WONT POO! At age 3 1/2 he holds it in for days

[cookiem]

My little boy who is 3 1/2 has been potty training for a year now. He is dry of a night and goes the toilet for a wee no problem during the day and night.

Ever since we started training him, he has never wanted to go on the potty/toilet to poo. We bought every potty/toilet seat imaginable and that still didn't encourage him. In the begining he used to just poo himself all the time but has now progressed in the last 6 months to not letting it out.

He stands rigid and goes red in the face and squeezes his bum together and says nothing is wrong when clearly we know he needs to go. After him keeping it in for about 2 or 3 days we have to finally take him to the toilet and make him sit there until he does it as i'm terrified he's going to damage himself. He looks terrible with bags under his eyes and his behaviour is awful when he needs to go.

I've tried stickers, bribes, rewards, shouting, ignoring and nothing works. I've spoken to his nursery, health visitor and doctors and they just say " he'll grow out of it" which doesn't help me.

Please, if anyone had any suggestions to help me i would be grateful, i just feel like bursting out in tears when he's straining as i know he's in pain and the longer he leaves it the worse it will be for him. HEEEEELLLLLPPPPPPPP!!!

Jamhead - oh no your poor DD. Bless her. How old is she?
Udo's Choice oil is great stuff, very expensive, but in the meantime using viurgin olive oil in cooking and raw over food would help. Something you have to do regulay.

Suppositories are a last resort. You can use them, no harm but not too often or they make the bowel lazy.

Long term - try not to do too high a fibre diet, oats are gentler so porridge is good for breakfast.

Things that bind like banans, also apples can be binding, as can eggs stuff like that.

As much water as possible so things like watermealon also good.

Girls - try and get this bowel essence stuff.
It Jan de Vries Flower Essences and it's called bowel essence.
It's just tinctures of pine, orange, hawkweed, walnut, willow, star of bethlehem, agrimony, tormentil, mimulus, bluebells and self heal in equal amounts.
Can't be detected in a glass of water.

HI

This is my first posting so I don?t know how to use the abbreviations i.e. ds / dd etc.

With regard to poo ? my little boy has had trouble since weaning and has had various medications to help. When potty training though, it all changed, we managed to reduce his medication and eventually get rid of it and we?ve had no problems with ?holding it in? even though it sometimes still hurts a little. It may sound a little awful but we?ve managed to make poo fun, once he?s been to the potty he?ll tell me if it?s a monster / animal / pebble. This way he doesn?t mind going and likes to have a look once finished.

I echo so strongly the words of Sassy back (she wrote on this thread back in July) - MOVICOL is the way forward - anyone who has written on here with a child who is holding onto their poo for days on end - not just as a one off - but continually - you need to DEMAND from your GP they are put on Movicol. I went through 12m of absolute hell with DD1 - it was torture for her & it was torture for us watching her go through such agony. We were eventually referred to a Paedeatrician (??) and we had home visits from the support nurse. She couldn't believe we'd been left so long in this state & said this is what hospitals are constantly up against with GP's. the GP's fail to recognise that it's long term medication (around 12mths) that's required to solve the problem. Movicol is a stimulant so forces the body into doing what the brain is saying it doesn't want to do - ie POO! Lactulose is a softener - but in cases of chronic constipation will not clear the "backlog"! Hope this helps someone of you out there - I wouldn't wish this problem on anyone again.

It is incredibly stressful trying to persuade a 3 1/2 yo to poo on the loo if they will only poo in their nappy. I have just given her a nappy again after 3 days of holding it in as I was so desperately worried about her. It felt like torture watching her. This is the first time I have tried to make her do it on the loo by withholding her nappy, but I have just read your messages and as it seems such a common problem I just felt it wasn't terribly serious and that they will Hopefully ! do it in their own time when they are no longer afraid. DD1 says she is afraid of the 'plop' and splash. But lining the loo with loo paper and offering the potty again have not helped. Today her nursery teacher said she only wanted to lie on the cushions and cuddle her toy. This was so unlike her. She has never done this before. But I just realised reading someone else's messge that they do it because they are concentrating really hard on holding it in. God I feel so awful for having put her thru this. I was hoping she would get so desperate she would do it and that would be that, problem over. But I can only have faith in the fact that few adults need nappies to poo in!

I had exactly the same problem with DS1. He is 4 now and we have been fine for the past 9-12 months.

I think if there has been a period of being able to do poos on the potty /toilet, right at the beginnning, then the problem is psychological.

I found that even when I knew / know that he is desperate and holding on for dear life, I cannot say a word. After all it is 'his poo', his body, his decision when to go and where to go. The times when we have trouble are when I say " do you need a poo?".

I think our problem was a sign that he wanted this in his control, to be independent and stop bloody hassling him and making him feel rubbish for not doing it as I WANTED !

It still kills me now when I know he needs one and he starts to hold it in, but my God he only does that for 5 minutes now, when it could have been days this time last year.

I bite my tongue, leave the room, make a phone call, do anything other than ask him if he needs the toilet. Then he just does it on his own -using an entire toilet roll each time - a small price to pay ! ( door is locked and I am not allowed in too - another point made below about being in private being the best for some)

Thanks for advice, Thomcat. DD did a poo on day 6 and then this week we got to day 4 and she finally did one -but definitely not enough to clear out her system, which is a worry.

Saw health visitor today who was very kind about DDs problem. She prescribed senna as she said although it is psychological, it will affect the bowel and may cause long term damage so DD needs laxative to make her body do what she doesn't want to do.

Anyone any experience of giving their child senna? (DD is 2 1/2.)

Senna worked ok for us. Our DD has zero telorance for medicenes and being poked and pulled, (has Down's syndrome and been pulled, poked, prodded, had blood taken too many times etc). But apart from having to administer it, it did it's job. Thin I mentiom Senacot on thei thread somewhere. It's a laxative but from made, primarily, from a natural plant and is suitable for kids.
You gotta try anything when it gets like this really haven't you.
TC xx

Yes, Thomcat, pretty much anything that helps is fine by me. A friend is a reflexologist and suggested foot massage - tricky getting a 2 1/2 yr old to sit still for that! But nice idea I think.

Hope things ok for you at the moment. DD did another today so that's only 2 days without and we all feel much better!

OHH YES REFLEXOLOGY, Nice idea. Nothing from Lotbags for a while unfortunatley