Toilet Humour: Rumpus in My Rompers

What do you do when your child won’t poo?

We were at the end of our tether when we wrote the ‘poo album’.  Our 3 year old daughter had been refusing to poo on the toilet since the start of potty training.  Since she was two we could probably count on one hand the number of times poos actually made it to the toilet. 

We had tried everything: rewards, sitting on the toilet and reading, blowing bubbles, stories about poos needing to return to pooland, the lot.  She was clearly going to be a tough nut to crack.  Then we did the worst thing possible.  After months of trauma we got firm and put our foot down.  She jolly well knew that she had to go on the toilet and that is what we expected of her.  Big mistake.

The poos stopped coming.  She quite simply refused to poo and would hold them in for a week or in some cases ten days, crossing her legs, bending backwards and going red in the face to avoid the dreaded outcome.  After a quick ‘Google’ and a scout of the parenting forums we quickly discovered that we were not alone.  Children up and down the country were hiding behind settees and curtains, crossing their legs and refusing to poo.  But what to do about it?

Well our little pickle had developed a real anxiety about it, the whole process made her angry.  You couldn’t go near her when she was crossing her legs.  Everybody knew it would just make everything worse.  So we tried to diffuse the situation.  Now, we just so happen to write musicals for a living,  my husband is a musician, I am a writer and together we provide schools and theatre groups across the country with shows to perform.  So we penned a little number for our girl.  It had a bouncy tune, predictable but fun with bad words like poo in it, which made her laugh and now we sing it to reinforce the message that poos need to come out, they are naughty when they are in and just by singing and having music around her when she is going through her poo traumas we can make the situation less stressful and more positive. 

We coupled that with a new matter of fact approach as advised by a counsellor.  The ‘this is happening’ attitude which has stopped her from holding poos in.  She now sings the songs on our album RUMPUS IN MY ROMPERS and is almost word perfect on the one we wrote for her.  To top it off she came home from nursery last week with a sticker for pooing on the toilet!  Sounds so trivial to some people, lucky people who have never had to worry about what damage their child could be doing to themselves by refusing to poo.

So now we have songs to poo by, songs for potty training, songs for manners, songs to eat dinner to, songs to help them understand what is expected of them without being too heavy going.  Now this is nothing unique, these albums do exist but  ‘Rumpus in my Rompers’ is not only great for children but with the rocky, jazzy, bluesy influences it is appealing to parents too.  An album you will enjoy listening to and an album to watch your children grow by. 

Knowing what a struggle we had endured, our daughter’s nursery teacher approached me recently to say she has decided to not only ask her nursery kids if they need a wee but also if they need to poo.  This particular teacher thinks that we don’t talk about number 2’s enough and that children need to be made to feel as comfortable with the idea of pooing as weeing.  So a great bit of advice for nursery teachers.  Let’s all get talking about poo…..actually I think I’ve done enough for everyone.

Angela & Andrew have worked in the field of youth theatre for many years.  Angela ran her own theatre school and now works as a freelance tutor, director and choreographer.  Andrew has a background in rock music but was invited to play the role of the man eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors and has had an interest in musical theatre ever since. Together they run Lucky Bucket Productions providing schools and theatre groups across the country with original shows for performance.