‘Help! My Son’s Friend Doesn’t Know How to Use the Bathroom’
Dear Emily,
My 9-year-old son’s almost-8-year-old friend simply can’t use the bathroom properly. We have three bathrooms in our house, and if he comes over for a two-hour playdate, he inevitably finds a way to pee all over the toilet seats and all over the floors of all three bathrooms — and that’s to say nothing if he goes No. 2, which I’m happy to leave to your imagination. He’s been a friend of the family for a few years, and when he was 4 and even 5 years old, I was a bit more understanding of the situation. But I feel like if you’re in second grade, you should be able to aim into the toilet! At this point I’m considering making a house rule where if this kid needs to go when he’s at our house, he can only do so in the yard. Or maybe I could do an inspection after he uses the bathroom and ask him to clean it up after he goes? Every option feels terrible, but I also feel like I shouldn’t need to schedule extra time to scrub the bathrooms every time he leaves. I feel like I should also add that I am in no way a clean freak, and my son’s not a prime specimen of bathroom hygiene or etiquette either, but the scenes this kid leaves almost need a special kind of house cleaner (or crime scene specialist) to deal with. This kid is average in all other respects, though I would say he’s a bit more aggressive and anti-authoritarian than the median 8 year old. But aside from being very full of energy and not the most well-behaved (or at least willing to listen to other people’s parents) kid in the world, it’s really limited to the bathroom. I wish I could ask his parents if this is something they deal with in their own bathrooms, but it feels weird and inappropriate. What do I do?
— Helppppp
Dear Helppppp,
This is a thing that happens on playdates to some extent in my experience. Something about the feeling of being over at a friend’s house seems to make kids eager to test the limits of the exotic new locale’s plumbing system. Maybe there’s a primal need to mark one’s territory at play? Or maybe kids are just gross.
I consulted a trusted pediatrician friend about this one, and she says that from a developmental perspective, it is unusual for a kid this age to have so little control over their bathroom hygiene, and also, given the scope of the mess, that it’s very unlikely that the parents are unaware.
Taking this into consideration, you could just suck it up and have an awkward conversation with this kid’s parents. I know it feels cringey to the max, but one nonconfrontational method (also suggested by the pediatrician, who knows a lot about tactfully approaching parents about their kids’ behavior) is to say something like: “I’ve noticed that Kid X has some trouble with bathroom hygiene, and I wonder if this happens at home. If so, how do you handle it? I’d like to go along with your way of dealing with it.” Maybe you’ll find that they already have some tactics in place, like rewards for aiming into the toilet, and then you can just follow their lead. There’s no way they’re completely oblivious — they live with this kid! — so you can go into the conversation feeling somewhat assured that they’ll respond with sympathy and might even be embarrassed and apologetic. After all, who wouldn’t react with some amount of shame upon hearing that their kid is peeing all over someone else’s house?
I totally get that you don’t want to bring it up directly with the kid. While I think you’d be within your rights to point out the situation and ask him to clean up after himself, my personal belief is that parenting other people’s kids on a playdate should be limited only to situations where someone’s physical well-being is in imminent danger. If you start imposing the mores of your household on other people’s children, you risk wading into all kinds of mess, and it’s my opinion that we as parents have our hands more than full just trying to enforce the rules with our own children. Ideally, your kid sets the tone and their guests get the message, whether we’re talking about bathroom mess or table manners or any other realm where different households might impose different standards.
One easy thing you can do that doesn’t involve direct confrontation with the parents or the kid is to designate one of your three bathrooms as the “guest bathroom.” Make it clear to your son and any friends who come over that this is the bathroom you want them to use during playdates — you can say, simply and honestly, that “it’s easier for me to keep the house clean that way.”
No matter which option you choose, at least you’ll be mitigating the damage, though no solution is going to be perfect except banning playdates with the bathroom-challenged kid. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I also shudder at the thought of you wiping up a stranger’s effluvia over and over again. Somehow it’s really different when it’s not your own kid’s mess.
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