Words by Sean Szeps
I can’t tell you the exact moment I realised gastrointestinal banter was the pinnacle of comedy. Maybe it was sometime in infancy, when adults would blow raspberries on my belly and make fart noises just to see me giggle. Or maybe it was second grade, when some renegade kid drew a happy poop emoji – long before emojis existed – on the chalkboard, and the class collapsed into chaos. Or perhaps it was the Great Gym Class Incident of 1998, when I accidentally let one rip during a sit-up competition and the entire basketball court erupted like I’d just hosted the season premiere of SNL. I was a star, if only for a moment, and for all the wrong reasons.
While I can’t pinpoint the precise point bum-based humour became my comedic currency, I certainly remember the moment it stopped paying off. The moment it turned on me. When laughter gave way to embarrassment, and that once-reliable coin started to feel counterfeit – silly, shameful, something I was meant to outgrow.
Growing up, my family was very much a “that’s bathroom talk” household. Poop existed in the same category as sex and politics: an unspoken presence you acknowledged with a wince, then smothered with shame and air freshener. No jokes. No questions. Definitely no dinner-table discussion. The message was clear: your body’s most natural functions were to be hidden away, muffled by toilet paper, and never, ever discussed at the dinner table.
And then I became a parent. Of twins.
At first, I tried to be a “dignified” adult about their experimentation with the toilet time classics. I heard my grandmother’s voice fall from my mouth as I instinctively hushed, “We don’t talk about that,” as I watched my kids explode with laughter over “poo poo bum bum.” I was unconsciously mimicking the very scripts I’d grown up with, steering my children away from something that wasn’t dangerous at all. It was funny. Innocent. Totally normal.
But it took a few years of mimicking the scripts I had heard from my own childhood before I relaxed and decided to lean into the poo humour. And now that I have, I’ve come to realise that poop isn’t a nuisance, it’s actually a parenting gift. Not because it smells great (it doesn’t) or because it’s easy to clean up (definitely not), but because it’s an invitation to connect.
Humour, especially the “that’s so gross” variety, is a bridge. When I laugh with my kids about poop, we’re not just goofing off. We’re creating safety. We’re saying, “Hey, there’s nothing you can’t talk to me about. No topic is too taboo. I’m your person.”
And if we can giggle about poop, then we can talk about our own bodies. If something’s going wrong “down there”, my children are more likely to talk to me about it. And if we can talk about that, then we can also talk about sex, love, consent, shame and identity.
Letting go of the instinct to “shush” has transformed the way I parent. I don’t want my kids to think laughter is something to grow out of. I want them to know it’s something we grow with.
So now, when my daughter says the word “poop” during breakfast, I don’t tell her it’s inappropriate. I tell her she needs a better punchline. And then we laugh together.
Because parenting isn’t about crushing the joy out of childhood. It’s about remembering how to let it back in. Even if it smells a little funny.
