Poo aversion stalling potty training

[MyHatIsGone]

2yo DD has been dry in the day time for almost a year now but when it comes to number twos, she physically holds them in - sometimes for three days at a time.

She is not constipated - she does this on purpose, crossing her legs and straining with everything she has to stop herself from pooing. For months, we’ve tried everything to help her understand that pooing is okay, it’s good to poo, it’s normal - just like her wee wees (and she’s really good at those) - and that her body wants the poo out - but she doesn’t want to talk about it, refuses eye contact and makes every effort to run away.

Eventually, when her body wins, she will poo in her knickers. It’s driving me mad. In between when she uses the toilet, it’s like wiping a crayon and she can go through up to 7 pairs of knickers a day. I feel like I’m a bad mum, like I’m stupid because other children seem to potty so well and as we keep hearing from the older generation they all got it nipped by 18m - what am I doing wrong??

I don’t want to give her stool softener because she isn’t constipated. I don’t want to put her back in pull-ups to encourage her to poo more freely because we tried that and all that happened was she went backwards and thought she could wee herself again and we had to undo that.

It seems to be a psychological thing. I can’t go to the GP with this, can I? What can they do? She just simply doesn’t want to poo and will try her absolute hardest to stop it from happening. It seems like she’s stuck in a vicious cycle of holding in poo, doing a mega poo that hurts her, she thinks poos hurt, so she holds them in so that she doesn’t hurt herself.

I don’t know what I’m hoping to get from this other than perhaps some reassurance that it’s fairly common and it will pass?

You absolutely can go to the GP about this, it's common. Also, have you had a look at the ERIC website as well? They have storybooks that might help and also you can request a call with one of their nurses for more advice. You may need to use stool softener in the end to get the behaviour change and prevent the withholding behaviour but you could start with stories and rewards.

Thank you for your lovely reply, I will call the GP in the morning and get her booked in then. I think I just needed some assurance it wouldn’t be wasting valuable NHS time and resources.

I will look at the ERIC website, thank you. I’d never heard of it before so it’s helpful to learn of a new resource.

Thanks again!

My 3 year old had the exact same, crying and hiding and refusing to sit on the toilet whenever she needed a poo, would have accidents all the time, holding for up to 10 days

went to GP who prescribed laxatives and she’s now pooing on the toilet no problem

My son did this up until he started preschool! we tried everything as he didn’t like the need to push or the gap between his little bum and the water 😂😂 we put loo roll in there, held him by his tummy so he couldn’t fall, reward charts, stickers and nothing worked! I spoke to the health visitor and she basically said:

• it’s completely normal and actually quite common
• its hard but when you see them withholding try not to get annoyed or angry at them, as they will already be stressed enough
• when he does poo give him a small treat but don’t “over celebrate” as we want him to think it’s a normal, day to day thing.
• we started giving him lactalose and it made them softer which tackled the pushing problem!

Hope this helps. Xx

I think she is almost definitely constipated now, even if she wasn't before. All the signs point to it, like the overflow in the pants you mentioned. If you go to the gp, they will prescribe laxido for disimpaction based on the description in your post.

Witholding may or may not be caused by constipation but it almost definitely causes it and you get a vicious cycle. We went through this with my ds and thankfully are now on a tiny maintenance dose.

My DS did similar but he was slightly older at 3. We saw the gp, who actually diagnosed ‘poo phobia’, he said he had an anal fissure which made pooing hurt and so he was scared to poo. We were prescribed movocol which made his poo softer and it stopped him being able to withhold. Eventually things got better but he wasn’t pooing on the toilet properly until his 4th birthday.

We had exactly the same problem and please don’t worry it’s a really common problem! So what we did first of all was make sure the poos don’t hurt. We went to the go and they prescribed some stool softener powder which gets added to water and we just played with the dose until it was soft but not runny. Then we bought a few books about poo and where it goes when it goes to the toilet. It helped just talking about and normalising poo, as it can be quite scary to them. Then we chose a special toy he really wanted and he only ever was allowed to play it when he sat on the potty. So after meals we got into the habit of sitting on the potty. I then bought a sticker chart so I told him he’d get a poo sticker if he poo’d in the potty. Eventually after about 2 months he did a small soft poo in the potty. We celebrated by getting a poo sticker and then having a poo party (a dance to the poo party song on Spotify) he enjoyed it so much he did another poo later that day. Try not to get stressed and put pressure on it, it will happen! Just think you don’t get many adults who poo their pants xx

Thank you to everyone who has commented - I feel much better about it and I’m hopeful the GP can help with it once she’s seen. I feel so much reassured, thank you.

We had the same at 18 months although we hadn't potty trained. She did eventually make herself constipated and then became scared of pooing.
Please do go to the GP and get her some lactolose so you don't get to this stage. I don't want to alarm you but she ended up giving herself a little fistula from it. We were referred to a consultant at that point who just said it's really common and continue the lactolose.
She was on it for a year until she had no poo/pain association. She's three now and goes on the toilet every day without issue.

Have you tried the Poo goes to Pooland app - worked wonders for one of mine with a similar issue

If you don't want to download an app there is a YouTube video of the story
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nzBYwnES-yw

The NHS do a colouring book version to go with it

https://bedslutonchildrenshealth.nhs.uk/media/vxudlxrx/poo-goes-home-to-pooland.pdf