How do I even start potty training a 3yr old DS who won't let his buttocks touch a potty or toilet?

[SoBroken]

I'm pretty sure he's ready. He definitely knows when he's going to poo as he makes an almighty fuss about it, and he has been talking about wee a lot too.

He comes to the toilet with me and DH quite often so he knows how it all works. We have read countless books, talked about it all and never pushed him, only talked about it as something big boys do.

But everything I read about actually starting involves him sitting on the potty while he's being changed, or trying it out, which he simply won't do.

He did a couple of poos in the bath recently, which really upset him, even though I didn't make a fuss. Tonight he went in the bath and then freaked out, saying he was going to poo, so DH lifted him out and put him on the loo (with a kid seat!). You'd have thought we were trying to murder him! He went rigid and struggled and screamed the place down.

We offered a potty but he of course refused that too.

I'm at a bit of a loss, I really don't want to push him too hard and make this a big trauma, am I better off leaving him to work it out in his own time or is there something I can or should do?

TIA

My DS (3yrs 3mo) has always gone on a potty for wees but did the same thing as your son when he needed to poo. It's been a nightmare as his underpants were constantly soiled as he would not go near the toilet!
We've finally mastered it this week! Ok, we've told him that mr poo wants to go to the beach, which is gross lol but hey, it's worked! That, plenty of encouragement and bribes are the way forward!
It may not seem like it but he will do it in his own time...boys are supposedly harder to train. I consoled myself withe the fact nobody in my classes wore nappies so they all get there!
I also second what another poster said re. a fun potty. We also have a frog one! There are car ones too if he likes them...or ones shaped like mini toilets!

Have a doctor friend who was succesful with Freddir the frog choc bars!
Also a drop of food colouring in the toilet & the wee makes it change colour.

Is he constipated?

hmmm, maybe bribery won't work. but i do know quite a few people who have had huge success with chocolate buttons, in particular. i had to implement a rule which is that the poo produced has to be bigger than a chocolate button to qualify for the button to be awarded. otherwise DD was producing about a zillion tiny specs of poo a day and expecting to be awarded for all of them. you may need to make the reward for poo-ing nothing to do with the act of pooing at all - ie not being able to tell someone about it or being allowed back in the water to play with toys. every child is different tho, and believe it or not, they do all get there eventually.

the son of a friend of mine was 3.4yrs old before he toilet trained himself...

I tried bribery in a limited fashion after the bath incident this evening. Told him I couldn't let him get back in the bath until he had pooed (he has bath toys he loves) and also promised that if he did his poo on the toilet or potty he could phone both his nans and tell them what a big boy he is (using the phone is one of his favourite things). No dice at all.

He will pretend to use the potty with his nappy on. We played a game with a black stone about an hour ago, pretending he was doing a poo and then flushing it away, all fine and happy. He just doesn't want to sit on it with nothing on his bottom.

Now he won't sleep because he needs a poo, doesn't particularly like doing them in his nappy either and gives himself a tummy ache holding them in.

I haven't tried putting a nappy in the potty, can't hurt!

i know this sounds stupid, but have you tried bribery? seriously.. my 2yr old knew when she was weeing and pooing and if i took her nappy off her, she took herself off into the corner to do it. but there was NO WAY she was going anywhere near the potty or toilet. she went rigid when i tried to sit her on it.

then i light-heartedly said 'if you sit on the potty and wee, you can have a chocolate button'. and from that moment on, she never went back into nappies.

i never thought it would work, but it did. she still refused to go on the toilet though and screamed if i tried to sit her on it. so after a week, i said if you want chocolate buttons now, you need to wee on the toilet', and she trotted off to the toilet and did a poo on it. i was totally shocked!

the chocolate button bribery only lasted for about 2 days each time. i got through less than a tiny packet of buttons and within 2 days she had stopped asking for them. so in my case, i don't think there was any long term dental damage caused by the bribery!

maybe chocolate buttons won't work, but perhaps a sticker book or something easily achievable and highly desirable might?

what kind of potty do you have?

ds became much more interested when we got a frog shaped potty from argos.

we found putting a nappy in the potty helped but it still took a loooooooooong time to get ds to poo on the potty.

Nope, nothing to do with the loo or potty at all!

Will he wee standing up?