To motivate a boy.

You may be aware that Josiah has not been poop potty trained, though he has been in underwear daily since sometime last fall. During these months he would ask for a diaper to poop in because he did not feel he could poop in the potty. We would periodically try various methods for encouraging him to poop in the potty, but they all failed. 

Until last week.

We had again implemented the rule that he had to sit on the toilet and try to poop before he could have a diaper. So we were sitting in the bathroom and I was trying to coach him through it. This was really nothing new, but this time it worked. Hooray!

And then for the next few days he produced poop like never before.

His first poop in the toilet was in the evening. And the next morning, he pooped twice before lunch. These were not small poops either. He was so excited to poop in the toilet, he wanted to do it every chance he got. All last week he pooped at least twice a day at home and then would sometimes talk about his teachers wiping his bottom, so apparently he was pooping at school too. 

Until this past Sunday.

Suddenly that evening he needed a diaper. I am still not sure what happened, other than this story: During Sunday School, he told one of his teachers he needed to go potty. But English is her second language and she did not know the word potty. She thought he was saying party. She told him there was no party. But he insisted. So she finally took him out of the classroom and, to her surprise, he went straight to the bathroom. And he decided to poop, of course. It was not until she was telling me this story that she learned the word potty and understood that Josiah had been trying to tell her that all along. While she was telling me the story, there was something about her telling Josiah he needed to eat more vegetables because his poop was stinky... or something like that. I was a bit confused and so that's why I'm not sure if something happened or was said to scare him away from pooping in the toilet.

But we finally fixed the problem.

The first few days of this week he pooped in diapers again. Until this morning when he finally pooped in the toilet (and then two more times today). And do you know what his motivation was for making it happen?

I told him that we could take a picture of it to show to Daddy. 

You're just lucky I'm not posting that picture here.