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Is your child ready for potty training at nursery? Here's the place for all your toilet training questions.

Original poster

4yo refuses to poo without pull-ups — what worked for you?

3 replies

Suzisushka · 21/10/2025 11:18

Hi everyone,

Our son will be four soon and still needs pull-ups to poo. He’s fully potty trained for wee and never wears them otherwise, but will hold it in until we put a pull-up on. Once he’s wearing one, he poos in the bathroom while standing with his legs apart.

This started after a painful constipation episode about a year and a half ago. Since then, he’s been on one sachet of Laxido a day (as advised by our GP). We’ve tried following eric.org.uk
’s suggestion to let him poo in pull-ups while sitting on the potty, but he refuses.

Has anyone dealt with something similar or found a gentle way to help a child move from pull-ups to the potty for poo?

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24Dogcuddler · 21/10/2025 11:52

At his age I’d try the toilet otherwise you are facing another transition. Use a comfy toilet seat, step maybe knees up.
Use paper in the toilet to reduce splashing, blowing bubbles can help with constipation.
Look at Poo goes to Pooland on YouTube.
It’s a fairly common problem especially for children with constipation. You could try him standing next to the toilet as part of the process towards using the toilet.
Sitting on the toilet whilst blowing bubbles 5 times then work up to 10 will help to desensitise and get him used to it.

PansyPotter84 · 21/10/2025 22:38

Posted elsewhere before and hopefully might help:

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 that 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 constructive.

Original poster
Suzisushka · 23/10/2025 10:29

PansyPotter84 · 21/10/2025 22:38

Posted elsewhere before and hopefully might help:

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 that 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 constructive.

Thank you very much for sharing this approach :)
It was very easy for us to do steps 1, 2, and 3, but step 4 is trickier. Our son often says he isn’t finished pooing for around 15 minutes, and he gets upset if we tell him he’s done and it’s time to remove the pull-up.
As for step 5, he refuses too — we’ve tried several times. I’m wondering if there’s anything we can do to help convince him…

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