Potty training help required!!

[IrishMamm]

We are trying to potty train our almost 3 year old. He'll sit on the potty no problem and sometimes does a wee but never a poo yet. He'll sit and hold it for an age. He's got into the habit of doing a poo in his nappy when he's been into his cot bed for the night. So we could sit him on the potty for 30-40 mins before bed and do nothing and then as soon as he's in he'll do it (standing up). He seems to have awareness as he'll ask us to go away when he's doing it and if he does a poo in his nappy during the day he'll go to one of a couple of quiet spots in the house and stand up and do it. He is still wearing nappies all the time. Should we take the leap and put him in pants and suffer the consequences? In my head we have to go someway to mastering poos before wees.

He sounds as though he’s making great progress and very similar to my own son when he trained. Yes you absolutely need to lose the nappies. You can’t (in my opinion) effectively train not to wee/poo outside of a nappy if you’re still using them. I would say ‘goodbye’ to the nappies whilst simultaneously gifting him some pants you think he’d really like? You do have an added hurdle that he’s pooing in his cot at night and obviously he won’t be ready for no nappy at night. Perhaps try him in pulls ups instead at night? They’re more similar to pants.

You need to be prepared for accidents and potentially quite a few of them. I would only start this process when you’ve got a few days you can spend at home. Every time he does a poo in his pants get him to come with you to the potty and empty the poo into the potty in front of him. Then from there into the toilet. Just calmly tell him that’s where poos go. Get him to wash his hands. Wees come before poos for the majority of children. Watch him for any warning signs that he needs to wee. If he does manage to her anything in the potty lots and lots of praise (and a small chocolate rewards worked wonders for my son..!)

Thank you very much for the advice and encouragement! Much appreciated.

Agree with pp, get rid of the nappies. Explain beforehand it's happening, get a sticker reward chart, show him some videos on YouTube (there are LOADS of cartoons and songs about using the potty), and then just go for it. In fact we removed pants too for that first weekend.

A long weekend in the house is perfect - yes there'll be accidents initially.

Poos did take longer for us to crack, just one of those things, but keep with it. We had to try lots of bribes in the end - chocolate button for every poo worked for a while, then we said once they got a full reward chart they could pick a (small) toy from Smyths toys and that did the trick.

Oh and that first weekend we set an alarm on our phone for every 30 mins and got them to sit on the potty and try when the alarm went off. Got them to choose a 'fun' alarm sound themselves. They do this trick at our nursery too.

Thank you. This is absolute gold. Really appreciate it and almost ready to take the leap.

Brilliant advice offered, just wanted to add that we had a lovely potty with a duck head that squeaked when he’d done good. There are also super fun books with both stickers and noise (clapping/uh oh’s) out there if you’d like him to try those. Just make sure you’re acting relaxed about it even when you feel far from it… kids are experts at reading our moods.