My toddler won't let us wipe her!

[malayasmommy]

DD (27 months) is working on potty learning right now, she’s made some big strides in the last 3 weeks. (Going potty/poopy maybe 60-70% of the time.) One of our biggest struggle right now is dealing with her after she goes poop in the potty chair—she will run around the house shrieking like a madwoman (laughing, not upset) and not let us wipe her. Obviously we don’t want poop all over our house, so we usually try to corral her into letting us wipe her but it’s quite challenging to say the least. We end up chasing her around the house and it usually ends up with her getting upset, us getting upset, and really bad evenings. We’ve tried giving her choices (do you want to wipe in the bathroom or your bedroom?), asking her nicely (please let us wipe), not giving her an option (now we NEED to wipe), bribery (let us wipe and then we’ll go to the park). None of them really work. We’ve noticed that it helps with her other behaviors if we “kindly ignore” her. (“OK, mom will go in the kitchen and clean up until you’re ready to get dressed”, and then basically ignore her until she says she’s ready to get dressed.) It’s difficult to do this with the poop issue, since we don’t want to clean up poop everywhere. Our bathroom is tiny and it’s dangerous for us to leave her in there. I proposed the idea of putting her in her crib and waiting for her to tell us when she’s ready to get wiped—the crib is much less square footage to clean up! But we can’t do that all the time—sometimes we need to go places and can’t spend 45 min. waiting to wipe her. Any suggestions, or anyone else deal with this…what the HECK did you do????

[lunarlady]

I'll confess -- I just put the panties back on and make sure to clean her really well during a bath later. If I can catch DD before she's off the potty, she'll let me wipe. But once she's off and running all bets are off. I know this isn't really the cleanest way to deal with it, but toddler skid marks are much less to clean than the chair, the floor, the toy box...and she doesn't seem to be suffuring much for her refusal to wipe. Her poop is pretty firm, so there isn't much there anyway.

I know it isn't the best solution, but it is working for us. Good luck!

[kittykat2481]

DS's poop is not firm, so there's always a mess. He likes being able to wipe himself. Usually I can tell him that I'll have a turn, and then he can have a turn. I get him clean, and he gets the practice. When the wipe/tp is clean, so is his bottom. He feels very accomplished when he's done. Then he also gets to throw it in the toilet and flush, which you know is tons of fun! lol

[Therese's Mommy]

Perhaps this is a sign that she isn't ready to use the potty yet.

[lnitti]

Will she wipe herself instead?

[malayasmommy]

Thank you for the suggestions...I get worried about her getting a sore bottom, but she doesn't usually leave a whole lot "behind" so maybe we could have her work on it herself. She doesn't quite get how to wipe when she poops, she gets how to wipe herself if she goes potty though. Maybe that's a way we can work on it and if she leaves a bit behind well...she does get a daily bath.

I've thought about this possibly being an indication that she's not ready also, but she's the one that initiates using the potty--I don't want to talk her *out* of using it.

I think we're also going to try to use pull ups more consistently as opposed to diapers, this may be less of a struggle as she thinks the pull ups are pretty exciting.

[prancie]

how about a squirt bottle of warm water to wash her off and then wipe her dry? That might make it more interesting for her.

[LCBMAX]

My 26 month old son loves to do downward dog yoga after poops, so we do a thorough wiping and then his reward is to pull a wipey out of the box "all by self" and finish with his own wiping. The cutest thing is to see him balancing on his head doing downward dog while wiping himself. Anyway, I think that doing anything "all by self" is a huge motivator at this age. I'd talk with her and practice when she's not mid-poop: "Next time, honey, you get to wipe yourself! This is how we'll do it. Here's the special wipey box just for you to use!" (warning, we load the "special wipey box" with very few, so he can have the joy of pulling them out, without me pulling out my hair in frustration at the waste.)