Pooh witholding 3 year old

[PetitFilou1]

Not mine but my neighbours. She has 6 week old ds2 and 3 year old ds1. He has been holding pooh in for days as had some pain on going once or twice. Now he seems to have a psychological problem with going at all and is really struggling with it. It doesn't help that his dad has been sitting him on the toilet to try and get him to go. Dad is now away for two weeks and my friend is really struggling with it all. Any advice?

Looking at other threads on this board, this is a really common problem.

When ds did this, I offered him a nappy - and he was perfectly happy to use the nappy for a poo. He used to come and ask for one when he needed to go, and I was happy with that, because at least he wasn't getting constipated anymore, and was more relaxed about pooing when he wasn't getting stressed about using the loo. It only took a couple of months before he was ready to use the toilet again.

How long has he been dry? Did they assume that because he was ready to be dry, he was also ready to be clean? It doesn't always follow.

Have this problem (now on and off) with ds 1. The SENCO at his nursery also thought the answer was to force him to sit on the loo. Took him to the gps on Tues and she agreed with my approach so the SENCO's approach has been stopped (thank goodness - I thought it was quite cruel).
The main way we got through it was to start awarding poo prizes (cheap pocket money type toys from woolies, john lewis etc). We also talk about poos alot - what colour they'll be, putting them in the toilet and flushing it (likes doing that a lot). We used to encourage him to squeeze it out - but found that he'd be squeezing it in (squeezing meant clenching his cheeks together) so we had to change our language saying how the nasty painful poo didn't belong in his tummy any more where it was hurting him, but rather in the toilet and he needed to push it out. It's really worked for us, but we did have to keep it going for a couple of months. We don't always give a prize now, and ds has become much better at pushing them out. It just seems to be every now and then.
We have been getting him used to sitting on them toilet and rewading that with plenty of praise, but we don't expect anything.
I would much rather he pooed happily in his nappy before combining the poo and toilet issues and compunding all our problems.