Yikes! One Year Old Pooping in the Bathtub!

hi J.;

i'm not sure what the big problem is. it's just baby poop, and it's in the easiest place possible to clean! my daughter does it all the time and she's 17 months. she's also been doing it since about a year.

you could try;

figuring out what time of day this happens; if it's the after dinner bed time bath, hold off on the bath for a while till he's had a chance to poop in his diaper. it might mean he goes to bed half an hour later but if you're that freaked out by it, maybe it's worth it.

or just fill the tub a tiny bit, like 3 inches, don't put any toys in yet, wait till he poops, clean it, then refill the tub for the fun part of the bath.

when my daughter does this, if there's already toys in the bath, i just fish them out quickly and throw them into a large pot of boiling water for five minutes. we have lots of bath toys so she doesn't obviously have to wait for more till these are clean. i clean the tub quickly with baby soap and start again. remember, it's just baby poop, it's very clean stuff.

at 1 year old, pretty much NOTHING is behavioral in the way that you're thinking; in other words, some kind of aggressive or wacky habit. it's just natural. and the bath relaxes thier muscles, so they pretty much can't help it. the reason potty training on very young babies doesn't work is exactly that; they simply don't have the muscle control or the language comprehension.

and BTW my 3 yr old son never ever pooped in the tub even once and he also, like my daughter, started using the tub as a pool without a safety seat, but with supervision of course, very early, and loved a llong bath, and it was and remains instrumental in a good bedtime routine. all of which is by way of saying, the tub poop is random, normal, NOT the result of anything you or your son is doing wrong, and, it's not correctable, so you might as well let it go.

to which i would in closing add this; try to liberate yourself from phrases like "it has to stop." this kind of resistive, controlling thinking is unrealistic and will only make you and your child frustrated and unhappy. tiny children like yours and mine don't have control and they don't have motives. they are just natural and beautiful and they really love us with thier whole hearts, nothing that they do, NOTHING, is about hurting us. save your energy, it's going to get a lot tougher in another year or two.

good luck and try to relax,
J.

Our 21 month old has done the same for months and then we got him a Bjorn potty and as soon as he looks like he's getting ready to push one out into the tub, my husband sits him on his potty and he poops there! He reads him a few books while he's doing it. Otherwise, you know that the warm water feels good to a constipated child - so check to see if your little one's poops are soft consistently. He may be pooping in there because it helps him to go.

I hear you about the poop in the tub! Noone wants to deal with such an unsanitary situation! I would also agree that it is probably because the warm water relaxes your baby's bowels and helps move things along.
I'd try to keep a close eye on him and see what things look like before he is about to go. Does he get in a certain position? Move his feet a different way? Turn a little red in the face? Move to another spot in the tub? Then, when you start to recognize the signs, quickly pick him up and hold him on the toilet while he goes, while saying, "do you have to go poopy?" or something similar. Be sure to let him know how happy you are that he is pooping on the toilet as he goes. If he isn't very verbal yet, try incorperating a sign with your hand as he goes, so he can eventually learn to sign to you when he needs the toilet.
While he obviously isn't doing this maliciously, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to help him learn to let you know when he needs to go. Good luck!

I personally don't see this being a real problem until you begin to toliet train. He probably feels relaxed enough to go at bathtime and don't think developmently at that age he would able to have the control to prevent it. I hope that it is hapenning after you got him basically all washed up!!! Good luck.