3 year old toileting NIGHTMARE!

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We are having a total nightmare with toilet training our 3 year old son! He has just had his 3rd birthday, and has been using the toilet for wees reliably since around October time. It’s very rare he has a wee accident and his pull up is dry most mornings.

however he REFUSES to do a poo on the toilet! It’s not a developmental/understanding thing, he knows when he needs a poo as he tells us, but he kicks off when we try and get him to go to the toilet. Instead he will
run away and hide and do it in his pants, or hold it in and then do it later. A couple of months ago he started doing it on the toilet and we gave him lots of praise and rewards, but now he has reverted back to doing it in his pants and even says ‘I don’t like pooing on the toilet I like doing it in my pants’ but yet he would never wee in his pants purposely? Only ever the toilet. We’ve bought a singing potty, porta potty and another fancy silly potty to encourage him incase he was scared of the toilet but he just won’t poo anywhere other than his pants?? I even heard him saying to my friends daughter the other day (same age) ‘do you poo on the toilet? Because I don’t I just do it in my pants I don’t like the toilet’ wtf!!!

he is meant to be starting school nursery in September which he is excited for but I know they won’t take him if he’s not fully toilet trained :( they don’t have the changing facilities, staff or time to be changing him every time he does a poo

please give me advice someone, anyone else been through this with their toddler?

Solidarity. At 6pm every day mine will ask for a nappy to do his poo :( in a way I’m glad it’s contained and there’s no accident but i obviously know this means he’s not toilet trained. He will sit on the loo very occasionally but makes it clear he doesn’t like it, pulls a few ‘poo faces’ and says nothing is coming out.

he has successfully pooed in potty once. Never has a problem using toilet for wee and goes all day at nursery with no accidents. But won’t poo there.

If it makes you feel any better, my nephew only pooed in a pull-up for around a year at that age. He is now 5 and goes on the toilet just like everyone else - but it took ages. I don’t think there was a magic trick either, he just suddenly stopped needing the pull-up.

I would see if you can get him either to ask for a pull-up rather than doing it in pants, or perhaps sit on the toilet with a nappy underneath to catch it - some of them don’t like the splashing sound.

We had a reluctant toilet poo-er.
We were told to put a nappy under the loo seat - making a hammock. Apparently some are fearful of the poo dropping down the loo.

Mine took a while to get through this stage. She would wait until bedtime and had a pull up on before emptying it into the potty - that was grim.
Bribery and perseverance eventually worked. It sounds like he perfectly understands the sensation but has a few psychological issues to work through!
We promised a scooter for being fully potty trained and she did get the scooter - just before starting school nursery where she also needed to be reliably clean and dry.. fingers crossed for you.

Solidarity with you. I don't know that I can offer much else but hope. My son was the same, we potty trained him just before his 3rd birthday and he appeared to get wees within a weekend but would hold onto poos until his night time nappy. Eventually he didn't need a nappy for night times anymore but would only poo in a nappy. So we kept doing that but I feel like we tried everything. Poo goes to poo land, a nappy in the potty, fancy potties and steps to the loo, blowing bubbles, endless sensory stuff, discussed with HV, kept endless poo diaries, withheld nappies, washable nappies, spending endless weeks naked and i even tried to bribe him with the thing he wanted most in the whole world. The whole household was obsessed with his bowel movements. In the meantime his sister who was 2 years younger basically potty trained herself over the course of a weekend.

Then one day just before he turned 5 he came sauntering out of the loo and said he'd done a poo in the loo. And from then on he did. I don't know why, I don't know what happened. I had made endless posts of various forums desperate for help and one day it was just sorted. Even now it sort of makes me want to throw him out the window - only now he is 12, super cool and bigger than me (and while sometimes slightly misses the toilet bowl everything else does go in the loo).

And he can offer no insight into what happened that day. And neither can I. So I don't know if it's at all helpful really because I don't have a solution for you. But I do remember how terrible it was and for that I'm sorry for you but take heart that while exasperating it will be okay.