Long live Mr Hanky: A lesson in the use of imagination with kids

G,day. One of the things that works wonders with kids, far better than bribes, belts, lectures or logic, is to use their imagination. Just look at how powerful concepts like Santa, Easter Bunny and Tooth fairy are for instance. And just look at how they animate and bring to life inanimate objects like their teddies and dolls, and how petrified they can become as they animate shadows and night noises that become monsters and burglars. For years now I’ve had lots of success, fighting these imaginary fears, not with adult logic but, in a fun way, creating other imaginary characters or scenes to knock out these night time nasties.

But Karl had me beaten. One of the perennial problems with many young kids is soiling! Sometimes it’s because of past pain in passing stools, an anal fissure, fear of losing part of their body, or for no apparent reason whatsoever. Some will only do it in their nappies, some hang on for days, some have to squat in a special spot, but the real worries are those who become petrified about doing poos and get quite constipated.

Once that happens, not only do they become unwell, but the distended anal muscles are often unable to stop little bits of poo sneaking through (“sneaky poos” we call it).

Under normal circumstances I’d be working strongly on a regular toilet routine, making sure their diet was strong in fibre and fruit juices to stimulate the kidneys and having some special activity they can only do when they’re on the loo (like reading a special book. But Karl wasn’t responding. Then some older kids were telling me about Mr Hanky in “South Park”, an SBS regular comedy, supposedly for kids. In this particular episode, the kid community had been deprived of all the  Christmas symbols because some minority group took exception. So, as kids must have imagination in their lives, they ended up animating a stool or “poo” and called it Mr Hanky!

Now I had an idea to help Karl. I told him about poor Mr Hanky who was every kid’s friend, but suggested that the reason he stinks is because he hated being squashed in nappies. What Mr Hanky really loves is to swim and dive. So when Karl’s tummy starts to grumble that’s Mr Hanky telling him that he wants out, he wants to go for a swim. And, better still, he loves to dive so if he can drop Mr Hanky into the water he’s really happy and then when they flush the toilet, Mr Hanky can swim right out to sea where all his mates’ poos (they were all toilet trained) are having a great “poo” party. Karl loved the idea and really responded – it took all the anger and conflict out of toileting and made it much more fun.

Of course, you have to be careful how you word it, One mum told me she failed to specify that it was loo water they loved and her young fella dropped it in the bath and was having great fun playing and chatting to Mr Hanky and all his friends!

Long live Mr Hanky!!