Won’t poop on potty :(

[unknownn]

I’m on 5th day of potty training. Wees absolutely fine, took to it straight away, goes by herself. But for the life of me she won’t poop on the potty. I’ve sat there several times a day half hour at a time keeping her entertained on the potty to give her time to go. When she strains I run her to the potty but nothing. She will randomly just do it on the floor when she’s playing. She’s not afraid of the potty, she’s not shy in front of us. She just won’t do it. I feel like giving up, but because she has done so well with the wees I’m thinking I need to persevere but I don’t know where to go from here :( Any advice please? xxx

Taking longer to poop is totally normal. I don’t actually think I know a single child who didn’t take at least a few weeks longer to get pooping on the potty/toilet than wee’s.

My DD toilet trained for wee’s the week after her second birthday and was great with it very few accidents even in the early days but we had a rocky few weeks of poop withholding, avoiding, wanting to go in nappies…etc. I think it took about 3 months to be fully sorted.

Try not to make them anxious about it as it just exasperates the whole situation.

I don’t actually think I know a single child who didn’t take at least a few weeks longer to get pooping on the potty/toilet than wee’s.

I do - mine - though I may just have been lucky. He'd been pooing in the bath fairly frequently in the run up to potty training, so I think it helped that we knew what time of day to expect it, and he didn't like it being in the bath so had an incentive to get it in the potty instead. But anyway on day 1 of potty training when he was naked from the waist down, I saw him bend slightly at the hips, shoved a potty under him, and a poo plopped into it. So that set us up well for the rest of potty training.

I am thinking maybe if you have to run her to the potty, then that makes it more of a big deal because the potty is too far away? If she's doing it on the floor, have you got her bare bummed? In that case, it's worth trying with the potty nearby and watching her really closely, as then you will catch it quicker before she has time to tense up.

Hi,

I am sure you already do, but I find it useful to take her to the potty after each meal, when it is more likely to happen. Also, if you take note of when she does it, sometimes you can predict it will happen at a similar time the next day.

Mine took 28 days to do it in the potty, even though weeing on first day... We showed her a picture of a space hopper she would be getting which helped convince her.

It took my son almost 3 weeks to poo, he was very reluctant to try so we resorted to bribery to be honest. We let him choose a special toy that we would buy him once he pooed on the potty, took a couple of days of talking about it until he decided he was ready to try but he has been great with it since. Definitely worth the cost of one yellow digger

Completely normal. I don’t know that mine ever did on the actual potty (can’t say I blame them, it’s grim). Try a seat for the toilet. But they aren’t robots. It will take time. I think it was maybe 3 weeks for our easier to master it one.

One of mine was like this. Bribery was needed in the end!