I need some advice about potty training my 3 year old son. He pees in the toilet most of the time and knows when he needs to go pee and will ask to go. But he flatly refuses to poop in the toilet. Although at times he will tell he needs to poop, when he sits on the toilet there is no "production". Lately he has not been asking to go to the toilet to poop, but he runs to his room and hides in the corner and does his business in his pants. We tried different ways of coaxing him to sit on the toilet to poop, but he will not do it. What can we do? He turned 3 in June and is due to start preschool soon.
What worked for my son is just to be consistant. I asked every 20-30mins if he need to use the bathroom. He eventually got more comfortable using it. I warn you it will be tiresome but it works. Good Luck!
I found that with my daughter it was uncomfortable for her to go. I found milk was making her constapated (she is lactoce intolerate) So I changed her diet -added more fiber - she started using the potty.
My son did the exact same thing. Seemed to me like he was embarrassed because he had to poop. I went straight out and bought the book, "Everyone Poops." We read it together, and it soon became one of his favorites. Since then we've never had a problem. He always wants to go in the toilet. Check it out, I hope it works for you as well as it worked for us!
Good morning A.! You dont know how i agonized over this same thing and its just a phase. My son also went potty in the toilet at 3 for a year and just wouldnt go poop in the toilet. He too would to his room then just come out stinky in his pull up. He also went to preschool and usually didnt have any accidents since preschool was just half day but one day just before he turned 4 he told me he had to go potty and then he did both and wa-la! He has been going ever since and no accidents! He is 5 now and tomorrow is his first day of Kindergarten!
Good Luck
My daughter did the same excat thing that your son is doing now. She was great with peeing but would not go poop. I would ask her if she needed to go and always got told no, would remind her to try and go if she didn't think she needed to, always got a no and she ran away from me. After she turned 4 and I did not say anything to her I hear her yelling from the bathroom mom I'm finshed going poopy. The best advice I can give you is try not pressuring him and maybe he will go. The preschool that my daugther went to was very understanding and worked it out with my daugter so don't worry to much about he will do it but it needs to be on his terms at least this is what I found out from both my kids-boy now 7 and girl now 5. Goodluck and hope this helps a little
My best advice it to not push it. He may respond to some tactics that people have mentioned, but my son didn't and we ended up causing a lot of problems with his pooping (holding it in) and he still struggles with it (at 6 years old, even though he was basically potty trained at about 4 1/2.) Let him do it when he's ready.
maybe an interim fix would be to get a training potty (baby bjorn has one that's very inexpensive & not fancy) and put it in the corner where he likes to squat. Then you can involve him in dumping the poo in the toilet, flushing, etc. It might help the transition.
my 2 1/2 year old has a training potty in the bathroom & sometimes she'll use one, sometimes the other. Still working on her letting us know when she has to go. Hopefully we'll have this sorted by the time she's 3...
My son refused to toilet train until the 4 year old preschool teacher said that in order to come to her class he had to be potty trained--it took one day. (I knew he could do it!) His younger sister (by 2 years) was trained before he was.
Boys are later. Maybe he's really constipated. Does he have a small toilet you can put in a corner in his room? And put an identical one in the bathroom.
My almost-4 year old has only just mastered the poop-in-the-potty thing in the past three weeks. She's had peeing down for months, but would only poop in her PullUp after she went to bed. It was a comfort thing for her. About two months ago we started having her sit on the potty before going to bed, but not forcing her to do more than sit for a second or two, with lots of "thank you for trying" "good job" "you don't have to go potty every time you try" reassurance and praise. Having a step at the potty where she could brace her feet to push helped her physical comfort, but she just wasn't mentally ready until a few weeks ago.
The best - and hardest! - thing you can do at this point is back off a bit. Follow the suggestions about gently helping him to clean up his own messes when he goes in his room. My repeated phrase was, "You're in charge of your own poop, and that means cleaning it up if it isn't in the potty." Bury your own frustration (I know, I know!!!) and keep it positive and upbeat. Laugh as much as possible. Then go into your room and shout all the things you want to say into a pillow or something. :) (My husband and I vented to each other after the kids went to bed.)
Good luck, and he WILL learn.
Hi there. With one of our foster daughters the doctor suggested taking advantage of the morning reflex. Our routine was: eat breakfast, have a cup of hot choclate (warm beverages help tell your body it is time to go), and sit on the potty for 15 minutes or until bowel movement. I would either sit with her or read a book or sometimes she would watch a dvd. She felt special because she got the hot chocolate and she got special time with just me. She usually would relax enought to go. We even bought a special "soft" kids toilet seat.
God bless you and your family.
If it's not already set up, be sure that he has a stool to secure his feet on so he doesn't feel like he's going to fall. I really discounted this with my son and a lot of getting him on the pot had to do with making him feel secure (we also limited him to watching his favorite movie unless he was sitting on the pot for awhile so he'd get used to it). We still struggle with sitting on a public potty but after he felt secure sitting on at home with the stool for awhile, we don't' have to have the stool now. We still struggle off and on with pooping in the toilet, just know you have to persevere, and you are not alone!
My little guy is also 3 and had the same progression, pee first and very resistant to going poo on the potty. He is very active and I think he found sitting there for that long very boring. We finally went with the 3 M&Ms for a poop reward (he was never motivated by stickers or small prize gifts) and he is doing amazing! But I honestly think it was a combo of the rewards and him just deciding to do it - our pediatrician said once they make up their mind about not going poop, there isn't much you can do to change it! Also, he finds it much easier to use a little potty for poop than a potty seat on the big potty, with his feet dangling in space. . .hope this helps!
Completely normal! So first of all let go of the anxiety- he can sense it. EVERY mom out there who has potty trained children (I've done 3) will tell you that pooping is the trickiest part. It's counter intuitive to me but it's just the way it is. Let it be for a while. Concentrate on the progress made in peeing and leave it there for a bit.
I'm certain he feels your concern and that only makes things more difficult for him. Hence the running to his room to poop.
When he poops in his pants have him help clean-- in a matter-of-fact nonthreatening way-- and then move on. He will poop in the toilet, just not on your time schedule. And that's okay.
I am a Montessori-trained preschool teacher who is finishing her Early Childhood Education degree, specializing in infants and toddlers, and when one of my daughters had this issue, I ended up resorting to good old fashioned bribery! LOL! My little Sweetheart was convinced that "it will be too hard!" and that she couldn't do it. She was asking me to take her to Chuck E. Cheese, so I used that desire to give her some incentive. When she "went brown" in the potty, we would go to Chuck E. Cheese. Once she did it, she realized that it was not the frightening or painful event she had feared it would be. I had to bribe her a couple of times, but then she had the confidence to go in the toilet on her own. I hope this helps!
By the way, there are preschools out there who allow children to enroll when they are not fully potty trained, or at least mine does. www.myfathersgardenpreschool.com I know I cannot be the only one! :) God bless you and yours!
Another comment already suggests making sure you have a foot stool, but it's for more than just security for the child. Most people don't know it, but bowel movements happen more naturally if your knees are slightly above your bottom when sitting down. Soooo, as adults we really don't take notice of this, but for children, it can be important, especially if they are using a normal tiolet and not a potty chair. Good Luck!!
my son was good to go when we started to read a book. He just got to pick one out of his collection. Good luck
Hi I went thru some of the same stuff when I was potty training my son. I let him pick out his underwear so that he was part of the process. But when he would have an accident and poop in his pants I would make him throw his favorite pair of underwear away. Needless to say he only did that twice. Maybe it will work for you. Good luck and remember it won't last forever.
I don't know but maybe rewarding him when he does in the toilet - like stickers, money(pennies and such), a special treat. You are almost there. Just my thoughts - I haven't gotten to that point yet.
I know what yor feeling my son potty trained around the same age but when he went poop the first time it splashed water on his behind. He shot up off the toilet and screamed cuz he was sure that when it hit the water his poop had exploded cuz he felt the water. I did my best not to fall over laughing but assured him it had not. I even tried to show him but he wasn't buying it. At that point he just refused to poop at all. I went to see his pediatrician and she said not to worry he would go in his own time but not to stop encouraging him. The Dr. did say though if he started to go in his pants or in inappropriate place to address it. I have always given my kids 2 choices for consequence behavior and aloud them to make the choice for punishment. My son ended up taking about 3 months longer but I was ok with that. I have always believed to let our children guide us, they teach us so much. What was crazy is my daughter trained at 2 and only took about 1 1/2 months from start to finish could not believe it. Good thing the hard one was first cuz my girl was a cake walk!
Make him clean up his poopy pants, with supervision of course. I had a little boy who would hold his poop for days, and then he started pooping in his pants at naptime. The first day I was so shocked I cleaned it up. When it happened again, I made him "clean it up," put the poop in the toilet, wash out his underpants, etc. It worked, he stopped pooping in his pants.
A.,
I'm adding a link to the responses that I got when I had this problem with my son (4 1/2 at the time). After the advice from all the great Mom's here he was fully potty trained in about 6 weeks.
We had a similar problem with pooping in the toilet too. He'd just poop his pants and not tell us. One night I asked him if there was anything that scared him about going potty in the toilet and eventually found out that there were monsters living in the toilet that tried to get him/his poop when he went potty. We set up a step for him and got him settled so he could squat on the toilet seat and could see those monsters before they got him. After that night he didn't poop his pants again. I think it was the splashing that scared him.
Hope this helps,
Melissa
