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Potty training

Is your child ready for potty training at nursery? Here's the place for all your toilet training questions.

Poop issues

1 reply

BeeMakesTea · 23/12/2020 12:07

Started potty training my 2.5 year old a few weeks and he’s done brilliantly, great with wees on the potty and was doing his poos fine too, until a few days ago.

The last few days he will say he needs a poo but will sit on the potty for only a few seconds before standing up again and saying he doesn’t need it. 5 mins later he will do the same thing again. This will continue until either we just happen to catch him on the potty at the right time or he’s gone in his pants. He doesn’t like going in his pants and will get upset at this. He will sit on the potty a bit longer if we distract him with books or tv but this seems to distract him from actually doing the poo! Generally he just won’t sit on it for poos even if he clearly needs to go. We’ve also tried the toilet with a training seat and again he will say he needs it but then will on sit on it for only a few seconds.

My thinking is that at some point it’s hurt him to poo and now he’s holding it in to avoid it, but it is just going to hurt more the longer he holds it! Any ideas how we can encourage him back to pooping on the potty and not holding it in?

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WoolieLiberal · 20/01/2021 16:18

Said before but I’ll say it again here. It’s more common than you think.

I have a friend who has a similar problem to this. She has a three year old DD who is nearly 4 and in her last year of nursery.

She is tall for her age and looks older. She is also articulate and speaks very clearly.

I had a socially distanced meet in a cafe recently and she brought her DD with her.

Her DD actually ANNOUNCED that she was going to poo and went off into a corner to squat down and poo (presumably in a nappy or pull-up). It was a bizarre sight to see, I can tell you.

She then returned to our table and (in her
most confident and grown-up sounding voice) told my (now embarrassed-looking) friend that she needed changing!

My friend told me that her DD had no problem with wees and is even dry at night but will just not poo on a potty or toilet and she has yet to find a solution.

All I could muster was to suggest a GP visit. I asked her if she had spoken to her DD about it but her DD refuses to discuss it, so she’s not getting anywhere.

My DD’s and I all had wee issues when small, probably attributable to black current juice, but potty refusal for poos is a new one.

I will refer my friend to these threads in case anything here helps.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that it’s more common that you would think.

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