Pooping Letters

He was three years old. Three years old, and not potty trained. Okay, so he could pee in the pot but come time to submit to "the deed" and he just had no interest. After trying every trick in the literal book for my Asperger's son, nothing seemed to work. Even sitting his potty before the television with a favorite DVD didn't produce any "yuckies".

It wasn't until I harnessed his obsession and applied it to potty-training that he was not only able to go, but to go with gusto!

The result: Pooping Letters

At age 2, my son's favorite past time was making designs. Give him a box of Popsicle sticks and he'd sit for hours, delighting in the elaborate patterns and designs he could spread across the floor. When his obsession with the alphabet took hold, his patterns turned to letters. He saw letters in everything, to the point that his pediatrician was convinced he was a little genius. Get him talking letters and he could find them in the most abstract of pictures.

When the pooping thing generated no interest for him, I plopped a "yucky" in his little dry potty and pointed out how much it looked like an "O". That did it. For the next few months, little alphabet man tried his best to generate more letters from the medium of his buttocks. And quite often succeeded. He made a few B's, many S's and countless C's.

I'm sure there were quite a few snickers from surrounding public toilet stalls when they'd overhear the typical conversations held between my three year old and I. "Try a T! Can you cross the T?"

Yeah, so it was weird. But I didn't have to change another poopy diaper again.

If your child is struggling with something, apply their interest to the topic. May take a little creativity, but sometimes, unorthodox is the best approach.