Toddler won't poo in the toilet

[nwlondoner]

Our 2.5 year old has been toilet trained for a couple of months and is doing really well. She always tells us when she wants to wee on the toilet and barely has any accidents. The only issue we have been having is that she won't poo on the toilet and will only poo in her nappy. She asks for her nappy when she wants to poo. For a while she would hold her poo in for days on end but more recently she has started going at least every couple of days. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

I've never posted on here before...only lurked! I had this exact problem with my DS (now in his 20's). This went on a lot longer than 2.5! He was fine with potty training for wee's but also always wanted and asked for a nappy for a poo. I realised that the problem was that he was scared of the sensation of the poo falling out of him! (sorry if that's TMI for some! ) He had a potty (that looked like a mini toilet with a lift up seat) at the time and to encourage him I ended up flattening a nappy out and putting it in the potty -just under him -so it didn't feel like it (the poo) was falling out and kept doing that and massively praising him. We also had a training seat in the grown up toilet and repeated that with the nappy just under the training seat. All this was done with lots of praise, bribery of buying him something and when he managed it lots of excitement about what a big boy he was!
It eventually worked and then he never looked back. I know some people might think this is all a big faff but he was genuinely scared and used to cry and get so upset about it. Good Luck OP.

Let her go back to the potty, not a nappy.

Yes, it’s the feeling of it falling out.

Sorry I forgot to add that after quite a few times of having the open nappy under the seat, I then managed to convince him that big boys don't need the nappy there anymore and he then at some point let it drop into the toilet without the nappy under him. I can still remember him being really nervous and a bit tearful -letting it drop and he was so pleased with himself when he managed to do it.

This was true of my DS and he did poos in his nappy until the summer before he started school.

I would just let her get in with it for a while.

We used a progressive approach - poo in nappy, poo in nappy but in the bathroom, poo in nappy sitting on toilet lifted down, then lid up and then eventually cutting gradually bigger holes.

ERIC website has v good advice.

Yea we have been ongoing with this for 1 year and DS3.5 really struggled after a while holding it in. I would keep reasssuring, be patient and keep asking her if she wants to go / let her sit on the potty regularly, keep the potty in the same place and let her go with you when you go. Give it time, it's still early days. We have only just got there (still now 100%) after a year c

Yes! My daughter did this too. She got to the point where she wouldn’t poo at the childminders and would hold it until she could get home and asked for a nappy. We let her go with it. I think in the end she did one at the childminders and felt all proud and never looked back. I just kept offering potty/toilet but she did it in her own time (like most things with her).

She did like one of those little seats you put on the toilet seat - might be worth a try if you haven’t for novelty value.

@petrafish this is really useful advice, thank you. She only uses the toilet with a step seat but maybe we need to get something with a bowl underneath so we can try and put a nappy underneath.

@ThursdayLastWeek I totally agree with the progressive approach. That seems to be the way forward. Thanks, I'll check out the ERIC website.

Good luck OP - she will get there in the end

I was having this exact issue and even saved this thread for advice as I had tried everything! She was pretty much the same, happy to wee but not poo.

However yesterday my daughter did a poo in her pants again, so once I cleaned her up I decided to take her with me this time and showed her where the poo goes. Once I dropped it in the toilet from her pants I said to say hello to it then say bye bye as the poo is going to go home now and let her flush the toilet. This actually worked!

Later on she came to me saying she needs to say hello bye poo and went on the toilet again and hasn't had an accident yet. It's early days but this helped get over that initial hurdle, yes there will no doubt be setbacks but so far, so good. Hope this helps your little one too.