Help needed in a certain part of potty training

[Lonelymum]

Ds3, as some recent potty trainers here will know, is being potty trained. He seems to have got the weeing bit moreorless sorted. He is still having maybe an accident a day, but he does loads of wees in the potty or the loo, decided when he needs to go, wees on demand if we are about to go out etc.

However, the pooing bit just isn't coming good. So far, in four weeks of training, he has got maybe three poos in the potty. Of those, one was moreorless hit and miss, one was fine except he forgot to take his pants off first (!) and the third was lucky timing on our part.

Maybe it doesn't help that we have been living a very ourdoor life of late. We have been on Cornish beaches for two weeks, and when home, ds3 is frequently naked, running in the garden where he does most of his poos.

I remember ds1 had the same problem: he could control his weeing before he could his pooing and I can remember tearing my hair out with him, but I can't remember what finally worked with him. Anyway, he was a bit older than ds3 is and I think he was sorted within the four weeks that ds3 has been trying.

So, has anyone got any suggestions for how I could persuade ds3 to poo in the potty (or preferably the loo)? He just doesn't seem to see pooing as the same activity as weeing even though he knows that poos are worth 2 choccy buttons and wees only one!

Gee that many responses eh? Shall I ask elsewhere?!

make it 3 choccy buttons!!!!

ROFL - sorry.

Can't help though, I have a while to go yet before this sort of thing applies to me. Sounds like fun!

Thanks MTS and CP, at least you answered! I thought there would be loads of smug mums the right side of potty training who could offer their pearls of wisdom.

My ds poo-ed in his pants for weeks after we started potty training. One of his nursery workers told me it was quite common for boys to take a couple of months to work out the poos though. In the end we just caught one by lucky timing. I'd taken him to the loo after a meal and decided to try and keep him there for a while by reading to him and hey presto - a poo. Cue general cheering and excitement and special chocolate treat. After that he started to do most of his poos on the loo but only because we would take him at the most obvious times (i.e. after a meal) and if one arrived at other times he would still do them in his pants for a few weeks. He gradually got better and he's been accident-free for the last 3 weeks or so (he's 3y 8m now) but I still go out laden with spare clothes just in case.

Oh dear gingernut, that depresses me because your son is so much older than mine! The thought of a year of pooey accidents is too much! But interesting that you say that your nursery said it was common for boys to take longer on this side of things.

ds had this problem as well - it took him a few weeks to get it right (he was trained around a year ago). He's now 3 yrs 10 months and we are joyfully going through a 'poo in the pants' relapse sparked off by a rather large and painful poo that obviously hurt him.

I vividly remember the first time round, we were watching Antz (or Bugs Life - can't remember the name, about the ant who saved the colony from grasshoppers!) and a fly went into the bar and ordered a 'poo-poo cake'. For some reason, this really tickled ds and from then on, he sat on the loo to poo so he could announce that he had done a poo-poo cake for the flies. I have no idea why that worked but it was like a switch being clicked in his brain and from then on, he was fine.

Anyway, much sympathies. Poos in pants are definitely not fun!

Lonelymum - Looks like we are having the same problem (see my thread)

My DD 2.2 is excellent wee-er, no accidents since being out of nappies for a week and in the beginning naked living meant poos were in the potty - now she is pooing in pants and then says wee wee now after!

Have had a potential nightmare where poo rolled out of trouser leg and when I got to the loos I thought I was imaging the saggy pants - I found the poo outside on the carpet - we were in a 5* hotel at the time -luckily no one was around to see!

I am thinking it is because we say wee wee all the time to her not poo so maybe it is fault in my teaching!

I have a different training problem so cant help specifically, but I have ordered some potty training reward stickers from kiddymania.co.uk to help with my own problem of potty training outside home (in home she is fab, outside she doesn't ask for potty at all)
i can report back later if they help or not.

gemmamay, I have not seen your thread - I will look for it. I'm sorry, but the image of the poo on the carpet of the 5* hotel just made me laugh! Parenting subjects you to so many indignites doesn't it?

I do say to ds3 do you want a wee wee or a poo poo? so I feel he should know that the poo is supposed to go in the potty too, but who knows how a 2 yo old's mind works? I am sorry to say we had 2 poos yesterday and I am just hoping that we have none at all today which isn't an answer to the problem but there you go...

dillydally, I am intrigued by your different PT method.

oh sorry, read your post wrongly, you said a different pt problem not method. Sorry. Reading too quickly.

Its infuriating..DD will poo happily on a potty at home and will inform she is doing a big stinky one but when we go out we get poo pants too.
Perhaps she has inherited my phobia of public loos..sorry it doesnt help you.

Dillydally, it would be a bore I know, but have you considered taking a portable potty everywhere with you? get dd to use it at home first and then hope she will use it wherever she is?

Thank you. I am looking at the portable ones, though silly me bought a quinny zapp pushcair with no shopping basket bit.
Its more like she is so engrossed in whatever we are doing there is zero warning right now. (Humblest apologies to the museum in docklands cleaning staff btw )

I suppose I'm lucky in that I didn't have many problems with this - but just a thought: IME with pooing you get much more warning - I could usually tell if a poo was imminent. Then you move them quickly to potty or loo till they get the idea. Stickers might help too. I did make apoo chart for my dd - mainly due to stopping constipation than potty training - and that helped her.

my dd age 2.5 is resisting this mightily, after a brief spell of success, and will deny that she needs to poo, while visibly straining, and protests all the way as she is carried in a "brace"position to the potty. I would laugh, if it wasn't such a chore. We've been using lavish praise and chocolate for months. I think the holidays and disruptions to childcare are to blame. It's just too boring for her, she doesn't care, really. The older one used to cry if she had an accident (but still had them).

scotlou - you are lucky then. My ds pops them out just like that, no warning at all, and he does several a day and not even at predictable times. By the time I have realised he has finished. Must be cos he eats lots of fruit!

Majorstress, I also felt that my ds was slow partly because he just didn't care - he never got upset about accidents. After all, he just got nice clean clothes afterwards so why should he bother to go when he could just carry on playing and do it in his pants (we had a lot of wee accidents too because again he just didn't care). So even once he'd got the idea that poos should go on the toilet he wouldn't necessarily bother. We had to find a way to make him care (star charts and chocolate treats).

There are 2 issues here - at the moment Lonelymum's is getting that first poo on the potty, then there is getting them to carry on doing it. Hopefully once he gets the idea LM he'll be OK. As you say, they seem to see pooing and weeing differently so you have to wait till the penny drops.

Foxinsocks, that's a great story re the poo poo cakes .

Doesn't help that ds3's favourite toy right now is a small cuddly Winnie-the-Pooh. earlier he shouted from another room "Poo! Poo!" and I rushed in saying "Do you need a poo?" and he said "No Pooh!" and held up his toy he had just found!

We've just done this with dd, however she would poo at home but not at Nanny's!! annoying when she's there at least twice a week.

We now do, squirty soap for hand washing one squirt for a wee and two and lots of messing and playing wiht it for a poo. I also have one of those stick on the wall press button air freshners and it can only be pressed if there's a poo in the toilet!!

We also have kandooo type wipes to make clearing up easier after a poo, just incase that's putting him off.

As long as he understands what he should be doing, it's just a matter of time and finding the right reward. DD was sometimes upset sat on the toilet to start with, so i held her tight and reassured her, now it's not a problem.

Lonelymum, you hit it on the head yourself when you said that he doesn't seem to see pooing as the same activity as weeing - it's not the same, and children often need for it to be treated as a separate issue, because it is a separate issue.

My dd wouldn't go near a toilet for a poo until she was almost 4 - she had been dry for about 15 months. It wasn't a physical thing, it was emotional - she just wasn't emotionally ready for it, so we let her have a nappy for a poo until she was ready to use the toilet, and then we found a star chart worked. It hadn't worked before she was ready to try, and the jar of chocolate lollipops I bought at first as incentives all went past their use-by date ... so sometimes bribery doesn't work if a child really isn't ready.

The best advice anyone ever gave to me was to relax and stop trying to force it. I thought they were nuts at the time, because it felt like such a big deal - but in the scheme of things it really wasn't. And they were right - the only thing that helped my dd was time.

What a relief to see everyone else has this problem too!

My DD has poo-ed on the potty - when she was naked - so it is frustating that she has lost that skill.

Yesterday 2 poo's in pants - no warning - one was when she was eating her tea - if she pooed at a certain time I would pin her to the potty then but as she seems to poo when and wherever it see it coming!

I am hoping it will just click one day!

I thought I was getting somewhere with this a short while ago. Was outside hanging out washing and ds3 was naked as usual. I saw he had gone stock still and saw some poo coming out so I rushed him onto the potty where he wee'd and I told him to try to push the poo out but to no avail. It then occurred to me to go back outside to have a look around and sure enough, he had done a whopper on the patio and what I had seen had been the tail end rather than the beginning. Disappointing!

my dd2 did it in the bath last night, her favorite venue, luckly dh was on duty and I was busy talking to HIS mother on the phone-doing my DIL duty!

A bit of a breakthrough! DD came back form nursery with the same clothes on! She hadn't done a poo so maybe that had something to do with it.

Anyway - I am very proud of her!

Well at least that was one nursery session where she stayed clean and dry. My ds3 starts playgroup next week and I am just praying that he can give the appearance of being potty trained at least once out of the two weekly sessions!