409. Q&A: What should I do when my toddler fights diaper changes and refuses to use the potty?

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Hello. We are back on the Securely Attached Podcast with our Beyond the Sessions segment where we answer listener questions and Dr. Rebecca Hershberg is here to lend us her wisdom. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (00:57):

Always a pleasure.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:00):

I have a good one and I’m a little remiss because Emily is our resident potty person, but…

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (01:07):

She is? I don’t even think I knew that about her.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:10):

She loves poop. People come to her with poop problems all the time. She does encopresis stuff a lot.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (01:15):

Interesting.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:16):

Okay. So I have a question from a parent and I feel like you’re going to have a lot of good things to say about this. So she writes in, she goes, “Hello. I’m hoping you can help because I feel really stuck. My three-year-old fights diaper changes almost every time, but also refuses to try using the potty. It feels like we’re in this in between stage and everything is a struggle. I’m not sure if I should be pushing potty training more or what I can do so this doesn’t turn into a battle every single time.” Any tips?

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (01:49):

Oh man. I remember those days.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:51):

Me too.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (01:55):

I guess I’ll just start by saying your three year old is right on track. Developmentally, if kids haven’t been potty trained by that time and they often haven’t, it’s completely within the normal age range, but you do start to see this real control piece takeover, this real autonomy piece. I want to do this by myself, but I also don’t want to do the hard part, but I want to not do it this way. And they just sort of want to be in charge.

(02:24):

And I think my first piece of advice, and we can sort of see where we go from here, is just the potty training stage is sort of maddening for a lot of parents and really anxiety provoking for a lot of parents, even when you’re like, “No, I’m not that anxious about it. ” And then you sort of dig a little deeper and you’re like, “I guess I am.” And kids feel that. And peeing and pooping is one of the things they realize early on that you actually can’t control. You can’t control toileting actions, you can’t control food intake and you can’t control sleeping. You can control mealtime and bedtime, but you can’t actually control those biological functions. And so the first piece of advice I often give parents as trite as it sounds is like, take a deep breath, sort of realize that you will get through this, like your child will get potty trained.

(03:24):

And just to bring a little bit less heat or charge to the topic and the conversation, almost back off and we can talk a little bit more concretely about what that might look like because Sarah, I’m curious if you’re on the same page as I am. But when I hear a question like this, I start with what would it look like if we just sort of chilled out a little bit, for lack of a more clinical term, because I hear a lot of angst and a lot of struggling and battling when you say you feel stuck. It’s like that word itself has this sort of tension in it and it’s incredibly natural to land there in the potty training process and it doesn’t have to be like that.

Dr. Sarah Bren (04:12):

Yeah. And I think that I fully agree. And just so you know, I’m on the same page with you in terms of like potty training approaches in that I’m far more willing to go slower than to like … I’d rather err on the side of we went too slow than we went too fast, which is controversial. Not everyone agrees with that. There’s a lot of people who will recommend you have to rip off the bandaid and it can feel counterintuitive to go slow, especially if you have been … Like you’ve introduced it, you feel like there’s no pressure, right? Sometimes we talk about the potty or we name it, we just try to low pressure practice, but what feels like low pressure to us might still feel like pressure to the kid. I mean, like we might be being very intentionally trying to avoid putting pressure on a kid to use the potty, but then there is this like … Like I could see a scenario where like this parent is like, “They are in diapers. I’m not pushing the potty, but they won’t let me change their diaper.” So I’m like stuck.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (05:37):

But even to back off the diaper changes, right? Not like literally all day, but like again, three years old is a great age to be like, “Looks like you need a diaper change, let me know when you’re ready.” And maybe they’ll wait five minutes to show that they’re in charge or you sort of take away your attention, you say, “I’m going to return some work emails. Then I would love to play with you, but before we play, we’ll have to change your diaper.” So you just let me know. Those sorts of techniques at this age where you’re giving the child some agency, you’re sort of tying it to your attention, but in this really sort of low pressure way, as opposed to, “We have to change your diaper, you have poop in your diaper, right now you’re going to get a rash.” Things that make perfect sense to say, and we’ve all said them, but that they’re not actually going to be effective because they’re not going to scratch the itch that your child has, which is a developmentally appropriate itch to be in charge of this particular set of biological functions. Even if your child can’t quite figure out, does that mean I want to potty? Does that mean I don’t want to be in diapers?

(06:45):

Do I want to say in diapers? Like your child is clearly a little confused about what control looks like, but to the extent that you can each step of the way, give your child little choice points again in this low key kind of, and you can even name that. You can even say like, “You know what? It’s your poop, you just pooped, it’s your poop and your tushy and your diaper. I’m not going to let you be in it for that long, but if you want to hang out in it for a couple more minutes and let me know when you’re ready, like you do you. ” And sometimes that honestly, like little bit of permission, a kid will, especially a really smart kid, will try to pretend for the first 30 seconds like they’re having the best time of their lives, they don’t notice the poop. It’s just the greatest because they have to kind of save face and then they’ll kind of quietly come over to you and push on your leg and it’s like, “Yeah, we actually do want to change that diaper.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (07:40):

Yeah. And I think that’s it because I think this isn’t really about … That was kind of my point. It’s not really actually about the diaper change or the potty. It’s about the power struggle. And so when we put down the rope, even though it can feel very counterintuitive to us to put down a rope that we feel like we’re not really pulling on, but it’s like, “Oh wait, hold on. I’m not pulling on the potty rope or the diaper rope. I’m pulling on the control rope. I’m in charge.” And they want to say, they’re in charge. And so to just sort of be like, I love that like, “Yeah, we’re going to change it eventually, but like I’m going to let you, it’s your … ” I love telling, I love that. I’ve never said that and I wish I had have a three year old still to like say this to, but it’s your poop.

(08:27):

It’s your butt. I get it. You don’t want me to change it right now? Okay. We’re going to have to change it eventually because I do think that’s very important. Right, of course. But okay, let’s check back in a little bit. And then they like … I just see that playing out. I’m sure it plays out really well with some kids and other times not.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (08:49):

And if they don’t say they’re ready, if they don’t come back, that’s when you might really give this sort of incentive, not sort of like, if I change your diaper, I’ll give you a reward, but something that’s sort of time based that’s sort of like, oh my gosh, I’ve been waiting all day to do this cool puzzle with you. I can’t wait to do it. The only thing is that first I just want to get that poop out of your diaper just because then we can actually focus. Something sort of you’re framing it that way where again, it’s still not a power struggle, but you’re upping the potential reward for your kid to get it done with.

Dr. Sarah Bren (09:23):

Right. And helping them kind of organize their thinking around what’s my actual goal here? Right. Oh wait, that’s … Wait, I want to drop this and go for that. You know what I mean? It’s a little bit more distraction than negotiating and I think that actually is better for the sidestepping the power struggle. One thing I’m also thinking about, and I’m curious if you did this or how you think about this, but helping your kid have some role in the diaper change, like making … If you’re not already having them in pull-ups, having it be something that like they can start to participate in a little bit more, have a little bit more agency around. Obviously if it’s a big messy poop, we might want to make sure that we’re changing our diaper in the bathroom and that you’re doing some of the wiping, but if they want … If they don’t like … Because I remember Mike, I used to really struggle with getting my kids to like lay down and like stay still for diaper changes.

(10:30):

We did a lot of diaper changes like standing and like walking and on the move. They are very difficult, but anything where you can like change it up and allow for a little bit more autonomy, participation, agency, being in a prone position on your back when you are three is really hard to tolerate because you can move and you can get out of that position. And so you feel very tempted to do so and being on your back is like just, it’s like, I don’t want to be here. So I think doing the standup diaper change, using pull-ups so that they can pull the diaper off and you’re just kind of there for backup could be also helpful with some of this control.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (11:19):

Yeah. I mean, I’ve worked with families usually starting when kids are three, not so much before that, although occasionally, where it’s like, let’s just put a pile of pull-ups in the bathroom and a thing of wipes and your child knows if it’s a pee-pee diaper, if it’s a pee-pee pull-up, poop is, as you said, a different story, they can go in the bathroom, take off their pull-up, put it in the garbage, wipe themselves, which I know is easier for boys than for girls in terms of making sure you get everything and put another pull-up on. And again, and it lays the foundation for some kids that are really stuck in this power and parents that are stuck in this power struggle place, lays the foundation for you go to the bathroom. It’s sort of like, this is the routine.

Dr. Sarah Bren (12:03):

It’s like more baby steps.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (12:04):

You do this thing. It’s baby steps and it’s still the pull up, but it’s adding a real piece of like … I’ve had clients where the kid is so proud, like they come out and they’re like, “Look, I did it all by myself.” And that’s awesome.

Dr. Sarah Bren (12:19):

Right. And that also has the benefit of, especially if we’re taking a little pause on potty training because potty training has been a bit challenging and we want to reestablish some positive associations with bathroom time, like that is a great way to do that. They get to reclaim that space a little bit and have privacy go in, come out, look what I did all by myself. And then now all of a sudden the bathroom doesn’t feel like someone else’s territory starts to feel like mine again, which is where we want a kid to feel … We want a kid to feel not threatened by being in the bathroom space. And kids who are really sensitive to power dynamics can sniff out territory and agendas like a mile away. And so if we’ve somehow tainted the claim of the bathroom as like if they associate with our territory or our agenda, they’re going to really just like out of like kind of stubborn will want to not go in there, right? But if it’s like it’s their territory, they set the agenda in the bathroom. It will really reset things in a good way moving forward when we are starting to move back into the potty training practice again.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (13:35):

Absolutely.

Dr. Sarah Bren (13:36):

Yeah. So this sounds to me like one of those, like this parent exactly says the in between, the in between in the middle of a transition of a skill leap, a skill development, so clunky. It’s just so hard because we see where they’re trying to go. We know how much easier it will be on the other side and we’re just like, “I promise, stop fighting me. It’s going to be so much better. Just trust me. ” And it’s hard to like…

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (14:09):

Welcome to parenting.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:12):

Oh my God, so true. Well, thank you so much. I hope this helps give you hope, give you some strategies. Everyone, please keep writing in your questions. We just love them so much and we’ll talk soon.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (14:27):

Sounds great. Always such fun to be here.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:30):

So fun having you. I love talking poop with you.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (14:34):

Anytime.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:37):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.