3.5yo refuses to poo on the toilet and will only poo in a nappy. Help!!

[FelicityJean]

We started potty training ds when he had just turned 3, about 5 months ago. He now wees on the toilet with no issues but poos are a different matter. He refused to poo on the potty and then when we progressed to using the toilet for wees (because the potty was too small for him really) he refused to do it on there as well. He asks for a nappy for a poo, will happily go to the bathroom to do it in his nappy but point blank refuses to try and do it on the toilet. Occassionally he will sit on the loo and "try" but nothing happens. I feel like we've tried everything:

• new toys as bribery (we have a bag of stuff waiting for when he does, he knows it's there and whats in it)

• watching a programme on my phone while he's sitting on the loo.

• special toys he can only play with while he's trying for a poo on the loo.

• poo goes to pooland app, along with various youtube poo songs and poo books.

• suggesting sitting on the loo with a nappy on - he just refuses.

• saying we have run out of "poo nappies". I'm reluctant to go too far with this because my daughter has constipation issues and that has been so stressful to deal with so I don't want to cause the same issue with ds so would rather he continues to poo in a nappy than not poo and hold it in.

• watching me do a poo (delightful!). My dd is pretty happy to show off her poo on the loo as well.

What do I do? I'm getting very stressed about it because we just don't seem to be getting anywhere and I really want to crack this! I don't know what else we can try. Any advice?

DS was like this for a number of months. I'd just leave it for a few months unless there's some urgency to sort it out.
He knows when he needs to do a poo and he's not doing it in his pants, which are the main things to worry about.

How about opening out a nappy on a potty and have him sit on that. So he gets used to sitting down for a poo. I sympathise so much with you. My dd is now mid teens and I still get a shiver thinking about how hard this was.

Another thing you could try is getting one of the smaller toilet seats - I just remembered that helped with DS.

Honestly I also worried about the whole constipation issue, but in the end we just had to remove the nappies. DS didn’t poo on the toilet for the first 24 hours or so, but the following day it was obvious he needed to go and he did. Never had an issue since.

I understand your reticence to remove the nappies, but while there’s a choice, he’s never going to actively choose the toilet over what he knows.

I think this is pretty common, so I was wouldn't worry too much. He'll get there eventually!

This is exactly what my son did. He got potty trained very quickly but wouldn't poop. I just stopped buying pull ups and showed him an empty pack and offered to go and get some if he waited. He couldn't hold it and quickly used the toilet and that was it!

Thank you so much for the responses. It sounds like I need to be a bit firmer with the "no more nappies/nappies have run out" and hope that he can't hold it in! And just hope that time resolves the issue!

DD cracked wee really quickly but was awful with poo, she wouldn’t give in and would hold it in for days and days and would become impacted. We ended up letting her do it in a nappy for a long time to prevent her getting impacted as that would lead to huge painful poos.
she started using the toilet for them at just before 4 when she felt ready.

DS is 3 now and fine with wee but won’t poo in the loo or on the potty. Currently we’re letting him use a nappy but will try to persevere with the loo.

Following as having the same problem with DD.

My son was the exact same when he was small. He still wasn't dry at night and was therefore wearing a nappy. He would wait until night and go then when he had his nappy on. It was so frustrating. Eventually one evening he needed so badly he started going in the bath. I quickly picked him up and sat him on the toilet. I remember he was really upset and trying to get off the seat but then that was it. After doing that he finally started telling me when he needed the toilet. It was almost like he overcame a fear.