When did you stop giving chocolate as a reward for pooping?

[UnravellingTheWorld]

So bit of background: we potty trained when my son was 2y 3m. He cracked wee wees in 3 days, but although he knew that poops also needed to go in the potty they never really happened. We gave stickers as rewards, but quickly he decided he didn't care.

That was 5 months ago. He hasn't had poop accidents - did them in pull ups in bed. We decided to give a chocolate button for a successful poop, which he's been talking about for a long time.

In the last few weeks, he's all of a sudden clicked and 98% of his poops have gone in the potty. He really wants that chocolate! He sits for a long time on the potty with every single wee-wee, trying hard to do a poop (often he does - he eats a lot). He's just done his business and got chocolate, then 2 minutes later declared that he wanted another poop (he wants chocolate).

Sorry for the essay 😅 If you rewarded your child with chocolate, when and how did you stop?

I didnt.

I was just like you. Always thought I would never use food as a reward but we went with a jam biscuit. I did it for a couple weeks to get him over the dislike of going in the potty.
Then changes it to you got one in the evening if you had no accidents all day. Then after another week I kinda stopped.

My best friend use to use chocolate and in the end her dd would spend half the day on toilet to get chocolate, which I'd imagine is your worry. In the end she use to do it in evening, so if no accident she got a chocolate coin. After a fortnight it was every couple of days and then on a Sunday she would get a animal bar or whatever.

Perhaps you could 'misplace' the chocolate buttons sometimes and say to him that he'll have to have it when you find the packet. Hopefully the delay with the reward will gradually deincentivize him to jump back on for another poo!

We did it until we thought she'd really got it and then the chocolate "ran out" and she never questioned it.

It takes about a month for a new routine to become a properly settled in habit so I suppose I'd carry on for that long, then the chocolate can run out.

We did pompoms 5 for small treat 10 for bigger treat. We varied treat some times chocolate, sometimes a craft exercise or watching a film with mummy and daddy or trip to the park. All things she got frequently but irregularly any way.

We did 2 set of 10 rewarding everyone and after that we got a bit lax and did some but not all and let it naturally phase out.

Then we wanted her to use the toilet instead of the potty. For the first weekend she got pom poms for 3 wees or a poo on the toilet. Then just the poo. We did one cycle of 10 doing it every time. Second doing it most times reward only for 10 not 5 and we have just done the third intermittently and think it might have naturally phased out.

I think I'd like someone to present me with chocolate after I'd dropped one. Would be a nice reward considering I have to live with piles.

Cut them in half for a few days, then quarters. When it’s that tiny they might loose interest.

I'm with you. I think I definitely need a reward for pooping, especially as someone is usually yelling for me to go and do something or find something for them.

Had no idea people reward toileting unless SEN.

We only started it after she went from some times doing a poo on the potty to jumping off the potty and insisting to get her knickers back on so she could poo in them. She had been dry for 3 months at this point.
She doesn't have SEN but she has allergies and toddler diarrhoea which means she doesn't always have notice that she needs a poo. This is still the case and you can see by her face that she did not know that she was about to poo. It meant it was harder to pick up the cues and some positive reinforcement around pooing helped to focus her attention on it and within a couple of days we went from solely misses to mostly wins. We phased the rewards out between weeks 1 and 3 until we switched to the toilet when we brought them back for a short time

There are many reasons beyond SEN where short term positive reinforcement can be useful to initiate a change in behaviour

Never heard of this. I can imagine the kid thinking "ok, sure, I poop and then she give me something she claims is chocolate. I'm not falling for that one..."

I started bribing with chocolate coins (it was the run up to Christmas) after DD’s withholding poo led to a poo explosion at soft play and me having to go home in just my tights and coat as my dress was covered (luckily we’d made it as far as the loos). Up till then we’d been doing it as we were supposed to, but literally within a day of offering the chocolate we had no more accidents.

I worried I’d have to give her a chocolate coin every time till she was 18 or something, think I even posted a thread on here asking a similar question. As it happened it just kind of faded out on its own - the fact the chocolate coins were a Christmas thing kind of helped, although I’d stocked up on so many it took us well into January. I was planning a whole thing of the ‘elves’ taking them away etc etc, but in the end I just started saying ‘oh I can’t find one now, we’ll get one later’ etc a few times and then maybe doing one at the end of the day like pps suggested, and a few times she forgot to ask until eventually it was a thing of the past.

I agree with phasing out. You’ve given a choc after each time, now you can move on to a choc if all his poos are on the toilet for the day, and then a treat a week, until he is going with no issues. I did similar with my DS but with little
toy figures instead.

Before university.

DS got bored of being rewarded with chocolate and just stopped asking for it, the novelty wore off once he was fully trained and the accidents stopped.

Keep going until the habit of going on the potty is ingrained. With mine it just suddenly changed from. needing bribes to shouting I need the potty. There were times I thought we’d never get there

It's one chocolate button! Keep going until it fades out naturally.