my 4 and a half yr old son will not go #2 in the toilet unless he is naked, he will hold it until he goes in his pants. we have tried everything and now he is starting to not take time to go #1 until he goes a little in his pants. he absolutely hates sitting on the toilet, freaks out and cries the whole time. he will go pretty much every day if we keep his pant and undies off, but if we keep them on he wont go for days. we have stuff everyday now so it's hard to keep them off. and he is old enough he should not be running around naked! I am about to break please help!!!!!!!!!!!
thank you everyone for helping. and no his diet has not changed, i give him lots of fiber and he is a water boy!!! i know it is not accidents, that is what me and my husband say to him all the time! we have been potty training him for probably 2 yrs. he does good for awhile then for some reason he goes backwards! me and HIS DAD have tried everything!!!! we have been patient with him, we have paid him so he can go get a toy with his own money when he saves up enough money, we have taken things away, we have been mean about it and told him that mom would get in alot of trouble if he poo's at school, kept him naked, made him wash out his own underware, and now he is currently grounded. i think that it is constipation cause he holds it. he isn't affraid of the toilet. it just seems to me that he just thinks that he is going to miss out on whatever he is doing if he goes potty. i have tried miralax to be honest it worked but...he was seriously pooping in his pants about 4 times a day! we had to stop it cause when me and my husband were on our honeymoon my mother in law took him into the bathroom and i guess he had gone ALOT and he didn't even know. he cries while he is on the toilet because he doesn't want to be on there. but thank you everyone for your ideas.
ok, gonna be blunt here, but did your 4 y.o diet change recently that is making his poo time hurtful for him? how does his poo look when he does go? is it dark and hard? maybe you need to check those things to make sure that the reason he doesnt want to go is it might be hurting him.
He is 4 1/2 and each child is different, but ultimately the behavior is not going to work for either of you. If you start early with responsibility then that may be a gift you give him for life. I don't know why your son is only comfortable naked. Those strange phenomenons always steer me towards homeopathy. Although that is not my speciality. If he poops in his pants then make him clean them. If he goes on the pot then reward him with something reasonable that you can do for a long time thats good for everyone. Maybe a sticker on the wall in the bathroom and when he gets 5 then you go for ice-cream or something special. Maybe something totally whacky like getting a new funky toilet seat that has seashells pressed into it would help....who knows. Maybe he's just ahead of his time and knows that pooping in our drinking water is weird. At any rate....just be firm with the fact that he knows to go on the pot. Maybe he will work on the agreement that he can totally take his pants and underwear off when he goes potty.
My 4 year old has similar problems. It sounds so weird, but for him, it's constipation. He just holds his poop instead of wanting to stop to go to the toilet. That can cause constipation. Then, the doctor explained encopresis. He said that when he's constipated, the stool around the outside is softer and oozes out. So my son gets smears in his underwear. The pressure in his lower (sigmoid) colon makes it impossible to hold his pee anymore, either. So we live almost constantly with poop smear and pee-damp underwear.
DS's doctor prescribed MiraLax for DS. That won't work for your son if he's only constipated because he's holding it. It didn't really work for us, either. i think I gave him too much. So what works best for us is that when I smell even a faint poop smell around DS, or if he's acting like his bum is bothering him (he sort of picks at his pants) I tell him he has to go sit on the toilet "until he makes a snake." (that's what he said the first time he went on the toilet, so we stick with it) He resisted at first, but now he obeys.
It sounds like your son might be having some sort of vicious cycle going on, where he holds his poop, gets constipated, and then it hurts to poop, so he's afraid of the toilet. So he holds it, which makes him more constipated, which means it hurts more, etc.
I'm not sure what to do about it. You could talk to your doctor, or call the nursing staff at his office. If you have MiraLax, you could try that, but don't give him much (we gave DS too much once and it was NOT pretty!) You could also try to up his fiber.
Would getting out the potty seat help? You don't suppose he's afraid of the actual toilet, do you? Some kids get afraid of crazy little things like the water splashing up when they poop, or falling in, or the sound of the flush, or their feet not touching the floor, etc. And just because he wasn't afriad before doesn't me he isn't now. Stay calm and positive (easier said than done!!!) and try to talk to him about why he cries on the toilet. You may discover his fear. Maybe he'll tell you it hurts, and then you can teach him that holding it makes it hurt.
As for going naked, that's a totally normal potty-training technique. Don't listen to people who accuse you of not knowing what you're doing. My boys were naked when potty training. My 4 year old prefers to be naked at all times, but the way we "weaned" him off of being naked all day for potty training is by requiring him to have underwear on. That's still a rule. And if he wants to go outside, he must have pants on. That's the house rule.
I hate pull-ups, but sometimes we just have to have them. DS wears them at night still, and if we're going somewhere that he might have an accident, or if he's likely to fall asleep in the car, I make him wear one. I also like to have an empty soda cup or water bottle for my boys to pee into if we're nowhere near a bathroom. My 4 year old has a hard time holding it after he's realized he needs to go, so immediate access to relief is necessary!
Make sure there aren't any medical problems or a genuine fear of the toilet.
If those two things aren't the problem and he is indeed doing it on purpose, have him sit in it. Gross, huh? Take him to a washable surface and have him sit it his poopy pants for a few minutes. I guarantee he won't like the feeling and it will give him some incentive to do it right.
A., it
s time to put a stop to this behavior. He is not having accidents, he is intentionally pooping and peeing on himself, and that is no accident. He does not need to be naked, I raised 3 kids and been potty training other peoples children in my daycare for 13 years and have never heard of such a thing. What I am wondering where are the dads? this is the second post today about potty training, where are the dads? at age 2 my husband was teaching our boys how to stand up and go. I'm sorry, but I would not tollerate that kind of behavior. J.
Maybe a reward every time he has a bowel movement in the toilet. Something inexpensive like stickers and a sticker book to keep them in.
