4 Year Old Won't Poop on the Potty & Has Accidents in Pants

Hi,

First off, I know your frustration. My daughter often sneaks off to do #2 and doesn't tell me that she needed to go or even did something. She's a middle child so I'm sure some of it is the need for attention, though she does get an awful lot of it.

Anyways, she goes back and forth between being fully cleaned and having frequent accidents. The only thing I've tried that seemed to have worked was some positive reinforcement through "treat coupons." If she does in it the toilet, she gets her own personilzed treat coupon, good for a lollipop, candy bar, or whatever is in the cupboard at the time. If she does it at night, she sleeps with the coupon under her pillow.

It's a slow uphill climb sometimes, but perservere and hopefully, your son will have it figured out soon. Good luck to you.

a little boy i used to babysit did this, and they found out it was because every times he would poop on the potty someone wiping him would say jokingly that he stunk, once they stopped telling him that he was fine.

My son was afraid of pooping on the toilet. He was over 4 before he just started doing it himself. He felt much better using one of those cushoiny seats that goes on the toilet b/c he felt like he couldn't fall through. But even after we bought him one, it took him a while to use it. But one day he must have figured he was ready. The more we pushed, the more resistant he got. When we backed off, he figured it out.

I can understand how his teachers could be frustrated, but they really should try not to relay their frustration onto him. As you noted, it won't help the situation.

My son had no problem. I sit him backwards and he has a poop party! When one comes then we count the friends. Then they all go down to the poop plant underground. We have done the potty dance! On line there are potty charts. Put stickers on. He liked that. Make it fun. Sometimes his poop even makes big snakes and little snakes! Silly! Good luck

I've given this advice on this subject before, so I apologize for being repetitive. It just worked so well I can't help it. We switched my daughter into underpants at her third birthday. She was good about pee but pooped in her underwear all the time. It was driving me batty. I tried everything - reward chart, making her clean up after herself when she had an accident, forcing her to sit on the potty every two hours - nothing worked. Finally I got some counterintuative advice and tried it. We told her that we weren't going to talk about using the potty at all anymore. She was a big girl, she knew how to listen to her own body, and she was responsible for using the potty. And then we didn't ask her again. Not about poop or pee. There were times when it was really tough because she would be hopping up and down on one foot, but I bit my tongue. When she had an accident we matter-of-factly cleaned it up with as little discussion as possible. After about three days she started going on the potty and we haven't looked back. (We did make a big deal about going and still used the sticker chart after the fact). It was totally a control thing. Once she didn't have any control over us, it wasn't worth it to her to keep going in her pants. She's in daycare too, and it did carry over. Good luck.