
wrong.

Thx!