Potty taining: Only 50% of poos are being done in potty/toilet

[beatie]

We started to potty train dd at 29 months - last month. It all went with relative ease aside from the odd accident. Last week she had a relapse after 3 days of poo accidents. We got back on track with the wees but we're only having 50% success with the poos.

Is there anything we can do?

There's no reluctance because 50% of the time she'll manage to do a poo on the potty or toilet. I don't think she gets much of a warning that she needs to go or perhaps doesn't recognise that she needs to go? Not sure. She'll tell me 'poo-poo, potty' as soon as she has done it. Poor little love

beatie, it sounds like she's doing pretty well. I know you've seen a bit of a regression but it does take time. We use a system of incentives with ds1 (star chart with reward of small toy every now and then plus daily incentives - chocolate rewards at the end of the day - chocolate mini egg from Easter for keeping the same pants on all day, clean and dry, smaller reward of a few buttons if he has only minor accidents). One thing that really made a difference I think was explaining to him how to hold a poo in - sounds strange, but I don't think he actually realised he could! I told him I was going to `tell him a secret' and said that when I felt a poo coming, I squeezed my bottom really hard until I could get to the toilet, and then I would stop squeezing and do it in the loo. It worked! Still have a few accidents but a lot of that is that he really doesn't want to stop playing to go to the loo, and the incentive system helps there.

HTH.

Thanks for your votes of confidence - it means a lot to me.

You never know how to judge whether these things are normal and going well when it is your first.

I will persevere with the rewards/incentives and try to be patient.