Refuses to poo in toilet- 3.9 yr old

[gutzgutz]

This seems to be a common problem but the children tend to be a lot younger. DS1 3.9 has been dry in the day for about a year but will only poo when we put his night time nappy on despite promises of a present or the bribe of a chocolate button if he will go in the loo. We offer him the ipad to watch a favourite TV show, giving privacy, the lot. He never soils himself, always holds it till the nappy goes on. He gets really upset when we push it (no pun intended!) so we have just left it for now.

He doesn't appear to be in any pain pooing and he has, in the very early stages of training used the loo or the potty to poo. We encourage him to use the loo to wee as I think it's more appropriate given his age. We have a child loo seat and a potty upstairs and would be more than happy to let him use the potty for pooing!

I don't know whether I should take him to the GP and get movicol which seems to be highly recommended on here or whether he will just sort it out himself. Please reassure me we are not alone!

If he is not constipated/stool is not hard or dry I would not medicate him as it may just cause him to soil himself and put you right back wrt progress. However if there

It is not unusual to refuse to use the loo/potty for poo. I once saw a child who when asked about it (she was 4.5) drew a beautiful picture of the poos building a boat and sailing off to sea.....they were warm and came out of her body she felt they were alive and that putting them in the toilet was "drowning them". we made a poop plan...

As discussed in "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk" by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish start by addressing the issue with himr right before the wants to poop (use the words you usually use obviously). "I want you to poop in the potty but you want to poop in the pull-up/nappy, sometimes its scary to do different things but we need to come up with a poopy plan. We are going to write a poopy plan on a piece of paper together".You start with some ideas for gradually getting closer to the potty/loo...eg pooping in the nappy in the bathroom for 2 days, pooping in the nappy standing next to the potty, sitting next to the potty, sitting on the potty/loo with a nappy on, sitting on the potty/loo holding the nappy......etc if he comes up with the ideas so much the better. It may prompt an opportunity to listen to some of his worries. If progressing freaks him out then return to the last "safe" situation for a day or 2 then carry on. he may surprise you by jumping steps or it may be a slow process.

Just wanted to let you know we have almost exactly the same 3.9 yo DS; dry during day for over 6 months, doesn't want to poo on toilet. His preference is to poo in his night-time pull- up after breakfast, but will poo in his pants as well, but never out, never at nursery he knows what he's doing...

Because he's pretty regular we do manage to get him on toilet most days with innotab for entertainment and sweets for bribery. He's never once gone on his own inititative. This is sort of workable for us and I assume it will sort out some day.

Intrestingly he's just gone dry at night and I wonder what will happen when pull ups disappear altogether.

But on advice - the 'poopy plan' above sounds good.

i'm in the same boat. but my 3yo is extremely headstrong and has refused all bribes.

any discussion on the subject is a flat 'no'.

i'll be watching with interest.

Can you get him to sit on the toilet and blow balloons up ? The pushing motion when blowing normally makes a poo come out, once they've done it a few times it might not be so scary.

Have you tried reading some "poo" books together ?

Everybody poos is supposed to be good and Little Mole is hilarious.

Or you could try the blowing up a balloon while sitting on the toilet trick.

I read somewhere that they can feel like they're losing something of themselves in a weird way. The feel is so different to a nappy.

He'll get there. I'd take it slowly and make it as fun as possible.

We had this with DS2, same thing, he would wait until he had his night time nappy on and do it then, showing that he had complete control over when he did it.

I showed him Poo Goes to Pooland which interested him a little.

Then I managed to persuade him to sit on the potty when he was pooing in his nappy to get used to doing it sitting down. After a while, we moved on to lining the potty with his nappy and him pooing on top of it. Then gradually on to pooing on the potty without a nappy lining it and then finally one day, he needed a poo at somebody else's house and he just went for it and did it on the toilet. This whole process took several months and now at 4.2yo he will poo on the toilet but he still needs paper in the bowl so there is no splash.

It will happen eventually but I totally understand how frustrating it is!! It was a shock to us after DS1 who announced aged 2 that he was going to poo on the potty, and that was it!

Poo goes to poo land worked with my reluctant dd2. She still mentions poo land sometimes (4.9 now, and no toilet problems!)

Eric do a really good leaflet about this with instructions. DS is 4.8 and after waiting for years for him to feel comfortable with pooing in a toilet we started very gradually moving him in the direction of pooing in the toilet. He is now at the stage where he will go with a nappy with all the absorbant stuff cut out so that he has a tiny frame made of nappy around his bottom which he wears for pooing. I think that in a week or so he will be able to poo without even this ghost nappy.

Mine didn't poo for a week when I tried that, so I went back to nappies :-)

Yes, the poopy plan sounds good. We made him stay in the bathroom tonight nappy and pjs on with the ipad. terrible fuss. No poo. Coincidence maybe but I think we'll discuss it properly tomorrow (missed that bit) bit keep on with the bathroom pooing. We have a few poo books and talk about pooland! It doesn't result in change only hilarity! Ah well.....

We have this with dd2. She has incredible self control! We are v v gradually making progress but it has been v slow.

1. She pooed standing up so we got her to start to crouch down by being v firm - no crouching, no nappy. This took about 10 days as I haven't a heart of stone and always gave her a nappy even if she only bent her knees a bit!
2. Once she crouched we got her to poo sitting on the potty with a nappy on. We had a bribe for this! This probably took 2 weeks.
3. We started reading Poo goes to Pooland.
4. She did one poo on the poo without a nappy (hurray!) claimed the peppa pig dress that we said she could have once she's done this and not done it since!
5. I read a thread on here where someone cut holes in pull ups so at the moment dd is putting a pull up on to poo in (on the potty) but it has a massive hole in the back so she is basically pooing into the potty but she has the comfort of the nappy.

She is happy enough with the holey pull ups but at some point we'll have to try and take them away. It is so hard though as we don't want to make it all into a terrible ordeal.

Sorry I missed out the first thing was getting her to stay in the bathroom to poo standing up with her nappy on.

How old is she honsandrevels?

She was 3 in February so slightly younger than your ds. The thread I read the hole in the pull up tip on had lots of parents of older children 4+.

We're at the hole in a nappy stage with DS at the moment. It works pretty well. I've cut out the whole padded section from a disposable so that it is basically just a short of frame and he needs help putting it on and taking it off but he will now poo in an actual lavatory and wipe himself afterwards. I think it will be at least a month before he will let go of the nappy completely, but I am now confident that he will be out of nappies completely before he starts reception.

Ok day 3 in the bathroom, no fuss and a poo! So we'll keep going with that for a bit before moving along.

That's great Gutz!

I might do as Molly suggests above and cut a section out of the pullup. That's a really good idea, thanks. See how that goes. I think I'd rather she kept the pull up and switched to using that on the toilet than get her pooing on the potty without it have to switch to the toilet at a later stage.

I do feel like we're going at a snails pace but as long as we get there in the end that's all that matters!

I thought I'd update for anyone else going through the same...we appear to have had a breakthrough. Probably jinxed it now So a few weeks back DS didn't have an evening poo as usual in his nappy but the next day was with DH at a play place and needed a poo urgently (poss slight upset stomach) and had to go in the loo at the place or soil himself. Fortunately he used the loo.

So DH bought him the promised toy and we decided to be mean (DH says firm). So instead of putting the night nappy on after the bath as usual, we delayed it until right before bedtime and told him why. Cue upset and protests but we stuck to it. Since then we have had poos in the potty and the loo (tonight was the first poo in 4 days!).

Maybe he was ready to start doing it anyway, maybe he needed a push (haha). Hope this gives others some encouragement. DS 3.10.

Thanks for the update, DS is 3.8 and we are cold turkey at the moment, day 12, no improvement but your update made me realise that things can change.