How do you get your child to clean their bottom properly ?

[3point14]

Our daughter was born overseas and apart from 6 months or so in the UK last year, when she was not really ready for toilet training, she has been used to an environment where we use a water hose as well as paper.

She is back overseas but her mum says she is doing very well in her training (she is 3 in July) but we're having issues with her cleaning herself after a No. 2 (just what should we call a shit / crap here ?).

I'm sure she understands that it feels better to be clean and not wet (still using nappies at night for now) and she can wear her big girl pants which she loves but I'm not sure she understands the importance of making sure your backside is clean.

She can certainly make the gestures with toilet paper but to be honest, she might as well just be wiping her forehead ! I think she likes taking the paper off the roll and putting it down the toilet more than anything else !

I could do with some tips on how to get over the art of cleaning up at the rear end.

Wet wipes/moist toilet paper works for us. I usually get called to the loo to wipe for DD ('mam, I done a poo and wee-wee') but occasionally she will do it herself.

ds is 3.5 years and I still wipe for him after a poo. He has had a go himself a couple of times but isnt very good at it. We also use moist toilet wipes e.g. andrex/kandoo/supermarket own brand, etc

DS is 5 and still often grubby post poo

I think the only real way is to make them 10...

Sorry a bit late in the day with this post.

I posted about the very same topic a couple of years ago, in relation to my ds (then 3.5). He would have a cursary go and then I would clean him up, but he did nothing more than just waft a bit of paper in the vague area.

Someone suggested to me that it helps to be really specific about how many sheets to use and how many times, eg tear off three sheets each time and have 6 (or so) goes. This improved things a lot, he seemed to like counting and I think it gave him some reassurance that he was doing it 'right'. Even now, he tends to fill up the loo with paper, and depending on how 'messy' the poo was, he's not always 100% clean but is a lot better now.

Oh, and you also need to guide your dd to the exact area - be very specific!

I hope that helps.