Waiting until bedtime to poo...

[Engima]

Hello,
My lo has been potty trained wee wise for about 6 months but pooing continues to be an issue for him. He basically saves it until he has a nappy on at night then within about 2 minutes of us putting him to bed he calls us to say he needs changing. I'm getting increasingly frustrated by our lack of progress on this. We've been encouraging him to sit on the potty every evening before bed and try to do a poo, or even just squeeze some air out to show he is pushing, but no progress has been made. We don't want to stress him out and so far he is still quite relaxed, but we really do want to move things on now. We've been reading Pirate Pete's potty and Everybody Poos and he is v interested in them but reluctant to act on it! Any tips to solve this problem gratefully received!

Hi,

I feel your pain, we had exactly the same thing with our DD. She eventually started doing it in the potty but still isn't totally consistent, we still get some in the bedtime nappy.

What we did was let her be naked from the waist down after dinner time and I would just carry on doing things around the house and say "remember, if you need to p00, do it in the potty" as soon as she went on the potty I would leave the room (you could hear she was trying), I don't think she liked doing it in front of people so I would go into kitchen, and run water, etc so she knew I was elsewhere. I then made HUGE fuss, clapping, jumping up and down, singing, she thought this was very funny. So the next day, I'd take off her bottom half after dinner and say "remember yesterday when you did number 2 in the potty? if you do it again we can sing and dance again".

I don't know if this helps, all children are different, I definitely think my DD just did it in her own time but she didn't like anyone in the room or talking to her while she did it. It is incredibly frustrating though, I know.

This is perfectly common right up to school age, Mine was 6 before he did his first poo on the toilet.