I have just lost my temper with my DD (2.8). I am so pissed off with myself as I know this will have likely made things a lot worse.
We started potty training in July when DD was just over 2. In hindsight it was too early. She has only had one wee accident in total in the past three months so we're there with wees, but poos are an issue.
She doesn't want to poo in the potty/toilet. In order to try to remove any stress from the process to avoid the risk of her withholding poo I eventually gave her the choice that when she wants a poo she can choose to do it on the potty or in her pull up. 9 times out of 10 she chooses the pull up. If she does use the potty then I make a big thing of being very positive about it. She has a reward chart but actually I don't think she's that fussed about it.
This evening she was just about to get in the bath when she said she needed a poo and wanted a pull-up. I lost my temper twenty minutes later when the bath had gone cold and we were still waiting for the fucking poo. She didn't seem to be making an effort to do it (ie was pottering around looking at toys, wanting to help me hang washing up etc.). After various reminders to remember to do the poo, I'm afraid I eventually lost it and screamed at her to do it 'now' and then went into a mini tirade about how I'm so sick of us spending our life waiting for poo.
We often end up leaving late for nursery in the morning because she 'wants to do her poo at home' but then doesn't actually do it and then she's often going to bed late because of instances like this evening, and she really needs her sleep at night because she doesn't nap anymore. She's now overtired from too many slightly short nights' sleep because of either delayed bedtime due to wanting to do a poo before the bath or because she waits until she's in her cot then does a poo 15 minutes later and then obviously it's nappy change and back to bed which all pushes bedtime back.
She's generally a really good child and has been perfectly well behaved today. She really hasn't warranted me being so horrid to her this evening but I just feel as though our lives are being held hostage by waiting for poo! After months of being patient and not making a fuss about it (although I did have a similar loss of temper a couple of months ago after a couple of weeks of dealing with poos in knickers - an issue that's now resolved) I feel like I'm at the end of my tether with it and don't know what to do.
There are three issues as far as I can see:
a) doing a poo at all, whether it's in pull-up or potty and stopping this rut we've got into of waiting for ages for her to do a poo she says she wants to do but invariably then doesn't
b) then moving to more poos going in potty/toilet - but actually this is less of a concern as it doesn't affect her health or my sanity her choosing to get a pull-up to poo in
c) she doesn't want to poo at nursery and I'm pretty sure she's holding it in
Things we have tried:
- making a huge positive fuss when she does a poo in the potty
- reward chart for poo in potty
- I'm never negative about her using a pull-up for a poo; she is clear that its her choice
- pooland app
- a potty book
Her diet is good and varied. She eats well and drinks enough so shouldn't be constipated. Before she started getting hung up about it she was doing a poo in the morning after waking up and then sometimes another later in the day. She now seems to be trying to control things so that all poos are done in her cot, whether that's when she wakes up first thing in the morning, or after she's gone to bed at night.