Potty Training Questions - Denver, CO

I believe that if you save bribery for the really big challenges, then it's okay to use rewards for something that is difficult for him. Research has proven that external incentives are best when ONLY used for particularly difficult or new tasks. So I might suggest offering a slightly bigger reward for going poop on the potty. I am also a fan of taking a day or two and leaving him naked or in underpants, not going anywhere, and taking him to sit on the potty about every 20 minutes. It's a long day, but it usually gets done fast. Also, if he ever pees sitting on the potty, then he might just end up going poop one time, and then he'll see it's not a big deal, and then if he gets an extra special reward for it, he'll want to do it again.

If that doesn't do it, I may be inclined to think he's not quite ready--especially if he's fine pooping in his pants. In that case I would likely wait a little longer and take it up again in a couple months.

Hope that helps. Best of luck.

S.
www.theparentpartner.com

We were having problems with pooping too. Does he have underpants with his favorite characters on them? If so, this might work. We told my son that Spiderman, Elmo, and The Transformers didn't like to get poop on them and it made them really sad if he pooped on them. When he did have accidents, we'd just emphasize that whoever he had on was really sad that he had pooped on them.
Good luck!

Potty training is a process, requiring complete coordination of mind and body, plus the psychological will to do it. There is absolutely no way that a parent can "move this process along". Some children do the whole thing in one day, and others "work on it" for over a year.

Unfortunately, the more the parents "participate", the more likely the child is to not "move forward". I suggest that you 100% stop discussing this issue. Your son will naturally accomplish potty training in his own good time.

I'm sorry if that sounds like your efforts are useless, but to a large extent, our efforts are useless in this developmental stage. (Did this with 3 kids. One of them took one day at age 3.5, one of them took one week under age 2, and the third started and stopped.)

Does he poop in his pants around the same time every day? If so, put him on the toilet at that time every day until he goes. I am not sure if it will work, but it's a suggestion. Good luck!

Make it a GREAT day!

S.

you know, we just went through this with our 3 yo son. We started potty training about a month before his 3rd bday. He had the same issue with going #2 in the potty. I have talked to several other parents and our peditritian and it seems to be quite normal and just something you have to push through (no pun intended). Soon he will be ready. Our son is still reluctant to go #2 and tries to put it off but goes great once he decides to go (or we decide he has to try..). We've been "practicing" for about 2 months now. I know it seems like a long time, but from everything I've heard, you just can't rush it. It will happen when he is ready. Emphasize that you want him to stay clean and dry - hopefully that will discourage him from going in his underpants. Our son only had maybe 3 accidents in his. Then he started saving it for nap or bedtime, when he also had a diaper on. Soon he started on the potty and did well. It will happen. It is just hard to be patient. Good luck. I totally understand. :o)

We are PT our 2 1/2 year old son now as well. He also has trouble pooping in the potty and would rather go in his underwear, I think because he can stand up, which is how he always went in his diaper. When he is ready for his regular poop, which is typically afternoon, we go to the potty and tell him he can not come out of the bathroom until he poops. He does pitch a fit, but when we give in and tell him he can come out, it's not long before the poop comes out too, in his pants! So we've had to be a bit harder with it and sit outside the bathroom while he tries. Once he has really tried, we let him come out and try again in 15 minutes, doing the same thing. I did not want to really take this approach but his 18 month old sister is pooping on the potty with little complaint so I really believe this age can do it. Someone told me you can't control what goes in your child's body or what comes out but I do believe that it's ok to tell them the only acceptable place to poop is in the potty. It may help to let him run around naked if you can near the time he normally poops, this has helped us too when we can do it. He does sometimes put up a fuss when he has to go sit on the potty, but we leave the room if he does and he normally calms down in a little bit and reads some books in there. It's all about giving him time to relax while sitting there, so we don't go very many places in the afternoon. I also tell him we can't go play or we can't do this or that until he poops, a bit of incentive. We also give him a quarter for his bank each time poop gets in teh potty, a bit of bribery that we could probably do without but I don't think it's hindering him. Good luck!

My sister is going through the same thing. I ordered an e-book on ebay for $3. It seems like good advice. It's a three day type of deal, but takes a little longer with the prep work and everything. For $3....it might be worth a shot.

We just ordered it yesterday, so haven't tried it yet.

At 2 1/2 I would say that it's more an issue of not being quite ready, than of fear or constipation. Bladder control and bowel control are 2 different mechanisms and he may not quite understand how to hold it till he gets to the potty and how to let it out once he's there.
We had the same issue with my daughter about this age. We could kind of tell when she had to go, but I'm not sure she could yet, and she didn't know how to let it out. We would sit her on the toilet when we could see the signs she needed to go, then ready stories so that she would stay for maybe 10 minutes. By the time the story was done, nature usually had taken course and she had pooped in the potty. We congratulated her and let her look before we flushed (she was fascinated by how it looked -eeww!) and within a few weeks, she was doing a lot better by herself.

The MAIN thing I had to remember when my daughter learned how to potty was that it's in HER control, on HER schedule, not mine.
As frustrated as it can be to clean up afterward, all the laundry, etc. This is something that we as parents have no control over, we can support, we can provide options, but we cannot make them go when we think they "should".

If he doesn't care one way or the other about underpants or is afraid to potty it sounds like he may not be ready for learning to use the potty yet. It's so warm out lately, if you've a back yard you might consider letting him outside bum-naked so he can make the connection with what his body is doing. I've read that kids have to see their body eliminating before they really make the connection between the feeling & the action.
Good job mommin'!

I had my son help me clean it up after months of a similar routine. If he refused he sat in time out till he was ready to help. He did most of the work and then I did a more thorough job after he was done. He hated it but he's stubborn so 2 weeks of cleaning up his big boy underwear and he stopped. It was the only thing that worked for me. Bribes, punishment, waiting till he was ready did not work. He was peeing before his second birthday. He was completely potty trained a month after his 3rd.

You can go the approach of having him clean it up or just let him wear the diaper for it - we did both at times. My son wanted a diaper to poop and some days I think he would still wear one though he is fully potty trained. We've put some on him at night for accidents and in the morning he doesn't want it off sometimes. Anyhow, some kids just aren't as aware that it can be taboo, or that it is greater to use the toilet. They'll come around.

Both of my boys went through something very similar. I suggest that you praise his successes and ignore his shortcomings and soon enough he'll be motivated to poop on the potty. With my recently potty trained son who is 3 he was slightly afraid, but more than that didn't really know how to poop on the potty. There was a book that helped him a lot. It caused a bit of a break through. "Once upon a potty" It explains bodily functions in a way kids can understand.
Hang in there and good luck!

My son did the very same thing. The only thing that got him on the right track was having him go without pants & underwear! When we knew it was going to be time for #2 soon, I'd have him go bare-bottomed - even though he had no qualms about pooping in his pants, he did NOT want to poop on the ground, and he'd make a bee-line for the potty. After a few successful times with that, we put pants back on, and he did great. Once he went a whole week with no accidents, we got him a toy that he'd been eyeing. Hope that helps - hang in there!

We have been trying to potty train our boy since he was 2.5 years old. He is now almost 3.5 years old and still not potty trained. He also does not mind having messy pants. What I have learned is that no matter how often you take them, remind them, praise them or whatever you are doing, they will not be potty trained until they are ready. In their time, not ours. Sorry. But every child is different and on their own growing up time schedule. Hang in there the light will go on in his head eventually.
About Me...
Mother of two grown girls, Grandmother of 3 boys and 1 girl.

I've potty trained 3, and am working on the last now. I've have found that pee comes first, and they are "poop" trained about 3-4 months later. Our rule, which worked for every child, was "You may put your poop on the potty or in a diaper." They all would bring me a diaper, or ask for one, and I'd change them and put them back in pants after. I suppose I could have forced the issue, but healthy children all train when they're ready, and my issue was not having to clean up undies. Oh--one more idea that worked for one of my kids was the portable DVD player in the bathroom so there was 30 minutes of distraction on the potty. :) I love reading to my kids, but liked having another time-consuming option while they were learning to go. Good luck!

Your DS sounds very much like mine. He wasn't afraid or constipated, he just didn't care! Unfortunately, it took us a year (started trying at age 2 1/2 like you, and finally had poop success at age 3 1/2). Here's what my dr recommended to us at his 3 1/2 year appt, which is exactly what we did with a 'twist' I'll explain next. I should mention this is 'shorthand' of what he scribbled down on paper for us:

1. 2 – 4 wks do nothing
2. Pick a day to spend full time with your child – limited/no distractions/siblings
3. Put him in underwear
4. Put out the toilet(s)
5. Give him soda and juice to drink, lots of salty chips and snacks – fill him up with junk food and drink (to generate pee and poo)
6. Create a box of prizes – preferably something he can see through or into easily
a. Let him pick one prize every time he pees or poos in the toilet (eventually switch to only giving him toys if he goes poo in the toilet).
7. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell him to go potty at all!
8. If /when he has an accident go back to the spot where he had the accident was and do the following exercise together:
a. Say "When you feel it" (grab your bum like you've got the urge to poo)
b. "Jump up"
c. and run to the bathroom
d. Have him pull his pants down
e. Sit on the toilet
f. Pull his pants back up
g. Repeat 5 – 10 times

9. Remain Positive always – most important

The trick for us though was the size of the toys. He did eventually get bored of the little toys, and we finally switched to big, large toys. I was able to afford this by renting them from babyplays.com. It worked great, and I figured it was cheaper than buying pull ups or diapers. We now are using the rented toys to help him stay dry at night. While I understand many kids (esp boys) are unable to stay dry at this age, I suspect, for various reasons, our DS just plain doesn't care. So far he has stayed dry twice (even got up to go pee once during the night) of the 5 days we've been trying.

For my kids it was really easy to tell when they were pooping and so I would watch. And as soon as they started pooping I would tell them that was what they were doing and then gently remind them that we poop in the toilet and not our pants. Then take him into the bathroom and sit him on the toilet. Sometimes I would also remind them of the actions that we do when we have to go poop and show them how we do it on the toilet (ie grunting and pushing the poops out). For a few of my kids they were poop trained before potty because it was much easier to tell when they had to go poop than potty. He may not realize what he is feeling as he is doing it and it might take a couple of times to tell him that he is going poop and making him aware of what it feels like to have to go poop. Just keep it up and he will have it soon. The suggestion of staying home for a couple of days are really hitting it hard was a good one too. I did that with my now 3 yr old DS and had him trained in a weekend.
J.--SAHM of 6

Hate to say it, he's not ready. At this point you're doing all the thinking for him and that doesn't do him any good.

Pull back, give him diapers and get him a treat he really, really wants. Put it in plain view and very nonchalantly let him know when he goes poop in the toilet he gets the treat. For us it was super fancy lollipops. My DS stared at them for 4 months before deciding he wanted one bad enough. The day he decided he woke up, went poop and demanded a 'pop. He got one and has been accident free and fully trained, since.

This is after several fits and starts of peeing in the toilet and trying to wear underwear, BTW.

My son, who just turned 4, has been working on the whole potty training since he was 3. As many moms have already said, they will basically do it on their own terms. I have the same issue with cleaning up poopie underpants as you. I just hate it. So we have gone to saying if you wear underpants then you are choosing to go poopie and potty in the toilet. If you don't want to do that, then let's put a diaper or pull-up on you. That way he has the control over his choice and I don't have to clean up poopie underpants.

I have tried all the potty toys and potty stickers and singing when we are in the bathroom together, but none of that made much difference. He has had to just do it on his own. We did get a fun book called "Even Firefighters go to the Potty." And somehow we magically found out that if he goes poopie on the potty he likes to get to go to Grammie's house. So my mom and I work together to get him some time at Grammie's house when he does poop in the toilet. The funniest thing that works is when I tell him to definitely NOT go poopie or potty on the toilet. I make it a game and say teasingly, "Don't go in there. Don't do it. Don't use the toilet." Then he always gets the mischeivous grin on his face and runs in to use the toilet.

But overall, he has just had to do it on his own terms. I can talk about it and he can watch videos and read books about it, but then it was all on his own timing.

Good luck.

He's not too young to help clean up his undies & himself. My son was in charge of cleaning himself up-rinsing the undies in the toilet (yes, we had a couple flushed-just plunge afterward) & rinsing the poop off with the shower head (we've always had one on a hose that they can rinse themselves with). If it's a genuine accident, clean him up, but if he just doesn't go in the potty chair, let him take care of it. Maybe him having to clean up after himself (make sure you check that his little bum is clean!) will be incentive for him to poop in the potty chair. We had lots of poop accidents. If the undies are too bad to save-he's sat on it for a long time or something-it's okay to throw them out!