With-holding poo/ not wanting to poo in the potty/toliet

[MamaBear2210T]

Hi,

we’ve now potty trained our stubborn 3.5 year old DS. He’s got wees amazing. He even did a poo on Tuesday on day 3 on the potty but since then has been refusing to go/lots of accidents in pants and saying he’s scared.

It doesn’t hurt when he goes. He did have a period of time constipated but that has been resolved for a good few months now. I’m worried we’ll get back to that and then relying on lactulose again.

any tips and hints welcome!

Have you tried lining the potty with a nappy/pull up?

This seems very common.

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.

How have you gotten on @MamaBear2210T ?

currently in the same situation with my LG but she’s quite a bit younger, it’s becoming a bit of a rigmarole and I’m trying to downplay it as I just want her to poop 🙃

Eric website is helpful.

The massive shortened version, avoid it building up and go early with the laxido/ lactulose.

My very stubborn daughter withheld. We tried every and all methods. We had helpful advice from ERIC. And also got movicol on prescription from the GP. I will add that she was later diagnosed autistic (I say this as if you'd have asked us to describe her aged 2/3 the first thing we'd have said was stubborn)

We did something very similar to what @PansyPotter84 suggests, but with a hole cut in the nappy from step 7. I didn't tell her in advance that I'd cut a hole in because she'd have refused to wear it. I just feigned surprise when her 💩 plopped into the loo, inspected her nappy, pointed out the hole and told her that there must have been a mix-up at the nappy factory. The same mix-up seemed to have affected every other nappy in the pack, and all the nappies in every pack we bought subsequently (we used a different brand for overnight use, and luckily she never asked to poo into an overnight nappy). Luckily, she accepted this unlikely tale of nappy factory ineptitude. The nappies had a slightly larger hole each time, until only a wisp of nappy was left, which she agreed was pointless to use.

Was this the first sign of autism you experienced?
I would describe my daughter as sassy/independent. I don’t have any other concerns

My daughter (just turned 3) is having the same issue. Has got wees in the potty or toilet straight away - we’ve been using Christmas holidays to be entirely nappy free until nighttime but have had a couple of poo accidents. She’s been good at saying “I need a wee” and even went to the potty herself when we were out of the room but poo is much more difficult. Not constipated as she’s doing them but either an accident or in her nighttime pull up. Driving me mad as feel like we’ve cracked the wee bit!