Jared writes:

Why do kids always need to go to the restroom (or totally blow up a diaper) at the most inconvenient times and places...like at a restaurant  in the middle of dinner, or even when you are driving on the highway just after you passed the last exit for the next 30 miles?

BusyDad:

Dude, it looks like you totally missed out when Time-Life came out with that “Mysteries of the Unknown” book series. You probably remember the ads for the more exciting volumes in that lineup, such as Alien Encounters, Dreams and Dreaming and Mysterious Creatures. But volume 26, Those Darn Babies, came and went without much fanfare. The ad for it wasn’t comparatively exciting either:

Emily Paulson makes a reservation for 7:00 at a nice restaurant and is sure her 8-month-old is in the clear for today’s poop. “He just made a big one at 3:45 pm,” she thinks to herself. But once seated she looks over to see little Daniel making that “concentration face.”

What happens next?

Reeead the book!

It’s 10:30 at night and Richard Johnson finds that he’s used the last diaper. Baby Janie had a bottle at 9:00 and this last pee should do it for the night. He’s really tired and doesn’t want to drive to the supermarket for another box of Huggies. At 11:07 he hears a cry. He rushes to baby Janie’s crib and what does he find?

What was it?

Reeead the book!

Because you weren’t lucky enough to have failed to send back the book within 10 days purchased this volume, I’ll let you in on a little secret. It was benevolent aliens who did this to our kids. They wanted the human species to be prepared for the worst, so they put these tendencies into our babies so that we would steal napkins from Starbucks and stash them in our glove compartment and line our jacket pockets with them. So that we would keep extra kids’ underwear under our carseats and in our laptop bags. So that we would have an excuse to keep half empty Sparkletts bottles rolling around the floors of our cars. When you’re potty-ready, you’re apocalypse-ready. Thank you, aliens!

Mr Lady:

Yeah, what BusyDad said.

*see what happens when BD let's ME pick the post title?  I go all Raising Arizona on your butt.  Also, please don't pick on me for the poor formatting of this post.  If I told you how bad my husband's computer sucks, you'd call me a liar.

Bob asks:

I live in a household with two other women, I’m married to one and father to the other one.  My problem is that I’m the only one in the house that closes the bathroom door.  Be it number one or number two, it doesn’t matter, they’ll let their freak flags fly.  I seem to have lost the characterizations of a male in my own house.  I might as well be a lamp.  How do I get my status of “male” back or at a bare minimum, how do I get them to at least turn the fan on?

BusyDad:
First of all, yuck. I feel bad for you. You have my sympathy. I mean, I’m all for females pooping, and I will fight to the death for their right to poop. But it’s one of those things better left as a concept, behind closed, soundproof doors and sage vanilla candles. And I’m sure it goes the other way too. Now let’s try to fix this, shall we?

The Kid
It wasn’t clear how old your daughter is, but if she is 12 or younger, simply make it a rule. You may have lost your status as a “male” but I hope you haven’t lost your status as a parent. Just lay down the law on this one. “When you are relieving yourself, close the door.” It’s not hard to enforce and not hard to follow. If she’s a teenager and has some sort of social conventions chip on her shoulder, just plant a seed, an image, in her head. Pull her aside one day and say “[name], I want you to picture something. Picture me sitting on the toilet. Taking an enormous dump. And then wiping it.” She’ll probably make a pukey face. Then tell her “that is exactly the feeling I get when I see you pinching a loaf on the toilet. Would you mind closing the door next time?” Even if she doesn’t close the door the next time (to showboat her resistance to authority), that talk will run through her head. And it will make her uncomfortable when she begins the wiping process. You’ll get your closed door. Eventually.

The Wife
I’m assuming you’ve asked her to be more discreet about her bowel movements and it hasn’t worked. Otherwise you would not be asking us about it. You’ve probably asked her to do it before and she said “ok” but never did (or did it maybe 3-4 times). That’s because you probably didn’t frame the question right. In this situation you can’t play “strong hand / weak hand” either (e.g. “I have to put my foot down – close the flipping door!”) because you will lose. You need to appeal to the one thing that married couples should hold as important at all times: the desire to appear attractive to their mate. I’m not saying that couples have to be attractive to one another other, because time and responsibilities take their inevitable physical toll on everyone. However, in every healthy relationship, the desire to be attractive to the other should always be at the forefront of the equation. Otherwise, why even bother? I know for a fact that the one thing that my wife can say to me that will make me scramble to fix something is when she says “that is such a turn-off.” I don’t care if she says “that’s gross” or “that’s nasty” or even “that’s ugly” because those are attributes that do not reflect my intentions. But once something turns her off, that says to me that what I am doing is actively making me less sexually viable to her. If you don’t care about that, then you may as well be just friends. Next time she’s on the pooper, walk right up to her and say wistfully “I know we’re close and this is a totally natural thing, but it would really turn me on a lot more if some things like this were just kept a mystery.” She’ll probably be pissed, and she’ll probably keep the door open a few more times, but if she cares at all about remaining attractive in your eyes, she’ll think about that each time she leaves the door open. Eventually, it’ll just be easier to close the door than feel guilty about it.

Mr Lady:

Yours truly was a 6 year old girl.  She lived in a two bedroom apartment with her mother, father, two brothers and one sister.  We had ONE bathroom.  And none of us ever closed the door.  One day, Lil' Mr Lady was on the john, doing her business, and her father came up the stairs.  He screamed something, the exact phrasing of which she can't remember, but the humilation brought about by it?  Burned into her brain FOREVER.

Do I think you should humiliate anyone?  Hell no.  But I DO think that it is Muy Importante that they learn about Personal Boundaries as early as humanly possible.  Pooping time?  No exception.  I'm with BusyDad; it's time for the crackdown, brother.

As for your wife doing the deed, you probably aren't going to have a ton of luck changing that.  But just you wait until she's halfway pulling out a tampon and that kid comes waltzing in.  And gets a bird's eye view of that horror.  And says something like, "Mom?  MOM?  Are you OKAY???"  And then cries a little.  She'll start locking the door shut after that.  Promise.  Pinky swear.  I totally know.  Like, I KNOW.