My son will not poo on potty - advice please 🙏🏼

[Olivia933]

My son has just turned 3 this week. We started potty training as it's the summer holidays. He's mastered his wee's on the potty and hasn't had an accident for days now. He just will not poo on the potty. He tries to hold it in, and you can see around his bottom that it's tried to come out.. he has pooped on the floor a couple of times.

Every time I go to leave the house and put pants on him, he fills his pants.

I know he's ready, he has done so well with his wee's and I feel like once he's done one poop on the toilet he will be fine, it's just getting him to do that first one..

I've tried lots of different things, rewards, carrying him to the potty when I can tell he needs to go, turning it into a game, toilet seat, potty..

Does anyone have any helpful advice or tricks that have helped in this situation?

Thank you so much in advance xx

He's a bit old for a potty. Toilet and step stool.

Look up the NHS resources for Poo Goes To Pooland. I think there is also a YouTube video.

Also, try the toilet rather than the potty as he’s getting a bit old for a potty now.

I had this with my son, the only thing that worked was watching him like a hawk and rushing him to the loo when he was mid poo. He would go hide in cupboards to poo in nappy if he could.
He was clearly freaked out by the feeling of pooing on the loo the first time but it was like ripping of a plaster and one he did it once it got easier (although he didn’t ask to go and I had to keep putting him on when I could tell he need to go). We never used a potty.

We had exactly this. Same age and everything. It was only a couple of months ago and I was tearing my hair out!
But honestly, we just had to ride it out. I went down the route of doing massive over the top praise every time he did a wee on the potty. I almost completely ignored every time he poo'd his pants, cleaned him up without saying anything and then at the end said very calmly and clearly, poos go in the potty, not in pants and got him to repeat it.
All of a sudden it clicked and he's not had any accidents since, but it took a few weeks. Every time he did a poo on the potty I went mad on the praise again 😂