Pooing in the potty

[KickingEAP]

DS is 3.5 and autistic. He's been late with the majority of milestones, although is miles ahead of expected in maths and reading/writing. I mention this to give an indication of his intelligence, in case anyone has any relevant advice.

About a month ago, we decided we'd have another go at potty training, having failed a couple of times, and didn't really hold out a lot of hope. To our amazement, he was dry within three days, and rarely has an accident with wee now.

The problem comes with poo. He rarely poos in the potty or on the toilet, and just does it in his pants. What on Earth do I do when he goes back to nursery?! He only attends for four mornings a week (despite having funding for thirty hours) because he's quite a handful and could do with 1:1 supervision, but he doesn't have funding for that.

It seems awful to put him back in nappies when we've made so much progress, but I can't imagine nursery being happy for him to soil himself and be cleaned up.

I'm sure I'm not the only parent to have experienced this. I'd really appreciate some advice.

Just to add: he knows when he has pooed but doesn't normally tell me unless I ask. On the odd occasion that he does happen to vd on the potty when a poo comes, he's very pleased with himself so it isn't that he's reluctant to part with it.

He's also dry overnight, but still wearing a pull up just in case.

Hi, I don’t have this exact experience, but I had to send my daughter to nursery in pants as she was weeing OK in the toilet but absolutely refused to poop in one. She would hold onto it until she relaxed at night time and would poo overnight. But she sometimes couldn’t hold it in so pooped her pants at nursery.

I talked to her nursery about it who were unbelievably kind and understanding. It’s way more common than anyone thinks. I hope your nursery is too?

The thing that eventually fixed the problem was being on enough Movicol (I think two sachets a day) that it made pooping incredibly easy. Then making her sit on a toilet every evening for a period of time. It eventually (after a painful year) sorted itself out.

Depends on the nursery, I work in a preschool which is separate from a nursery as such and we do not have changing facilities. Policy is if a child poops the parents have to be called. It's only a 3 hour session session and that's in Ireland so it may be different. If its full day care then they will be used to this kind of thing, if he can say when he has done it and get changed straight it's very different from discovery after a while when it's a big squashed mess. Talk to them, they should understand! I'd recommend you take a diary of his times, he might be very predictable. My DS was late to train too, also autistic and at one stage was part time so never pooped at nursery which was lucky. Sounds like your DS is doing great all things considered!

Reward pooing on potty immediately with something highly motivating (plus praise). If it's going to work it should work quickly and you can phase out the rewards.

We've recently potty trained our nearly 3 year old and have previously potty trained our older child. Both of them have got the hang of wees before poos and the nursery have been totally fine with this and clearing up the odd accident. My eldest learnt quickly to hold it at nursery and then did it either in the evening or morning when wearing his night nappy. Younger one took longer to get potty training overall but got poos quite quickly after wees so we had a few weeks of regular poo accidents at home and nursery. I'd have a chat with them and see what they say. Ours were very supportive and I think seeing their friends go actually helped with the whole process

This is so normal. I’d imagine the nursery will be very aware of it. We did give our DS the choice to ask for a pull up if he preferred to do it in a pull up. We also used the poo land YouTube story to support. After a few weeks he just started pooing in the toilet. Not sure why but it does just take a bit longer

Thank you for the replies. I will read in detail later. Previously the staff have been okay with changing the occasional dirty nappy without calling us.