2.5 year old potty training woes

[Thegirlhasnoname]

2.5 year old DD has been toilet training for the past 3 months. She has weeing on the toilet/potty cracked but completely refuses to poo on there. I know poo usually takes a bit longer to get the hang of but she won’t even try

We’ve tried ‘Poo goes to Pooland’ and she loves it. Knows that when her tummy hurts it means it is time to poo etc but we’ll get her there and she’ll say she can’t do it. She’s gone 6 days without a poo before as she will completely refuse to try so will go in her knickers, every time, without fail.

Honestly getting to the point where we just scrap it all and put her back in nappies because I’m fed up of having to throw away knickers that even a go through the washing machine can’t save. She doesn’t even seem to be bothered about the sensation of poo in her knickers recently and will just carry on.

Does anybody have any other miracle ways to get her to try? Is she not ready despite having wees cracked?

(Done bubbles on the toilet, screen time on the toilet, and completely out of ideas)

Did you try going commando? I found that a useful stage, the sensation of knickers is said to feel like a nappy. However given you’ve been at this for 3 months then not sure if that would help massively, worth a go though. When I trained my first we went knicker free for the first month. Second is just over 2.5 and can’t face starting but know will need to soon so you have my sympathies - it’s a surprise how all consuming it can feel!

Yeah we started with going commando but only managed 5 days before she was due back at nursery (they voted for her going in knickers rather than pull ups) but the last time we did commando it landed us with a poo down the stair carpet 🤦🏻‍♀️

Everybody (and her nursery) keep telling us that one day she’ll just crack it but I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel after 3 months of it

She doesn’t sound ready. Three months is a long time and it sounds like you are at risk of causing long term constipation/withholding issues by trying to push her. Would you expect her to run if she couldn’t walk on the basis that she could use her arms to clap so was half way to getting her limbs to coordinate? Of course not.

Something which helped us was to see bladder training and bowel training as two distinctive skills. Keep putting her on the potty twenty mins after a meal for ten or twenty mins and hope that one day she does a Pooh. Otherwise be patient, it will happen one day.

She's not ready OP, don't force the issue, just go back in nappies for a while. We tried DS around the same age your DD is now and it was a real struggle so we gave up. Tried again 3 months later and he was more or less potty trained in around 4 days.

If only it was as easy as putting back in nappies sounds 🤦🏻‍♀️ We tried back in nappies and she managed to take dungarees off and nappy off in under half an hour declaring that she doesn’t want to wear nappies anymore

At least since then she has stored her poo for when she goes into a nappy at bed time I suppose

Toddlers are complicated 😂

It's not easy, but it will suddenly click and then you'll wonder what all the fuss/stress was about

Also what about lots of prunes etc to make it easier to go?

@Thegirlhasnoname I was in a similar situation with my little boy...he will be three in September so I started potty training during the Christmas hols, became apparent very quickly that he just wasn’t ready so we left it, then he initiated it himself end of January. All good apart from up until a week ago he’d done a grand total of four poos on the potty/toilet. I’d tried loads, bribing with chocolate and so on but just made the decision to stop talking about it for a while as it was stressing us both out. We know roughly when he will go so just tried to pop a nappy on around that time, which he would then take off himself once he had done his poo (Jesus, the mess though 😩). This week he has started to poo on his potty completely independently...so we’re talking about three months after starting wees on it. He just woke up one morning and decided to go for it, and each day is really gaining in confidence. There is light at the end of the tunnel, honestly! Maybe try just not mentioning it for a while

She woke up last Thursday and it’s like a switch has been flicked as she’s been to the toilet everyday (at least once) for a poo since. This afternoon she was in the middle of playing and got that panicked “oh crap, I need to poo” face then scurried to a corner but then shouted MUMMMM I NEED TO GO TO THE TOILET FOR A POO (ignoring the potty that was next to her... 🤦🏻‍♀️) so taking that as a massive win

Fingers crossed it continues and thank you all for the comments

This is quite a reassuring thread as we're in quite a similar situation with my DS who's 28 months. We had a couple of poos in the first week of potty training but since then he will only poo in his nap or night time nappy. He seems to know not to go in his pants. We only started potty training 6 weeks ago so this gives me confidence that he'll crack it eventually if we're patient...