Toilet Training a 2 Year Old

take her to a field and show her the animals, horses, cows, etc. pooping. This worked for my niece. good luck!

A similar thing happened to me and my daughter too.What I did was to stop training her give it a few months the try again. Tell her that you are going to put the potty chair away and that when she is ready to let you know,then wait till she lets you know. Also I found that training in the summer was easier,less clothes to get in the way. Hope this help, Good luck!!!!

J., I'm a vetren mom, 3 boys 1 girl, 2217, 15 and 10. My youngest (girl) did the same thing. Even though you don't think they understand you much, try talking ot her with a postive voice and attitude tell her it's okay exploer the potty so she knows how it works and why; and tell her your proud of her for going potty. Find something that she loves to get so that you can reward her for sitting on the potty, one for being brave and one for actully going potty. I sometimes takes a while but don't give up, stay positive and laugh and giggle with her so she keeps a happy attitude. I stood next to Brooke, while she went potty and praised her unrelentlessly. After she understood that the potty is a good thinga nd that it doesn't spit out yucky stuff that it takes away the yucky stuff she should feel better.
I hoope this helps!
S.

I've heard of this sort of thing happening before. Even my own kids weren't too sure what to think the 1st couple times. My daughter did prefer using a pull up for poop for quite a while, but one thing that seemed to help was pointing out how much cleaner she stayed by using the potty. My other thought: was she at all constipated the first time? Because if it hurt that might be the cause for her concern. She wouldn't know that it wasn't the potty's fault. All my kids also responded very well to the book and video "Once Upon a Potty". They have it for boys and girls. I highly recommend it. The video also has a section on it for parents. I'm pretty sure I've seen the video at my local library...consignment shops would be a good place to try too. Good luck!

When my second son was born, my first son was almost two. I was determined NOT to have two in diapers, so I started working hard to potty train my oldest. It took a number of puddles and piles on the floor to realize that potty-readiness is very developmental and specific to each child. Needless to say, I had two in diapers for a while. However, it really worked to my advantage, as a child who is RELIABLY in diapers is much easier than a child who is SEMI-RELIABLY potty trained. I checked for "potty-readiness" by taking out the potty chair about once every two or three months. I kept this a low-pressure event, completely at my son's discretion. It usually only took about half a day to find out if he was ready or not (and some Resolve carpet cleaner to clean up his mess). If he showed that it did not come easy or he was not interested, the potty chair went back up in the closet. Both of my sons were ready to potty train a few weeks before their third birthdays. I was as eager as every other young mom to have early toilet users, but I have found that it is better to not push things, but rather let the child show mom when he or she is ready. They will ALL learn to potty on the toilet, and we can all survive a few more months changing diapers, but,overall, I think that waiting until a child is old enough to be reliable about using the toilet is best for mom AND kids. A three-year-old can do so much more than a two-year-old, like pulling down their own pants, washing, rinsing and drying hands, flushing the toilet and putting down the lid... EVERY TIME. Sometimes a very young child who is potty trained is actually more work than a very young child in diapers. There is no need to put pressure on mom and toddlers to face the scary toilet before it is time. That has just been my experience. Hope that helps.

J.,
You may think that this is discusting and weird, but I have four children under the age of five and it has worked for the two old enough for potty training. My oldest son refered to his turds as skunks. Naturally, I guess, since we say they both stink. It was fun for him to go poop because he was puting a little family of skunks in the toilet, and every time he flushed, they would run and hide in their hole. When my second son was ready for potty training, we had no problems with the peepee part , but like yours, he was afraid to go stinky, and would cry until I let him down so he could pull up his diaper, run around the corner, and poop in his diaper. When my oldest son introduced him to the fun skunk family, he became excited about the whole thing. He has been potty trained almost a year, and I can still hear him in the bathroom now saying "Oh! there's the big brother, and hear comes the little baby". I know it's gross, but like I said, it worked for my kiddos. ____@____.com

A Little About Me:
I am 25, and a very blessed mother of four under the age of five.

Have you tried explaining that the poop is no longer part of her body? Your little girl is just afraid of losing a part of her. Kids think that if it comes out of them, it is still a part of them. I told both of my kids that the poop and pee are all the garbage that their body needs to throw away. That really helped. It also helps to have them wave bye-bye to their "garbage". I know it sounds weird but if you go and explain to her that it needs to go bye-bye, she will feel a lot better about it. It may be hard at first, but it gets easier. Just remember to comfort her afterwards because she will still feel that sense of loss. Good luck! My name is H., mom to Ethan(4) and Emma(3).

Hello J.,

My first thought is that maybe she was constipated and it hurt the last time she had a bowel movement. You may want to feed her more fiber and things that will help her to have an easier passing of waste? My 2 cents.:) Hope this helps.

I think every child goes through that fear. It is so scary at first. I am bad because I used bribery. My second child did not get fully trained until she was three, because I waited until after my son was born. I knew that she would just go backwards after he was born. My oldest daughter was fully trained at 2 1/2. I think that is a normal age. My son has been going potty in the potty on and off for a couple of months and just turned two. He has pooped a couple of times, but it scares him also and he clinches up. He has two sisters encouraging him, so it makes it easier on me.
It is an adjustment for them. They normally squat to poop and now they have to sit. I imagine it has to be hard on them to adjust to this new pooping style.
So you could try bribing her with suckers or something, but I would just wait it out. She won't be in diapers forever and as nice as it is to say...hey my child is potty-trianed...I would not push it. Just let it happen. If you tense up and start worrying about it, she will too.
Oh...and keep her on the baby potty. They really freak out when the poop hits the toilet water and splashes up at thier little bum. Whenever she does poop just get excited, she will eventually get over her fear.

Best of luck.
D.

I haven't gone through this with my son yet - but as I'm a nanny of a now five year old, I have some experience with this!

While potty training, her parents had a sticker chart on the bathroom door, so she could put up a sticker every time she peed, then when she pooped, she got to put up a better sticker - shiny/glittery, bigger - something that made it better.

She also had to say 'bye bye' to the poop as it flushed away - helped her to see that it was positive - that the yuck goes away when SHE pulled the handle (she was in control of it) - not when some scary monster took it away.

Maybe, if your daughter does seem to think it's something scary like a monster - could you dump her diaper poop into the toilet, and have her flush it away, showing and explaining that it's just the same if she poops on the potty again herself?

Good luck!

J.,

My first thought while reading your post was that somehow pooping that first time hurt/scared her somehow. At some calm point in the day, try asking her if anything scares her about going potty, and go from there.

My son is 4 1/2 and I'm hesitatingly saying he's potty trained. We had some major life changes and it took a while. about a month ago we started trying the training again, and we got to the point where he'd pee no problem, but would poop his pants every time. After some advice from this website, I was able to talk to him and through a series of questions I learned that there are monsters in out toilet that try to get him/his poop. We set up a little IKEA step for him so that he could squat on the toilet to see below him, and that was the end of pooping in his pants. Now, he sits about half the time, and squats half the time, but it was something as simple as him not being able to see what was happening, and being scared of the unknown.

Talk to her, you may (most likely) get the answer from her.

Hope this helps,
Melissa

Hi J.,
I have a 3 year old daughter that was going through the same thing almost a year ago, she too got scared of her poop, like she thought she had done something bad and was afraid of getting in trouble, my husband said it just got to be too much for her. What I did to show her that poop was supposed to go into the chair is I took her poopy daiper and dumped the poop into it in front of her and tell her that that is where it goes and then dumped it into the big chair after that, and I did it all in front of her. It didn't take her long to figure out what I was showing her and it wasn't too long after that she turned away from the little potty chair and prefers to use the big potty chair like a big girl, so it seems I was right.
*Congradulations on your upcomming arrival, and good job on having them so well spaced apart, my daughter Natilee who is 3 has two younger brothers that she likes to be miniature mommy to and lots of times does help me but she can get carried away, but yeah a 20 month and 16 month break between kids can sometimes be too much, and was too much for my body. I just blame all that on the long haul trucking my hubby did. Anyways good luck on the training, all I needed was mostly patience.

That sounds hilarious, however, I know that being in the situation is NOT funny. However, maybe you could show the humour of the situation to your daughter. Also, you could go to the bathroom yourself and show the "results" happen to everybody. Then she wouldn't be scared.

Hi J.,
My best advice is to give it a rest. You could be entering into a major power struggle here. Two years old is young for potty training and she may just not be ready. It won't be long and I know having two in diapers seems like a lot. If you continue to push her you could create issues that will be much harder to resolve and end up having her in diapers longer than you would if you just let her wait until she's ready. I'm sure it seemed she was ready because she was excited at first. That's pretty common, and it's also common for them to revert to diapers. Just before we had our second baby our daughter was acting as if she was interested in the potty. So we bought a potty seat and underwear. She used the seat about twice and then wanted the diapers again. So, we switched to cloth diapers. It really encouraged our almost 3 year old to move onto undies because they weren't as cozy as a paper diaper. Good luck and all the best with #2!
L

I had this same experience with my son! So, I just gave it up for a couple months. That's all I could do. Then, when we were ready to start again, I bought the "last package of pull-ups" and made a big deal about them being the last ones. Then we would count down each pull-up we used and talk every time about how when they are all gone, then it's time to use the potty. I actually still have our last one, un-used and it's been since last July. Also, I made a deal that all peepees go in the potty and our 2 month break was just from poos. We also used a stucker chart for all the peepees. But counting down and getting prepared one pull up at a time for pooping was what worked for my son. Good luck and I hope this helps. It is a frustrating time, but your child will not do it until she is ready. Part of it may be a control issue, but the preparation of her getting closer to the time when there are no more pull ups may give her a sense of having some control over the situation. But DO take a little time off so you can start over fresh.

My 2nd son did the same thing all of a sudden one day. We took a couple months off of toilet training and let his cues tell us when he was ready to try again. I think sometimes kids just revert with stuff like that and if you push them it gets worse. Maybe giving her a break and pretending you don't want her to potty train for awhile will reboot the system so to speak and get her back on track. Worth a try, good luck!

My grandson had the same issue the first time he pooped in the potty. He is also two. The best my daughter & her husband can figure is that he never saw his 'stinks' when he did it in his diaper so actually seeing it in the potty suprised him and therefore scared him. It took a couple weeks but he got over it and is doing fine now. He did 'stinks' in his pants for a while but he didn't like that anymore; although he did see the actual product when they cleaned him up. (They decided to not use the pullups at all and went straight to panties.)

That's terrible! I'm just about to start potty training my little girl. I found a book that she love that might help. It's called "my potty book for girls" you can order it at www.dk.com

I know it sounds kind of gross but maybe having her be in the bathroom when you go poop and then showing her it in the toilet would help her understand that there's nothing to be scared of.

try getting her used to seeing her poop, when she goes in her diaper take her in there with you and drop it in the toilet and let her flush it and say good buy. sounds gross but just gets them used to where things go and that there is nothing to be afraid of.

Hello J.:

I had the same experience with my daughter. 2 things to remember, 1) when the have a bowel movement they do not understand that this is not a part of them. they directly think they are losing a part of themselves and it can scare them. 2)2 years old is much ahead of most potty training schedules so she is already way ahead of the game.

When this very same thing happened with my daughter, I asked her pediatrician what to do and she told me to go back to diapers or pull ups and forget the potty. Just leave it out and read books or watch videos on going to the potty. Once I reverted back to pull ups and just engaged with her in reading and watching the videos, within 2 weeks she was going on her own. I must add though, that she was 3 years old and age can make a difference. I would add what my pediatrician said to me..."dont worry, you child is not going to grow up to be the CEO of a corporation or our country and wearing a diaper." This really helped me put things in perspective.
Good luck to you in your journey.

Maybe let it go for awhile. OR, bribe her with a sucker or treat (if you believe in that), if not, don't push it for awhile, kids forget and forgive quickly.

I had books and a video for my kids about potty training. The video was great. I also had books just to read while on the potty. I would let them pick a few new books from the store and they only got to read them on the potty. Another suggestion is let your daughte be in the bathroom when you use the toilet and let her see ( i know this is gross,but it lets them know it is ok). In the meantime let her decide when she is ready for the potty.

Hi J., Have you tried the cushioned child size seat that fits right on the regular toilet? My daughter (she's 4 now) was afraid of "falling in" so the smaller sized seat worked great. Good luck! K.

Hi J.,

I know this happens to some children. That was a new experience and can be scarey too, even if they are only urinating.

I strongly suggest talking to your daughter, just reassuring her (every time) that it is okay to go potty. Allow her to see you on the potty. Maybe you can say, "time for mommy to go potty" and take her in the bathroom with you so she see's that you are not scared and that it is not a scarey thing. How else will she learn. Sometimes little ones need to see for themselves. Remember, everything to her IS new.

Another suggestion for potty time is to say "potty time for mommy and ______," then the 2 of you go potty together, then eventually she'll be brave and go on her own.

Good luck!

Children's Hopital (in Seattle) will offer a Potty Training Class at no cost to parents on Sunday April 13 from 10-Noon. You can look at what will be covered and decide if it might help. The link is:

(http://www.seattlechildrens.org/child_health_safety/class...)

I've already registered and have told all my friends who are stay-at-home-moms to do the same. I'm not saying that this class will help resolve the issue you mentioned, but at least it may give you new strategies to address it. It's hard to know exactly the right thing to do, but I hope that the instructor can give you insight.

Oh, how discouraging that can be! I have two daughters of my own, and I have taught toddlers in a childcare setting for many years, as well. One thing that has been helpful to me when a little one is introduced to THE BIG POTTY is to make sure they have a little seat to sit on, which makes the hole smaller and less daunting. Another thing that is surpsingly simple is to give them a little footstool to put beneath their feet. Some children really need the safety of knowing that their feet are not just dangling. Some children also need some sort of railing to hold onto in order to feel safe. There are many varieties available out there. In the end, I ended up bribing one of my daughters with a trip to Chuck E. Cheese if she went in the toilet! LOL! This sounds very "old school" at best, but once she went a few times, she was able to conquer her fear of it. Good luck! You sound like a wonderful, compassionate Mama.

Hi J.,, I myself haven't tried this but it might work,, it makes sense to me after I thought about it,, this may sound a little gross or what ever but us mom's see and do what ever we have to do get the job done,, so here goes,, the next time you have to go # 2,, take her in there with you,, and let her see and look and hear what you are doing ,, them after your daughter sees in the toilet what mama just did ,, she will see that you were NOT afraid to see what was left in the toilet after she got up,, and then say,, see what us BIG girls do in the potty!!!! and we are so proud of our selves,, so next time she has to go poop,, mom ,, you go in there with her,, and tell her member mama went poop when you were in there with me,, and I didn't get scared,, so why don't you go potty and mama will see what you left in the potty,, make a game out of it,, or tell her she gets a little prize for leaving a little some thing in the toilet like mama did,,tell me what happens k,, I am helping my daughter raise her son,, 15 months,, so if it works,, I will try it on him,, might any way,, just because,, good luck!!! keep smiling,,she could be grabbing a hand full and saying,,, mama look it stays on the wall!!!!!!My niece did that,, she was so proud!!{ 16 mo } D. ,,, :))____@____.com

Having worked in childcare for several years, I saw this a situation over and over again. All I can conclude is that it's perfectly normal and happens to many children during the potty training stage, especially when it come to going #2. It also seemed that the more the child was pushed, the harder it became. Not to be negative, but for some children, it would continue on through the age of 3. Going poop in the toilet often seems to be a dramatic experience for little ones!

I think the best thing to do is continue taking your child to the bathroom (even when you go) and offer the potty chair as you normally would, but don't be disappointed if she refuses, as this can often cause greater conflict and frustration for the child.

It may also help to offer incentives. We often used a sticker chart or some sort of positive reinforcement.

Ultimately, potty training seems to be on the child's schedule, not ours. And that can be frustrating especially when you're expecting another bundle of joy. Who wants to change diapers on double duty!

Best of luck to you and congrats on your baby to come.