DS won't do a poo unless he is at home

[BertieBotts]

Which means never at nursery, public toilets, his childminder's or other people's houses where he sometimes goes either with me/DP or while I'm at work. (DP works nights)

He goes happily at home and has even started going alone now without insisting one of us sits in the bathroom with him. He is 3.7 and only fairly recently stopped using nappies for poo, about 3 months ago.

This is causing a problem in that if I'm at work for a few days in a row, he only has a few hours at home each day, sometimes a much shorter time, and if he doesn't feel he needs a poo during this short window, he just doesn't go for several days and of course gets constipated. :( It's awful as he wakes up screaming at night with it and sounds as though he's really in pain. We have started giving him calpol for it which seems to help with the tummy ache, but obviously it's not solving the real problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions which might help? He's perfectly happy to go for wees in all of these places and is really confident with that, it's just poos. Might he just get there by himself or is there something we should be doing to encourage him?

You need a copy of the book "Poo goes to pooland"! Start a new message with the name in the title and I'm sure someone will be able to send it to you.

Where does he poo at home? Ie in the toilet or a potty? Does he use a child seat? He may just be scared of the toilet. My ds for a while would only wee in a toilet that was the same shape as our one at home :o he refused to wee in my sisters because it was "too round"! He also went through a phase of not pooing away from our house and i countered it by getting him to use the adult seat at home so that he realised it wasn't so scary and he eventuallyfelt comfortable enough to use them outside too. This is quite recent and he is 4 1/2. I'm not sure if I've really answered your question though.

We've got poo goes to pooland. He likes the story but doesn't seem to connect it with actually pooing. It wasn't that that got him to poo in the toilet originally, he just decided one day that he would do it.

He uses an insert on our toilet seat, but I've tried showing him one e.g. at a friend's house which is the same and he just squirms and says "I don't need a poo" - he will do a wee quite happily in the same toilet (standing up).

I think then that you need to get him to use the toilet without the extra seat. That might help him come to terms with other peoples toilets. If not then he might just do it one day. You could try asking a hcp but IME they aren't a huge help. Like I said my ds only just mastered this so it could well take a while. They all do stuff in their own time. Dd went straight from nappies to the normal toilet (no child seat) when she was 2 1/2 and was trained before ds who is 14 months older.

Ahem, there are plenty of adults who are the same

I still prefer not to poo anywhere other than at home!

My DS (2.3) is similar. Although we are not at the potty training stage yet, he will hold poo in when we are out and about and go as soon as he steps through the front door. If we are staying with family/friends it usually takes him a day or two to build up the confidence to poo. I can't imagine what he'll be like once we start with the potty!!

I agree I prefer not to go elsewhere as well but I wouldn't get constipated as a result. He def needs to start doing it.

I am the same .

And when I went on holiday with my uncle and his family I found out it runs in the family. As it were. he was also constipated for the first week of every holiday.

I think it's some sort of bizarre security thing!

just to give some reassurance that i used to be like this as a child!! had a thing against other toilets - esp public toilets!!

So much so that i once done a 10 hour drive from edinburgh to portsmouth (well i was in the back of the car - i was 8!!), then an overnight ferry portsmouth to st malo, then a 5 odd hour drive st malo to the Vendee without going to the toilet - had to wait until had our OWN bathroom. (and that includes peeing!!!)
It was very much a phase and hasnt done me any harm long term!