I have to be careful about knowing where Bub is at in the house and checking on him when he gets “too quiet”, which is always a sign that he is up to something that he doesn’t want anyone else to become aware of. We have had to take one of the toilets in our house off of the ground seven times since this behavior started, but Bub will also go through periods where he is transfixed with flushing items down the toilet that are not supposed to go down the toilet, or anywhere near the toilet, and then make himself scarce from the restroom as fast as possible with the intent to avoid detection. Sometimes it does not immediately become apparent that he has flushed something down the toilet that eventually becomes problematic, although if an adult sees him rushing out of the restroom they know to check the toilet and to check the surrounding area for any “missing things” that he could have grabbed on a whim to flush down the toilet. A few times he has actually come close to causing some… slightly expensive damage, but fortunately he has not been able to flush anything down the toilet that isn’t supposed to be flushed so thoroughly that he has succeeded in that.

This is something else that he goes through “phases” in for some strange reason, and I have yet to figure out why, or what the reasons are for any of his problem behaviors that have these phases. I mean, one time he actually managed to flush a small plastic cup down the toilet (I’m still not completely sure how he did this, but he did), and he got it to go a decent way down the toilet, which really stopped it up after a few flushes… and this was something that we had to figure out by looking around for “the missing object” while the toilet was randomly overflowing. Even knowing that he had to crinkle the cup to get it to go down the toilet and obviously being there for the experience and removal, I am still not entirely sure how he managed that…

When there’s a will, there’s a way. When Bub wants to do something, he will try extremely hard to.