My 2 (nearly 3 year old) DS won't poo on the potty or toilet - Help!

[SH27]

Hello,

My DS who is 3 at Christmas will not poo on the toilet or potty. For a while he would ask for a pull up and then poo in that but now he is in a state pooing at all. He holds it in and is getting in such a state.

I don't know why as we have never told him off and have only encouraged him. He seems to have a poo phobia.

Has anyone else experienced this and does anyone have any ideas?

Many thanks from a worried mum.

Hi

I'd love to have an answer but I only have the same problem. My dd1 (2.8) is in week 7 of training,completely dry in the day and is hysterical about pooing anywhere but in her nappy or pants. We have never told her off either, it got worse after we read the Mr Poo book from the HV. She woke crying in the night saying Mr Poo was in the loo. Don't know where to go with it, am putting her in a nappy after bathtime, which she poos in within about 10 minutes and then changing her again. She is such a stressy little babe and we can't understand why, poor little thing. She is interested in the contents of dd2's nappy and congratulates her if she has done a poo, she also comments if anyone goes to the loo and what they did in there!
If we have a major breakthrough I'll report back - I'm clueless sorry!

Hiya - I'd like to lurk on here too. Ds (3 in Jan) won't poo anywhere except nappy/pants/pull up. He had a dicky tummy about 3 weeks ago and did a poo on his high chair (he had nothing on the bottom) and was very upset. He still talks about it now!

I wonder if it's the sensation of the poo falling away from their bottoms that they don't like?

Ooh can I join in too as I have exactly the same problem with dd2 who is now 3 years and 3 months old!

She has for a long time asked for nappies when she wants to do a poo and then has disappeared for a few minutes before coming back and asking to be changed as the poo has been done!

On holiday in the summer we though we'd cracked it as on a couple of occasions she was in the swimming pool and needed to go. not having any nappies tohand, she seemed quite happy to go in the loos. Hooray we thought - but alas no, it was post holiday back to being insistent on a nappy.

We gone slightly more hardcore recently by insisting that there are no more nappies to use, but all this has resulted in is her holding it all in, then leaking a bit when she clearly needs to go and her getting more and more distressed and upset. Again, we thought we were sorted as she rang me (well our lovely nanny rang me on her behalf!) to tell me that again, she'd managed to poo in the loo, but since then, there's been no poo for 24hours - she's normally a once a day girl) - and soiled knickers yesterday.....

I need some inspiration and help here.

By the way - have tried bribing and she's so totally not bothered.....

My sympathies are with you as we went through exactly this with DD when she was 2.5 (and I was heavily pregnant with DS so the whole thing was quite exhausting!) She'd had a few bouts of constipation which made her completely terrified of pooing, even though she was fine about doing wees. She'd hold on for days so when she did go it was really traumatic. It was a nightmare and I felt like it was dominating my life!

Our GP prescribed lactulose , which just softens the poo - he said that anything with a laxative effect could be a bit too strong in such a young child. I kept dosing her every day with the lactulose - so that when she needed to poo she simply couldn't it in - and let her wear pull ups to poo in without making any issue about it (she tended to wait until her nap time so this was quite easy to make sure she had a pull up on in her cot). After a while, she began to poo at a fairly regular time each day and began to realise that it wasn't necessarily a painful, frightening thing. At that stage I'm afraid I resorted to good old bribery, took her to a toyshop and let her choose about 15 of their cheapy pocket money toys which I put in a big bag - each time she did a poo on the potty she got a prize. Amazingly, it worked within 2 weeks and it has never been a problem since (she's now nearly 4.5)!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

I have been dealing with this exact problem for the last 6months... DS (3.10) started potty training in jan this year, was doing really well, getting the hang of it all, then suddenly got a tummy bug and messed himself.

This was at the back end of March (pardon the pun ) since then he refuses to poo in the toilet, will sit on it, but will not do anything. I can sit him on it before bed, then put on the nappy and 5/10 mins later, there he goes, poo in nappy.

I literally had the HV round last week and she said that it was normal for all DC to be scared of poos, in all forms, and a tummy bug can just be enough to tip them over the edge.

She says now to reward all poos.. even the accidents in pants [gnawing knuckles emoticon]

So at her suggestion i have drawn up a star chart and he gets a sticker for any poo that he does.. I also said he could be 'flown' upstairs (i.e i carry him super fast up to the loo, he had another dicky tummy last week..)

So the plan is to reward all poos, no matter where they are... then next stage is to 'direct' them to the toilet.. which he knows, and isn't frightened.. HV said something about perhaps putting a nappy on him only for his to do poos in.. but i think he's past that ...we'll see....

Apparently the action of pooing and having it go somewhere, possibly splash them, is what can scare them. A bout of iffy tummy and it kinda compounds it all..

So try the reward all poos approach... I'll update you when and if I have any progress.

No stars today, cos he went to bed early with a cold.. b ut that could mean he'll be 'leaking' tomorrow, so there could be more stars to hand out....

Wishing you all luck, fingers crossed for me too!

Try your health visitors... mine, I'm pretty sure, will be invaluable to me and to my family...

Ds has just done his first poo in the potty!!

I have made a big fuss and hopefully he'll get it now!

Seems like perseverance and Cod's potty training boot camp has paid off. Hooray for Cod (and my ds!)

Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for your suggestions and stories. Makes me feel better in a strange way knowing I am not on my own with this!!

We got to day three without a poo and I was getting seriously stressed as was my DS. So I gave him half a teaspoon of syrup of figs and we sat on the potty and read a book and watched some TV and hey presto!!

He has since been on the potty again, although he was a bit stressed, but its a start!!

Good luck everyone. xx