Oh, Holy CRAP.

Literally. Well, not HOLY. But CRAP.

S. is almost 6 years old. She is in first grade where she is the youngest by over a year. She is a Smart Cookie, and academically, she belongs in first grade. Socially, she does just fine. She is good friends with the other kids in her class, and she plays well with older kids in general. She is used to hanging out with Z., who is 7 and a half, and Z’s friends who are mostly 8.

When I toilet trained Z., it was really easy, for the most part. Z. is the kind of person who can wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, play on the computer, watch a show, and then MAYBE she needs to use the bathroom. She never had a nighttime accident. When she was first trained, she would not under any circumstances poop in the toilet; she always requested a pull-up. And then one day, she got it, and that was that. Easy, peasy.

Along came S.

S. is the kind of person who needs to pee CON.STANT.LY. All. The. Frickin. Time. And ever since we moved here, she has picked up the speech habits of someone she hangs around with, and she constantly shouts, “I have to make!” as she dashes off, and for some reason, I HATE THAT PHRASE SO MUCH.

But anyway.

S. has a LOT of nighttime accidents, but that doesn’t really bother me. I understand why it happens, I get it, and I know that it will end one day. And we do the wake her and take her to the toilet thing a lot, and that helps somewhat but not totally, but whatever. That’s not really an issue.

But OH HOLY CRAP.

In recent weeks, she has, to put it delicately, crapped in her pants about six times. (OK, I guess that wasn’t really putting it delicately. Sue me.)

Every time it happens, she is in tears, screaming that she “couldn’t hold it anymore.”

We have discussed the situation calmly at a later time, we have tried sending her at various times throughout the day to try to go, we have lost our temper and shouted, we have tried rewards and punishments, and we have tried ignoring the problem on the off chance that it would go away. (It didn’t.) The other issue is that when S. does go in the toilet, her wiping skills are… look, I get that she’s a kid, but I have another kid who NEVER handed in underwear like this. It is truly horrendous. And I have no idea what to do.

This is the same kid who, one day as we all sat in the family room, quietly passed gas. When the smell nearly choked us all to death, she said, “What? I like farting.”

At this rate, I am thinking that the next person in our house to be fully and completely toilet trained will be Baby J., who just turned one, and who deserves his own post because he is SO CUTE.

So, my lovlies, any advice? S’s suggestion, by the way, was that I buy her more underwear and “go back to potty training.”