Hi,
Our daughter is now nearly 3. Last summer, while she was still in nappies, she had a bout of constipation which, while not severe, lasted a long time: several months if I remember correctly. During this time she stopped passing stools during the day, presumably because it had become too uncomfortable to do so. Instead she started passing them at night, in her sleep.
She's now out of nappies and dry during the day. However, even though she can now use the toilet properly and confidently she still absolutely refuses to even try and use it for solid waste. She'll sit there and claim she's trying, but she clearly isn't. So most nights she still either wakes us up in the early hours needing a nappy change or will do it just before we go to bed when she's been semi-awakened by the noise of us coming up the stairs. Sometimes she goes back off to sleep and wakes up in the morning with a very nasty, sore rash on her bottom which takes several days to heal. This is a particular problem now she's started pre-school and has to be up and awake by a certain hour some mornings of the week (we used to just let her sleep in if she'd had a badly disturbed night).
We've tried various things to encourage her to go. Offering various rewards hasn't helped, neither has prolonged periods of time spent simply sitting on the toilet, and nor has time spent composing a number of encouraging songs on the subject to sing together whilst on the loo It may just be that her body has become so used to the routine of evacuating her bowls at 2a.m. that she simply can't do it at a more sensible hour.
But whatever the reason we're at our wits end. Can anyone suggest anything else we might possibly try?