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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.

Original poster

Please help, toddler will not poo in potty, only nappy!

31 replies

Red010286 · 01/07/2025 20:27

We potty trained our 3 year old shortly after welcoming his baby sister into the world, probably bad timing but live and learn 😬 after a fair challenge he eventually got the hang of wee in potty or toilet and is absolutely great now, will go anywhere wherever we are and no matter the toilet. Issue is with poo in potty or toilet, he never has any accidents but will only poo when in his bedtime nappy (first thing in morning or before bed).

have tried every strategy we can, spoke to health visitor and they gave us more tips, so we mostly have him standing in the bathroom at least to do his poo in nappy. But we are about 7/8 months in and I cannot face the ongoing battle, anyone with tips or ideas to try please 🙏 treats, stickers, etc do not work. He absolutely can go to toilet, wees totally fine in it, doesn’t love flush but uses it, please help!

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SwirlingAroundSleep · 30/04/2026 22:50

We had this with my autistic step son and after lots of research learned:

keep nappy on and get closer to the potty/toilet

When he will sit on that and poo (in the nappy) let him for a short while get used to it

then try with nappy placed on potty (not done up)

if that isn’t accepted we then had to cut a hole in the nappy so he can see he pooed in the potty , a small hole at first and steadily bigger until it was just a band. It was essentially a security thing for him at that point. One night he went and forgot about it, cue well dones and the nappy band removed the next day.

SwirlingAroundSleep · 30/04/2026 22:53

P.s. also tried blowing bubbles on the toilet, poo goes to poo land video etc.

SwirlingAroundSleep · 30/04/2026 22:54

PansyPotter84 · 10/07/2025 08:28

I’ve said this on other threads on this topic as it seems to come up a lot…

Hopefully I can offer some constructive advice having had this issue with my older one.

There is a well known method and it worked for us.

  1. When they are confident with wee, take the pull-ups off during the day and have them wear pants.
  2. Tell them that when they need a poo they need to come and ask for a pull-up to do it in (rather than just wearing pull-ups all the time).
  3. When they poo their pull-up, it has to be done in the bathroom and nowhere else.
  4. The pull-up is taken off immediately afterwards, and the poo flushed down the toilet (in their presence).
  5. After a week or so of doing this, ask the child to sit on the toilet or potty (with their pull-up on, still) to do their poo.
  6. Repeat step 4 afterwards.
  7. After a further week or two of this, instead of putting the pull-up on, put the open pull-up into the potty or toilet so that they will poo into it without wearing it. Repeat step 4 afterwards.
  8. Eventually the child will get so used to sitting on the toilet to poo that it won’t matter if there is a pull-up underneath or not.
  9. Job done!

The above worked for us, but I’ve also heard of the following variations:

If step 7 is too big a transition for the child, try cutting a hole in the back of the pull-up before they put it on so that the child can sit on the toilet still wearing the pull-up but the poo goes through it and into the toilet.

If they can’t get past the step of placing the pull-up into the toilet, do so gradually by cutting pieces off the pull-up bit by bit each time until eventually they only need a little bit of pull-up in the toilet to poo on, which can then eventually be replaced by a wad of toilet tissue.

Good luck! I hope this proves useful.

😊

Should have read your post first, this is what we did but I explained it worse.

Original poster
Red010286 · 02/05/2026 09:10

yeh, our son wouldn’t sit on it at all, so we basically started with moving to all poos having to be in the bathroom but he could stand wearing a nappy, and we started only changing him in there and only changing him standing up. The biggest challenge was then getting him to sit down, even wearing a nappy, as he just didn’t think he could get it out, huge battles and lasted a long time. One week recently I pushed and just said no more standing, took 2 days and then he tried it and found he could do it. Then has now only been a few weeks and he decided, out of nowhere, he would try sitting without nappy. If you little one is ok sitting on there already you might find they transition faster

OP posts:
Original poster
Red010286 · 02/05/2026 09:12

It does also help identifying the part of it that they’re struggling with, so for us it was getting to the sitting down part, so we ended up not needing to then do the staged approach to removing the nappy sitting down

OP posts:
BillieWiper · 02/05/2026 09:25

PansyPotter84 · 10/07/2025 08:28

I’ve said this on other threads on this topic as it seems to come up a lot…

Hopefully I can offer some constructive advice having had this issue with my older one.

There is a well known method and it worked for us.

  1. When they are confident with wee, take the pull-ups off during the day and have them wear pants.
  2. Tell them that when they need a poo they need to come and ask for a pull-up to do it in (rather than just wearing pull-ups all the time).
  3. When they poo their pull-up, it has to be done in the bathroom and nowhere else.
  4. The pull-up is taken off immediately afterwards, and the poo flushed down the toilet (in their presence).
  5. After a week or so of doing this, ask the child to sit on the toilet or potty (with their pull-up on, still) to do their poo.
  6. Repeat step 4 afterwards.
  7. After a further week or two of this, instead of putting the pull-up on, put the open pull-up into the potty or toilet so that they will poo into it without wearing it. Repeat step 4 afterwards.
  8. Eventually the child will get so used to sitting on the toilet to poo that it won’t matter if there is a pull-up underneath or not.
  9. Job done!

The above worked for us, but I’ve also heard of the following variations:

If step 7 is too big a transition for the child, try cutting a hole in the back of the pull-up before they put it on so that the child can sit on the toilet still wearing the pull-up but the poo goes through it and into the toilet.

If they can’t get past the step of placing the pull-up into the toilet, do so gradually by cutting pieces off the pull-up bit by bit each time until eventually they only need a little bit of pull-up in the toilet to poo on, which can then eventually be replaced by a wad of toilet tissue.

Good luck! I hope this proves useful.

😊

This sounds brilliant. I was just thinking about the idea of gradually doing it like putting the open pull up in the toilet. But cutting a hole is a fantastic idea, I've never seen anyone saying that before. I can see why it would work.

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