Holding on for Nappy

[srmjbut]

Please help! My DS 3 in 7 weeks time will not poo on the potty or toilet. He will wee fine and even takes himself now with no problems, but he will not do a poo. We manage to persuade him to sit on the loo and try whilst I read him a story etc, but nothing. Then as soon as I put his bedtime nappy on he does it. The only solution I can think of is to do away with night time nappies but he is sooo not ready for that yet. He has done a poo on the potty once before and once on the loo at nursery and neither were a traumatic experience for him. He wees sitting down or standing up so has no fear of the toilet so really am at a loss as to what to try next. When we first starting to potty train him he would hold the poo in and make himself ill, he has now trained himself almost to go once his bedtime nappy is on!! Grateful for any advice/tips. Thanks.

Watching with interest, dd has similar problem........

This seems to be a pretty common problem, and quite an upsetting one. It must be so frustrating for you.

My ds is only 21 months, so I don't know how this will work for your ds since he is much older. However, I have been ECing with mine so perhaps I could share some EC based ideas.

My advice would be to put a nappy on him when you think that he needs to poo, then ask him to do his poo. This might sound crazy, but at least you are both communicating in a positive way regarding pooing, and collaborating to "catch" the poo. Try to always use the same phrases or sounds to encourage him. The idea is that these should become pooing prompts or cues, which will hopefully be transferable to new locations. If you do this for a while, it should give a positive starting position to build on.

Once you have a pattern of helping ds to catch the poo, albeit in the nappy, one route forward might be to put the nappy on looser and looser or just to hold it under him.

What do you think? am I crazy, or does this make sense?

Out of interest, how long is it since you first aquainted your son the potty toilet?

Ok ladies, cracked it. Starting telling him beginning of Dec that Father Christmas would be taking his nappies as he was a big boy and would be 3 and therefore wouldn't need them anymore. (We did this last year to get rid of his dummy and that was a success with very little reaction, so figured we try the same this time). Told him big boys & girls etc went on the toilet. Re-iterated this to him everyday until Xmas eve. Left his nappies out with his stocking....Christmas morning, Mummy I need a poo, off we trek to the toilet, went no problem, no scene.....all good since. Couldn't have hoped for a better result. It did however mean I had about 2 weeks of changing a wet bed most nights, but once he was fully happy with going to the toilet for poo, I re-introduced 'pull ups' at bedtime under the guise of 'Pyjama pants' and told him that these were special pants and only for emergency wee wees in the night and under no circumstances should he poo in them or we'd be in a terrible mess as they weren't designed for poo. Obviously he didn't have a clue what I was talking about but it's worked. He now poos for Britain going about 2 or 3 times a day, it's like he's found a new lease of life in that department!! Thanks for all your help.