Spoiled SS5 won’t potty train and poops himself at school
Just a quick background. My fiancé and I have been together since shortly after his divorce. He has a son with his ex wife, who is 5 and I have a daughter who is 12. We recently moved in together. We have SS5 every other weekend plus Wednesday night. There is a lot more to vent in all this but the one that is driving me up a wall right now is SS5's inability to potty train. For 3 years, I've watched him pee and poop himself constantly. He knows he's doing it cause he will back up and squat in a corner of his room to do it. We have to wash his clothes in a special detergent so they don't reek of pee and poop. His dirty clothes are put in a grocery bag til SO is off work and able to clean them out (if he remembers), which means the house starts to reek of poo or pee. My cats have sniffed the bag and puked from the stench. A couple of weeks ago, SO and I were tidying up SS5's room and we discovered a huge area of poop stained on the wall behind a bunch of toys. We don't own the house we live in and this had obviously been built up over multiple poops so we had to scrub for what seemed like hours to clean it all up. SS5 started kindergarten last week and out of 4 days in school, he's pooped himself twice. At one point, they had to shut down the playground cause his poo was smeared all over the equipment. He played for who knows how long with poop dripping down his leg. You would think this would merit some sort of consequence but nope. He came over to a room full of toys and electronics at both his moms house and our house. I dont institute any punishment on him because I don't want to step on anyone's toes but this is getting ridiculous and I don't know how to help. I def have more venting to do later but this is the big one rn.
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If it was me?
I'd move into my own home. I'm not going to live with someone nasty like that (kid or not). Further, your bf isn't going to have any incentive to fix his problem (problem=not having the ability to properly parent) if you are agreeable and living with him (making HIS life more comfortable - yours not so much).
Quite honestly, chances are your bf will never change his parenting ways. Do you really want to spend the next 13+ living with a kid that is allowed to be feral? Do you want to put YOUR kid through that? You are renting now...but what about if you owned the home...do you want his feral kid literally shitting on your home?
Eh. Throw this one back. Plenty of fish in the sea.
You definitely have a fiancé
You definitely have a fiancé problem. He can't parent, refuses to do it actually and uses weaponized incompetence to get you to fill in. You can step on toes by giving fiancé consequences and putting limits on including SS in your life.
Charging cords can disappear. Poop covered toys can be tossed. Making the boy clean up his messes works wonders, (I had a messy SS in the bath and that's what I made DH do with him when he was under 10). At 5 he can be inconvenienced with his messes.
Shut the playground down? No consequence for his parents? No conference with the teacher and principal about this? Were they impressed with it all? He will never live it down, doomed to be known as "the kid who $hit his pants so bad they shut down the playground." It will be remembered at his 30 year class reunion!!! What a label to be stuck with.
I agree that you can do better. You daughter is watching you. Show her how to eliminate a trashy man from you life.
We are in counseling and I
We are in counseling and I told the counselor straight up that he has some of the worst dad guilt. But it's not just him. He and his ex are in this battle of the ho can make SS love them more. And that means neither of them punish him or face the consequences of his actions. They buy him off with whatever toys or gadgets he wants. The counseling is helping I think on our side but if ex isn't doing it on her side, nothing is going to change. SS does listen to me more than anyone, but I have raised a child already so I know how to make them listen. He doesn't listen to ex or so because they never make him listen to them. Until they do, he will continue to pee and poo himself. Like you said, the kids at school are never going to let him live this down and he lives in a small enough town where by the time he's in middle school ALL the kids will know him as the sh!t kid if he doesn't get potty trained immediately. The school has sent 2 strongly worded emails to SO and ex and said if there's a third instance they will need to come in for a meeting. So you know by the end of this week it'll happen. They've had him evaluated for mental issues and allergies and nothing came up. It's just pure laziness on ex, SO and SS. I wish it was easy enough to leave him sometimes. Other than just failing miserably as a parent, he's a pretty good guy. He's sweet caring does his part of housework. He treats my daughter wonderfully and wants to adopt her one day. It's just when his son is involved that it all goes to hell. Plus with the economy the way it is, if our relationship breaks down, I don't know if I'd be able to afford a place for my daughter and I.
For privacy/security
For privacy/security, your blog has been edited to remove names. Please PM me of you have any questions.
SO = Significant Other
SS5 = stepson 5yo
https://www.steptalk.org/faq#a2
I prolly should have noted
I prolly should have noted that I used aliases and none of the names are the actual names of those involved. My bad...
The consequence here would be
The consequence here would be 100% wearing diapers at this point. and maybe an evaluation of why he is unable to potty train? kids have accidents.. this seems overly frequent. he also needs to be better supervised and encouraged to "go" on a regular schedule by his father.. and I would throw out the toys that get soiled..
But.. diapers .. start that when he has to be with you.. much easier to deal with I would think.
I think I'd prefer the option
I think I'd prefer the option that he is never with the OP alone and when with DAD, he has to wear diapers that daddy changes.
No way in hell I'd agree to be alone with a 5 year old in diapers, especially a child that was not my own.
I would like to add, even though there has been no mention of SS5 being a special needs child, my DS27 is Autistic and had a gluten and dairy sensitivity that caused him to have very loose stools (dripping down his leg). This made it REALLY hard to potty train him. He was wearing diapers or pullups well into kindergarten and likely pull ups at night at age 6 and 7.
Has this child been evaluated for a learning disability or some other disability?
We were doing diapers until
We were doing diapers until his ped admonished us because he said putting SS in big boy underwear would help him by making him not want to potty in his pants. It obviously hasn't helped. I make sure when he's here and I'm in charge (I work 1st shift, SO works 2nd shift and both of us wfh), he goes potty every hour. It's not enforced by so or ex though since he fights it, so my 4 hours of being in charge of him means nothing since the other 20 hours of the day, nobody bothers.
My first inclination is
My first inclination is making sure he is physically and developmentally ok. Has he been assessed for Autism, does he have any other signs of an issue medically or mentally?
If that is all clear, then diapers for sure but also consequences. He should be cleaning. There are safe cleaners for kids to use and he needs to get scrubbing.
I would also get a timer and once an hour SS needs to go potty and "try" until he has pooped daily.
He has been tested for
He has been tested for allergies and disabilities and everything has come back negative. Ex tries to blame the divorce but I call BS on that since my daughter was the same age when my ex and I split that SS was when they divorced and she was still mostly potty trained by 3 with occasional accidents that stopped at 4. We have a timer but it doesn't work since neither so or his ex enforces it since ss fights going to the potty when it's time and they'd rather not fight with him about it.
You can't care more than the
You can't care more than the bio parents. That is just the facts of life.
Don't clean the messes, don't worry about the timer, get taken off the school's call list when he poops himself in class. Completely disengage from anything to do with poop.
If he is in any main room of the house and has crapped himself tell him he stinks and needs to leave the room. Be a little mean without being cruel. But let him know it's gross and you aren't dealing with it. This is 100% a parenting problem with your FDH and BM.
I'd drop the diaper.
I'd drop the diaper. Seriously, why are you helping clean up the crap this kid is wearing? This is a parenting issue and neither parent is doing their damn job. can you live with this or is it a preview of your crappily ever after?
The parents need to address this w/ their dr, the school, and each other. If they don't/won't, this is how they will handle every parenting role in the future.
Rule out any medical issues first but ...
I'd say that this is an attention thing. He's noticed that his parents are battling it out to get his love and attention and this is a fairly efficient way of keeping their eyes on him. If his parents actually started effectively parenting this would probably stop pretty fast because there'd be no positive effects for him, only punishment/discipline.
Definitely a parent problem. I'd move out until the problem is solved.
Remember your daughter is
Remember your daughter is watching you. Is this what you want to show to her as a normal behavior? And do you want her living in, literally, a crappy house?
This child must learn that there are rules at Dad's house, and rules (or not) at Mom's house. Honestly, if your DH doesn't step up his parenting game to protect you and your daughter from this, I would probably have one final meltdown and then find a place of my own. You can still date him if he's great otherwise, but his inability to parent is serious stuff. I hope you are not considering having a child with him yourself.
If it persists even at school
If it persists even at school past the first few weeks, i think there is more going on. It may be that he doesn't have an organic brain disorder, but the years of disorganized parenting are setting him up for a behavioral or personality disorder. Or perhaps his development has progressed so far down the wrong path due to extremely piss poor parenting that he won't ever be "normal." It's too young to diagnose things like NPD or BPD, but a "normal" child wouldn't keep doing it at school if it's strictly due to parenting issues. No kid wants to be in class with poopy pants, even in kindergarten. The school administrators probably know this, which is why they are giving it some time before the "meeting."
Just yuck!
Some good advice here.
Start saving your $$ in case you need to bail.
There is clearly something very wrong with this child and
There is clearly something very wrong with this child and no one is doing anything to help him. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the possibility of sexual abuse. Some children who are being abused will have issues with not using the toilet as a way of protecting themselves from the abuse. Your SO needs to step up and figure out what is going on with his son. Are you sure you want to live like this?
YSS
Would crap on demand when almost 7. He was angry that I had Chef cut out his waking up at 3 am on weekends to surf the internet for toys routine.
He would also force himself to vomit for attention. Your SS sounds like he does this for control/attention with a bit of anger mixed in. Knowing what I know now, I would RUN!!
5 is past old enough to clean the shit wall himself.
Put him in a diaper. A big, obvious, puffy, the kids will shred him for being a shit baby, diaper. Every day, he goes to school. In a diaper.
If.. there is not some medical reason behind his shitty drawers and wall painting problem.
My SS had a bed wetting problem at about 5-6. The diaper problem fixed it. We put him in a diaper on a Friday night and told him he was going to wear one to school the next week. He refused to leave the house that weekend because he was in a diaper.
At bedtime Sunday night he came to us to say goodnight wearing regular under wear. He told us he got the message and would not wet the bed again. He never did.
He was mortifified at the thought of having to wear a diaper to school.
Try it, it works.
From what you've written he
From what you've written he doesn't sound incontinent. It's not like he doesn't know it's happening. If he's gone into a corner to squeeze it out then he can recognise the signs of an incoming bowel movement. Why isn't he in diapers though? I would insist on it just for his hygiene and the hygiene of the rest of the family. Make it his dad's responsibility to change him. Reward him every time he signals he needs to go. And slowly encourage him to move his squat corner from his room to the bathroom so he associates the bathroom as the place to go. Might be a long time before he can migrate to the toilet but if there is one thing I've learnt from training DD is that different kids go at different paces. And unless the kid is onboard with the idea, nothing can budge them.
If it's not medical then it
If it's not medical then it sounds like a behavioral issue. Is he in therapy?
UPDATE
We had SS over the long weekend and I told SO that I was going to take over potty training while ss is here. He looked at me weird but said ok. Every 30-60 minutes I was forcing ss to go to the potty. He fought me every single time, but he only had one single accident all weekend. And that one I can't really blame him on since it happened while we were in a very long line for a ride at the amusement park. SO dropped him off at school Tuesday and his mom picked him up from school. That night, we get a text that she had given an enema then left him alone in his room, where he promptly shat himself and got it all over the carpet. The poop was actually dried and crusted to the carpet before she had come in to check on him so he had to have been sitting in it for at least 20-30 minutes. We had SS again last night only I was out running errands so couldn't force him to potty. I came home to find that SO basically didn't do anything for the potty schedule and Ss had pooed and peed in his pants and SO was cleaning it up. While I was out, I got a nasty text from SO about my daughter not flushing the toilet (she didn't flush before showering and forgot to flush after her shower), so I grounded her. But ss ruined his bedding and he was still on his phone went I got home. This morning when so went to drop off ss, the school pulled him aside about the potty issues and now he's waiting to meet with the school counselor. I'm worried about CPS getting involved in my life. I dealt with them a lot as a kid and I don't want to deal with them now, so frankly I'm terrified.
If BM is giving him enemas,
If BM is giving him enemas, it sounds like maybe he has been diagnosed with encopresis. Usually BMs don't do that unless directed by a doctor. If that's the case, it's possible SS's nerves in his rectum have been severely damaged by years of constipation. Do you know if SS has been diagnosed with this or anything else?
My fear would be that BM
My fear would be that BM decided by herself to give him enemas without ever having discussed it with a doctor.
I know he has constipation
I know he has constipation issues and barely eats at his moms. She's a health food nut and is always pushing him to eat healthy foods that kids just don't like. Here is a little more relaxed and he eats everything on his plate (if I can get him off his phone long enough to sit at the table and eat with us). He has to take a capful of miralax and a choco lax piece every day. I asked so if the dr told them to give ss enemas and he didn't know, but he's been to all the appts so I'm gonna say the dr didn't tell them to do that and she's acting on her own. I don't think the nerves are damaged simply because he knows when he is pooping himself. He squats and backs against the wall, but won't go to the toilet.
He really needs to see a
He really needs to see a doctor. ETA he may not realize until it's already started. The fact that BM is giving him enemas and 2 kinds of oral laxatives means either he has been diagnosed with this and BM didn't tell you guys, therefore you can't adequately deal with him at your house, or she's taking this upon herself to give him all these meds, and she obviously doesn't know what she's doing. No kid wants to crap himself at school. Some will do it at home for attention or other reasons, but only a kid with something either physically or *seriously* mentally wrong would do it at school.
I'm inclined to think that
I'm inclined to think that she's doing this off her own bat simply because she gave the kid an enema and then left him to sit ALONE in his bedroom afterwards.
If that's the case, enemas,
If that's the case, enemas, Miralax, and ex lax might be what's causing his dysfunction in the first place. No way a kid at 5 should be ingesting that many laxatives without being under the care of a doctor.
Agreed
Agreed
Now the time to drop the
Now the time to drop the hammer on SO and make it clear what your expectations are with his parenting and what happens if CPS gets involved. This just got real and he needs to understand that ignoring the problem will cause him MORE problems which are much worse. I'd start looking for a new place to live just in case.