Good god.
One of those WTF moments I must share. On a board about step-parenting, someone complained that their 15-year-old stepdaughter never flushed the toilet after she took a dump, regardless of how often the stepparent reminded her. It sounded like the kind of molehill that people turn into a mountain because the relationship has so much free-floating AAAUGH in it that it’s almost a relief to have something specific to focus on. Some commenters gave reasonable advice, or funny-but-workable advice like embarrassing the daughter when her friends were over by telling her, “I see you didn’t flush again. Somebody needs to eat more fiber!”
And then there was this gem:
First time: Talk privately about appropriate behavior (sounds like you are long past this stage)
Next: Talk with entire family
Next: Public humiliation – keep escalating until it works if not:
Next: Dispose of poop on her bed
Next: Dispose of poop on her pillow
Next: Dispose of poop on her pillow while she is sleeping
Next: Kick her sorry ass out of your home permanently. Nobody should have to live with shit. Because if it were me the next step would be to cram that shit down her throat and one must stop before that.
Do take pictures as evidence. Save them to humiliate and embarrass her the rest of her life as she will likely remain a total ahole forever.
There were no responses. I like to think the other members are just ignoring the asshole who proposes throwing out a 15-year-old for not flushing the toilet, but after my time in the trenches of estranged parents’ forums, the assumption doesn’t come naturally.
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Love it! But I’m assuming that the person who commented is joking – hope so.
By the way, don’t trust Buffy. The look on his face suggests that he’s either not amused or seriously considering the ‘poop on the pillow’ suggestion.
They’re not joking. A group of members glommed onto the issue and used it to vent their own rage at disobedient kids.
Buffy has fluff-jodhpurs, so sometimes a little friend follows him out of the litterbox and ends up… just about anywhere. He’s not allowed in the bedroom, but a non-negligible percentage of his little friends end up on the sofa, which is covered in pillows and where I sometimes sleep. “Poop on the pillow” is a viable threat.
What?! I honestly thought it was a joke.
Well, if a person is happy for a minor issue to reach such a point where the situation is so out of control that a teenager faces homelessness, then this is the way to go about it.
It probably gives us some insight into how the person who made the suggestion deals with minor issues in their own life. They must be a nightmare!
My kid sometimes forgets too. I roll my eyes and flush the toilet.
I must be really bad — I made my son clean the bathroom when he forgot. For about a month, I had the cleanest bathroom ever, then he suddenly started to flush appropriately. Turned out it wasn’t the chores — it was his stepsister (who was drop-dead gorgeous and several years older) said something to him about the likelihood of ever finding a girl when he had such habits. Puberty solved it!
*snrk* The missing element: motivation.
Someone once talked about living next door to a teenaged girl whose dates thought their car horn was a doorbell. Finally she went out when the latest suitor was leaning on the horn, and told him that what impressed girls more than anything was manners. The kid immediately went up and rang the doorbell. Later the girl’s mom told the neighbor that the kid was the politest date her daughter had ever had, he did this and that and that was before they even left the house, OMG. The neighbor didn’t tell her it was because the kid thought it was the way into the daughter’s pants.
I don’t think cleaning the bathroom is a terrible punishment, provided you’re doing it in a calm manner.
Sounds like a protest, actually. A childish one, but a protest nonetheless. A point of contest that never fails to irritate was found and gets applied. Flushing and ignoring might work, actually.
I’m not an expert, of course. It also seems like there’s more shit going on than this.
In my experience, teens are made of childish protests. Appearance, cursing, etc. I think it’s an attempt to assert individuality and distinguish themselves from their parents. When there’s dysfunction, the protest escalates. I’ve found ignoring to be largely effective where the protest is mild. In any case, poop mountain is not a hill I’d choose to die on.
As a teen, can confirm. Moving the boundaries isn’t easy on parents or children. It’s just that food- and toilet-related difficulties are typical of toddlers (where, again, boundary-pushing occurs).
It may just be that this specific protest is something that happens to really bother the parent so it is repeated. I don’t perceive it as a big deal, and I’m not sure what remedy I’d deploy to stop my husband from doing it on occasion either. People can be distracted and stuff happens. Apparently when it happened the first or second time in this case, there was a reaction that confirmed it is a button. It’s not for me, but I tend to dismiss a lot of stuff as just things kids do. I do make a point of telling my kid she needs a haircut on occasion, so she feels like she’s sticking it to me by not getting one.
Thank you very much for, uh, being chill. It’s not something I observe often.
It helps that I have a very good kid.
Of course, I also worry about this, because estranged parents always seem to talk about the good relationship they had with their kids growing up. I feel like I do have a close and loving relationship with my daughter and then I read what estranged parents say and then question whether it’s just perception. I do make a great effort to respect her as a separate person, so I think I’m OK, but there’s definitely some anxiety about my perception versus hers.
It’s a good anxiety to have. And, of course, if there’s a problem she won’t give you an honest answer, while if there isn’t a problem she’ll tell you everything is fine, so…
But it certainly sounds like you’re doing well. Self-reflection is good. So is being willing to be wrong, and not dismissing complaints because you don’t understand them or don’t see what the big deal is.
(If I had to do 13 over again, I’d pick you as my mom.)
I’ll sound banal, probably, but – if you’re thinking about that, if you’re doubting and questioning yourself, then something as bad as estangement is a lot less likely to happen.
That is a super sweet thing to say.
It also seems like there’s more shit going on than this.
So to speak.
You and Magpie have it covered. The kid’s 15, she bounces between households, leaving a floater doesn’t even register on Dad’s scale but it sends Stepmom through the roof. If I were 15, I’d think that was hilarious. (Unfortunately, Mom was a nurse and thought poop was hilarious. So many opportunities lost.) Stepmom knows the floaters are an act of defiance, but they’re such a petty thing that she can’t justify the response she wants to give.
And then some of the commenters have an anaphylactic reaction to the stepdaughter’s defiance. It’s like in one of the responses to AC’s issues that I analyzed–granddaughter refuses to give Grandma input into her choice of college? Death to her!
It actually is pretty hilarious as an act of defiance, but it’s also a pretty mild one. I’d take a petty symbolic poopy act of defiance over something more significant any day. Stepmom is pretty weak sauce if something like this is spinning her up. Daughter could be doing any number of actual real bad acts to show defiance. I would speculate that daughter is a good and appropriate-acting kid in general, if this kind of meaningless gesture is what she chooses to be her big gesture of rebellion.
There is someone at work who doesn’t flush the toilet. Once I had to turn around and run out of the room gagging because the smell was that bad. So it could be much more then a molehill – I would be pretty pissed if I only had one bathroom and not flushing put it out of commission for a while because of the smell. I don’t agree with the suggestion… I have no idea how to fix it. but I can see why she is upset.
I regard grown-ass adults completely differently, and I would take issue with this as well. Teens have executive function issues and do stupid things, and how you deal with those things is important. In this case, daughter is getting something from the reaction, so the reaction is not helping the situation, even if the behavior is intrusive and annoying. Adults don’t get that excuse. I manage the admin stuff for a manufacturer, and I actually had to institute a kitchen cleaning schedule, because people could not manage to wipe up their own spills and crumbs. And don’t get me started with the toilet seat in the “women’s” bathroom (really unisex, but we have three and that one is advertised as the one that only women are supposed to use — to avoid having to do things like lower the seat all the time). But these people should all know better, and it’s not motivated by anything either than laziness and the expectation that other people take care of that stuff.
It’s. So. Frustrating.
With kids I think it is more complex and more excusable. If it’s rebellion, the situation won’t be helped by an extreme reaction because that’s actually the motivation. Bad behavior in the work place is another thing entirely. BTW, I think work poopers are a thing. I could swear I’ve seen it addressed in some HR blogs. Ask a Manager maybe.
BTW, I think work poopers are a thing.
WHYYYYYYY did I Google that?
http://thoughtcatalog.com/michael-podell/2013/11/i-poop-at-work-and-these-are-my-observations/
Only mildly related, but high on the You Have to Read This scale: http://loweringthebar.net/2016/03/has-your-boss-ever.html
At risk of lowering the discourse further, this is also a thing:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/the-case-of-the-mystery-pooper-dna-privacy/400355/
I’m a lawyer and I do HR so I was actually familiar with the first case you linked but the attempt to use genetic testing to determine the identity of the work mystery pooper is the one that really gets me.