My 4-year-old son enjoys traveling... except for having to poop in a strange bathroom.

It doesn't matter if it's a hotel or a grandparent's house, if it's not his usual environment it's uncomfortable. He'll usually say he doesn't need to poop when it's obvious that the need has indeed arisen.

Fortunately, some wacky ideas have worked.

On one trip, he was happy to use his travel potty while watching our home security cameras, which helped him pretend he was home.

On the next trip, he was happy to use the hotel toilet while watching the home security cameras.

But on a recent trip to my dad's house, that wasn't enough. We brainstormed together for 20 minutes for solutions.

I finally asked him, "Do you know what would be ridiculous?" (he thinks "ridiculous" things are hilarious).

He gave a short forced giggle and asked "What?".

"What if we made a whole app just for pooping?"

He knows that the apps and games I make for him take a while so he thought this sounded extra ridiculous.

I suggested that we could have poops fly up from the bottom of the screen. He suggested that the background should change colors. I asked him if the poops should be all the same size; he thought they should be different sizes.

Then I one-shot prompted ChatGPT to create a single-file web app, copied it into the Working Copy app, and we tried it. It was perfect.

Over the following days, when it was time to poop, he would ask "do you remember that thing we made?" I'd pull it up and we'd go to the potty.

Once we got home, he asked to use the poop app, but we don't want screen time on the potty in our usual routine. Instead, we made an analog version: little brown paper triangles with googly eyes in a plastic bag.

If you ever need poop app, you can find it here. It can be added to your home screen as a PWA (a capability I added later).

Happy pooping!