to have let DS poo outside the doctor's?

[TheMonster]

DS and I had walked to the Post Office this morning, which takes about 20 minutes.
All that is on this little parade of shops is the Post Office, a small Boots and a doctor's surgery.
As we apporached the shops, DS (4) suddenly annouced he had a tummy ache and needed a poo.
No problem, thinks I, there's a doctor's surgery. It's not my doctor. I went in and asked the receptionist (a young lad) if we could please use the loo. By this time, DS was doing the toilet dance. The lad said no we couldn't.
We ran accross the road to Boots and asked and the lady was very apologetic and said it wasn't possible because of the drugs (fair enough). DS was unusually polite and said 'I'll be careful' which made us all smile, but is irrelevant.
DS was about to explode so we dashed back to the Dr's and I took him behind a bush which was sort of the side of the building, held him up and he went. It was just watery so no chance of picking it up as you would a dog poo.
When he had finished and we turned around, I realised there was a narrow but tall window into the waiting room (which was empty) and the lad at the reception may well have seen.
We walked off quickly.
Was I wrong? Was there an alternative?

or they rarely happen

YANBU. I don't see you had any choice. I would have done the same in your position. I'm not sure how you could have cleaned it up if it was watery. I think I probably would have made some effort to bury it but that's all.

Agree, next time ask where the toilets are, not whether you can use them. What possible reason would he have had for saying no?!

How awful for your both

With hindsight, you should have gone back into the GPs, and announced in a loud voice that since he wouldn't let a desperate 4 year old use the toilet, the child had to poo outside, maybe he could clean it up?!

That's grim.

Many city centre surgeries (as well as other civic buildings) won't let the public use their toilets. Can you imagine the state of them if they were used as public toilets by every passing person that popped in for a poo? Where I work even though it's only for the use of patients the toilet is often left in a disgusting state - wee all over the floor, blocked toilet due to people trying to flush nappies down the loo, and just last week we had a flood because a young child blocked the plughole with toilet paper and left the tap running. The parent didn't notice

Also many surgeries aren't NHS property, they are private buildings owned or leased by the GPs. So essentially they can let in or refuse entry to who they like.

Having said all that it seems rather unreasonable not to let an obviously distressed child use the loo, I think some discretion could be applied.

Dp thinks the loos are probably behind a locked door as the surgery is in a bit of a grim area with a fair few druggies hanging about (it's a well-known local area for deals). Maybe they thought DS needed to shoot up????!!!!

no way, not unreasonable at all. What else should you have had him do? poo his pants and leave psychological scarring.

No, when you got to go you got to go, especially if he was unwell and unable to know with enough notice to tell you and then wait til you got home. He was clearly unwell, seeing as he had tummy ache first.

You did the right thing.
I wouldn't worry about not cleaning up, a passing dog will have eaten it by now. They are quite partial to human excrement apparently :o.

I don't see you had any choice.

Poor little chap

you didn't have any choice! YANBU in any element of what happened.

YANBU. Prob worth letting the surgery know about this. It sounds like a jobsworth receptionist thinking 'well we can't let just anyone use the toilets' and not realising that it is OK to make an exception for a four year old with diarrhoea. Poor ds, hope he is feeling better now.

He's been keeping the loo warm on and off all day since then.

oh no poor thing BOE . Some people lack basic human compassion and humanity, how sad is this. They are also devoid of all commonsense instead recite the rule book like robots. The country is being run by robots rather than human beings.

A Drs surgery of all places, thought that they would have some compassion, obviously not.

Poor DS and agree not much else you could have done.

And perhaps there wouldn't be so many threads about dog shit if every dog owner picked it up.

The receptionist sounds pretty inexperienced and I think a quiet word with the surgery wouldn't go amiss. I mean, what if it were an elderly person whose request they declined? I'm not belittling your son's embarrassment but this sort of thing (being caught short) happened to my gran fairly regularly when she was still out and about and getting used to her more fragile state and something like this would have destroyed her. Luckily, she was always treated with respect and discretion.

I don't think, given the details of the situation, there was much else you could have done. Poor little chap, I hope he's feeling better and wasn't too upset by the whole thing.

I'm surprised they didn't let such a little boy use the toilet. I don't think you could have done anything else.

I ahve to go to the job centre every fortnight and there are no toilets provided for people who go in there. When I was first made redundant and went for my first signing interview my 2 year old said she needed the toilet halfway through and they called security and took me down and opened the disabled toilets so she could go in.

Betsy, you are so right. That would have been awful for an elderly person.