3 year old DD will not poo in the toilet

[YouAndMeAreGoingToFallOut]

My DD is 3 and 3 months - we started potty training 5 months ago. She is reliably dry day and night, but we cannot get her to poo reliably in the toilet. I am at my wit's end with it. Bribery doesn't seem to work.

She doesn't appear to be constipated. Very very very rarely she will ask to go and will poo in the toilet - she is then lavished with praise. Usually she just goes in her knickers. She doesn't reliably go at the same time every day, so it's difficult to try and predict a poo, and anyway it's challenging to get her to sit on the toilet if she doesn't feel she needs to go. She doesn't seem to be able to recognise when she needs to poo.

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm so fed up!

Have you looked at the ERIC website? It's got great advice about all aspects of continence.

Haven’t potty trained mine yet but I read once that too much praise can have the opposite effect, maybe you could look it up

Hello
My DD did this , she is not quite 2.5 yet and didn’t keep it up for quite so long, but what got us through it was me basically watching her like a hawk for when she started to poo and then putting her on the toilet for her to finish her poo. I did this for a good few weeks. She needed to get used to the sensation of pooing sitting down I think.

Also she had some peppa pig pants that she loves, and some plain ones. The plain ones are always in the changing bag, so if she soiled her peppa pants she would get changed into plain ones. I wouldn’t point it out but nevertheless she wanted to keep her favourite pants clean because she knew it would be less exciting ones if she had to change.

I also made sure she had to stop whatever game she was playing and come with me to clean the soiled pants. She didn’t actually have to clean them and I never said it was a negative thing, but she soon cottoned on that we had to take a long boring break from her fun to clean up if she did it in her pants.

People often talk about the story Poo Goes Home to Pooland being effective - it’s on an nhs trust website as a pdf, a quick google should find it.

At least she is not constipated! At the beginning my dd held it in for days on end and I started to get really stressed about her making herself ill!

Keep going, don’t let it stress you out, she will get there