4 y/o only poos in nappy

[LemonLadybird]

Hello! My DS is 4 and autistic with a speech delay, and a genetic condition which means he’s had chronic constipation and bowel issues his whole life. We’re so proud he’s recently managed to potty train in wees (we’re keen to try and get him fully trained before school and didn’t think even that would be possible!) but we’re really struggling with only wanting to poo in a nappy. We’ve gone through so many pants the last few months and he’s just not phased at all by it.

I’ve tried stickers, charts, letting him read books / iPad on the potty and toilet, treats, praise, songs, books about potty training …. You name it. We’re trying to keep it low pressure for him but it feels like we’re just getting nowhere. Any advice would be so welcome! Thank you.

I feel you pain my eldest was like this. Now 14

I think it’s quite common in alot of children as I learnt when I took advice from my health visitor who was “old school no nonsense” she said get rid of the nappies (as he was dry at night) and battle thru it.
So this is what I did and I had 2 weeks of hell and when I saw him straining I’d quicky lift him onto the toilet and stay with him and give him loads of praise and I said to him if he did a poo on the toilet every day we could go to the toy shop and choose something. This was the motivation!!!

in terms of the chronic constipation my friends son had this and she was told to give him prunes so she used to blend these (tinned ones) into smoothies and they worked a treat or if he’ll just eat them - great!

I remember being absolutely petrified but I just got tonnes and tonnes of cheap pants (friends gave me some too) and we had a couple of incidents and a lot of tears (mine included!!!) but we got there in the 2 weeks. The health visitor was amazing and dropped in to support and praise which worked well too.

I think just map out some time, and go cold turkey with the nappies/pull ups and make the end goal something he loves like a new toy or whatever.

I let me son choose a toy from toyrus it was at the time and I cut the picture of it out and stuck it on the wall and that gave us some focus.

wishing you luck and sending positivity!

Have you tried the Poo Goes to Pooland book? I think you can still download it free. Worked like magic for my son.

I also said things like
“what a good boy keeping your pants nice and clean” and I gave lots of attention and praise and spoke about nursery/school and how big boys wear pants etc etc

once we’d done about a week and it started to get better I got some character pants at Asda which he loved and he was very determined to keep them nice and I bought the matching vests and said “it would be a shame to have the vests but no pants if they all get dirty” and this worked well too.

it’s just trying to work out what you think he might respond well too.