Frustrated and fed up with poos in pants!

[mrspir8]

Argh, gotta rant here so excuse me.

We have been potty training dd since feb and i faffed about with training pants/pull ups for ages before then. She is 2.9 months old.

I am really beginning to be fed up with it. It seemed to start ok, she took 5 days to have a dry day then we had 3 weeks where she was totally dry except at nursery. she is fairly good at weeing in the potty but poos are a total no no. Every nursery day I come back with 3 or 4 outifts which are soaked and pooey. Today I was utterly mortified to hear that a poo fell out of her pants while on the climbing frame onto another child. This meant not just one child in a mess but two-I offered to wash the other childs clothes but the nursery would not give them to me as they dont belong to me.
The nursery nurse is forcibly having to take her to the toilet to catch anything and it's always with a screaming fit.

She never asks to go at nursery although she will at home. Thye are willing to carry on and have told me not to put her back into nappies- even though I am tempted. They have tried stickers and rewards. They have tried to talk to her about it but her response is the same as it is with me, I dont know, or it's funny or I want to poo myself in front of my freinds. I have no idea why she thinks it's funny-ive never made a fuss-just clean up with little or no contact and get her some fresh clothes. I have even rollocked the nursery about taking her more often and she did get better for one day but now it's worse than ever. I got no less than 5 dirty outfits back today. Im so sick of the seeming lack of progress-I just would love one day to pick her up with no little bags of stinky clothes. Has it been going on too long? Should I back off and try again later?

[mummyloveslucy]

She is still very young and I've heared that it's quite common for children to be slower with their bowel control.
Maybe she dosn't like the nursery toilet for some reason?

[CarGirl]

Hmmmm the nursery don't seem very on board with how she is?

Does she suffer from constitpation as this could be having an impact on the situation?

[girlywhirly]

I feel very sorry for dd. I'm not at all surprised she won't wee or poo at nursery if she is dragged to the toilet in tears, with a nursery nurse standing over her. No wonder she soils her pants, nursery is not a happy place to be at the moment.

The thing is, dc view their excretions differently to us adults. They have produced something which they want to hang onto, especially when the adults want them to do it and get rid. This then becomes a battle of wills the child witholds as long as possible, and does it in the pants anyway. I suspect the success of the pooland book is because it gives dc the power to 'let go' of the need to hold onto their poo and keep it close. Wetting and soiling have quite often an emotional cause, aside from the potty refusal, is dd happy at nursery in every other way?

I wouldn't go back to nappies, but I would consider constipation as a problem as the wetting is linked, an overloaded bowel masks the signals of a full bladder. It would be good if she could have a break from nursery to try and dispel the negative association dd has while you try to sort out the soiling. I think that you could look at some sort of reward scheme for using the potty/loo/clean and dry pants. Would she like to have her own potty to use at nursery? Choose some new pants? Would she sit on the potty at the same time as a little friend at nursery? Actually you could start that off at home, get some toddler friends round!