I have always thought of myself as anal-retentive, though I think what I really meant by that is organized and efficient. Recently, I’ve had cause to contemplate the phrase since my son, age 3 (almost), finally divested himself of diapers and the much less absorbent/somewhat less humiliating sibling product, Pull-Ups, and has entered Freud’s second psychosexual stage: the anal phase.
How do I know it’s arrived? Well, one evening about two weeks ago, during a dinner party, my son emerged from the bathroom stark naked, handed me a plastic spray bottle, and remarked, casually, “There’s poop in there.”
Sure enough, upon examination, there were three feculent malted milk balls rolling around in the bottle. But how did they get in there? Did he sit on the bottle, which would seem to place him in an even more developed psychosexual stage, or did he excrete somewhere else and then insert that ship into the bottle? I had to ask. “I pooped on the tile,” replied Skuli. “And picked it up with my hands.”
I thought that was the end of it, so to speak, but ever since the child started wearing underpants full-time, he’s been holding his bowels until the breaking point, then delivering in some dramatic, unexpected way. After two or three days of anal retention, we move into triage appropriate for labor and delivery of a baby, with him screaming “rub my tummy” then flipping over and demanding “rub my butt!” Finally, with a look of terror on his face, he will stand in the bathroom and begin to push, his face turning purple, the veins standing out on his neck.
My sister, ever able to fan the flames of my neuroses, called a few days into our new PSP (psychosexual phase). “I hope you aren’t rubbing his tummy,” she said. “According to Dr. Cohen”—the French celebrity pediatrician, who compellingly advises ignoring whatever is wrong with your child—“giving him attention will only make him more retentive.”
So, I’m committing to being less of a hands on bowel movement partner with Skuli and trying not to worry what his current rituals say about his future personality, according to Freud and this strangely charming autodidact.
