eating poo

I have a few nurse friends, faeces, excrement, excreta, poo and shit all figure large in conversations!

When we moved, DD aged 3 smeared poo all around her bed on the walls. I was really upset at the time, I thought she was going to turn into some weird person, but apparently it's a normal way for children and animals to mark out their territory with the only means at their disposal. Just goes to show how our instincts haven't been entirely bred out of us.

I have had several friends who have admitted to their young children eating poo. Their own and that of pets. I think it's just something that most people used to be too inhibited to mention.

I remember being scared to ask for a loo when visiting a friend's mother's house. She realised what I needed, and said 'Don't be embarrassed, we are all the same, even the Queen doesn't shit into plastic bags wearing gloves'!

In Kent there is an abundance of damsons and foxes. This results in large quantities of purple poo in gardens and lanes. My visiting nephew, on a country walk, once got to a pile of fox poo before we could retrieve it from his mouth. He was three and said it was lovely. My sister, being a germaphobe who prefers town life, looked at me as if it was my fault.

I was thinking about that too - I don't either. I suppose if I were having a heart to heart with a friend about health problems I might refer to constipation or diarrhoea, but you tend not to need a grown-up word for 'poo'...

I suppose a doctor would ask about 'stools'.

Oddly enough I tend not to speak to other adults about that part of my bodily function nor do I enquire after theirs. So the only people I do need to question on this issue tend to be 4 and under.
Thus I use the word 'poo' too

I mean for little ones to use, not that poo is a good word to use when describing little children. You have to be so careful on here, no editing!

I thought for years that everyone used that term - then realised that a lot of people say 'Number 2s'

I think 'poo' is quite a good descriptive word for little ones!

Goodness, mine (8) wouldn't have a clue what I meant if I asked them if they'd done their business! They'd probably think I was talking about some sort of 'monkey-business'...

I think we are using the word 'poo' on this thread when we are referring to it in relation to toddlers. It is probably the word I used with my DC and now use with DGC, although now that the two older DGC are six I may use the term 'business' as my DM did with me, ie 'have you done your business yet?'

I would use the word poo with the two year old. It would seem odd to ask her if she had defecated, and as I was chatting on here about her pooing in her knickers I thought it was the appropriate term to use.

I don't mind if you call me Rose, Rosequartz or Rosie or whatever, ethel!! Just don't call me roses as people will be confused with rosesarered.

I tend to use the word poo (as does my GP!) - to use the word 'shit' would have had my mother accusing me of committing the 'c' offences: common, crude and crass.

I don't think I've ever heard her use any descriptive word for it come to think of it

What word do you use, absent? I'm seriously interested.

I am not "having a go" at you Etheltbags1 now or at any other time. In fact, I hadn't really noticed who was the OP and was commenting on so many women of fifty, sixty or older using the juvenile word poo when talking to other women of fifty, sixty or older. It always strikes me as odd.

If you are insisting on your full monniker Etheltbags1 then the least you could do is return the compliment e.g. to rosequartz and anybody else. Mind you, few of us stand on ceremony here

When I was studying books by Freud, Eysenck et al (recommended reading on a course I was doing years ago), I had to borrow the books from the library as I could not afford to buy them.

One day I got home from work to find that the dog had chewed his way through the three books I had borrowed. I decided then and there that the dog may have had the best idea.

Beat me to it, Elegran. Freud had some strange ideas about certain behaviours, as did some of his followers.

Don't take all of Freud's pontificating about sex as gospel, though. He was obsessed by it, and thought everyone else was too.

Rose I have just read the link to freud, its really interesting I will get DD to read it.

Please would you all refer to me as etheltbags not ethelbags. thank you

absent you are having a go at me again as I started this discussion. I thought that the word poo was the most tactful and as we are almost all of us grandparents we are familiar with the word 'poo'. I would no doubt be criticised if I used the word s..., and Im not going all posh and say 'moved the bowels' because we are talking about kids therefore the word poo is appropriate.
I couldn't see my DD ringing me saying, 'mum, our S....... has just eaten the excrement from when she has moved her bowels'.

Here is Freud's take on poo:

www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/learning_modules/psychology/02.TU.04/?section=12

Chocolate does have an unfortunate resemblance to excrement.

Not just chocolate. A friend and I took our children camping one weekend and, obviously, meals were planned around what was quick and easy. We had bought a tin of Campbells Meatballs to have with some packet mash (yuk). My son refused to eat them but was told he had to as there was nothing else. The next day at school, he started to cry and told his teacher I had made him eat poo in the tent! I was actually called into the school by the headmistress as well - she did chuckle though when I explained what it actually was that he had eaten.

Oh this thread is great, I've laughed so much the tears are running down my legs! Working as a nurse in the eighties, I helped care for emotionally disturbed children who would smear their poo, this was while they were in hospital, one said it helped them feel at home, and made the area around them theirs. Our bowels do impact on our lives in a big way, you cannot ignore them, and I certainly do not mean to be smutty or faecetious.

Truffles especially!

put me OFF

Chocolate does have an unfortunate resemblance to excrement. Funny - that hasn't put me of chocolate.

DGD2 is being potty-trained and is generally very good, especially with the wee - or should I say expelling of urine as I am supposedly a grownup?
However, sometimes the expelling of faeces does not always happen at the right time. We went to the lavatory after lunch out, she did a wee. A bit later on she announced that she had done a poo in her knickers. We went back to the lavatory, luckily it was quite solid but as I carefully took off her knickers she said:
'Oh, yummy yummy yummy, mmm' and licked her lips. Then looked at me and giggled because she knew it was wrong.