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Izzy’s mom, Betsy, came to see me when I was the Director of her child’s preschool. Izzy was a very bright, 5 year old girl who was doing well in preschool and was more than ready to start Kindergarten in the fall. Her mother confided in me that while she consistently used the toilet to pee she still asked for a pull up when she had to have a bowel movement. This routine started out innocuously enough when Izzy was just 2; her parents were simply delighted that she was peeing in the toilet. They were told to not insist and that soon she would be using the toilet for everything. Now it was 3 years later and there had been no change at all! Izzy held her BM’s until the evening so the school did not know there was any issue. Izzy’s mom knew it would be the same in Kindergarten but realized that some day she would have to take away the pull ups for good. The question was how?
A child of 5 who is used to having her parents involved in the bathroom will not be easy to change. It may take weeks or months (and there will be tears…) but it is a worthwhile endeavor. Izzy is old enough and smart enough to realize that her friends use the toilet to have a BM. Despite her insistence that she get a pull up, she undoubtedly struggles with her feelings that she is not as grown up as her peers. Izzy’s mom had a great deal of difficulty with this notion. Izzy became so distraught when her mom even gently suggested she use the toilet that mom was sure “she didn’t care at all” about her peers or what they might think. In fact, she did and this was proven just a few days later. Izzy was going to spend one night with a close friend when her parents needed to be away. While they were packing her overnight bag, Izzy’s excitement turned to distress when her mom took out a pull up to put in her case. Izzy demanded that her mom remove the pull up and actually said: I don’t want Zoe to know that I still use a diaper! I would be so embarrassed! Her mother was shocked but in that moment, saw that Izzy needed her support to move on.
We talked about how even well developed children like Izzy can still cling to immature behaviors. There may be several reasons for this, but in Izzy’s case it seemed to be a desire to keep her parents engaged and involved in this private process. By continuing to demand a diaper she was able to draw her parents in; they were involved by getting the pull up, cleaning her up and generally, stopping what they were doing to attend to Izzy. That is a lot of attention for a child to give up!
Izzy’s mom was convinced it was time to do something but she was reluctant to face her child’s tantrums if she just took away the pull ups. So, in this case we started with small steps: Izzy had to be in complete charge of her BM’s. That meant, she had to get her own pull up, put it on, have her BM while standing in the bathroom (not just wherever she happened to be) and finally, clean up the unavoidable mess all on her own. None of these jobs was too difficult for a mature 5 year old like Izzy. This was just a first step for Izzy, and her mom, but they were both on their way to establishing an age appropriate behavior.
— Susan Glaser, MA, Coauthor “Who’s The Boss?”
