Refusing to poop?

MrsEKC

Okay, so my 2 1/2 year old son has been potty trained or at least pee trained for 6 weeks now and has been wearing underwear all day.  He only wears a pull-up at night.  He must be afraid to poop on the potty or maybe it hurts, not sure, but he will not poop on the potty.  He did poop in the potty twice the first week he was in his underwear and hasn't gone since.  For the first couple weeks he would wait until we put his pull-up on at night and go then.  Now he won't go at all and just holds it in.  He cries and keeps telling me his tummy and his rear end hurt, yet he won't let it out.  My pedi recommended putting a pull-up on him when he needs to poop.  Not sure if this is the best approach or not.  I'm afraid since he has been doing so well with the underwear that it might give him the wrong message that it is okay to go in his pants and confuse him that he has to pee in potty, but he can poop in diaper.  I have heard of some parents using Miralax or Benefiber.  Anyone else experience this?  What did you do and how effective was it?  How long after were they pooping regularly in potty.  Thanks.  Sorry for the novel.

JulieandBen

When I trained Jack we used Miralax and I also majorly upped his fiber intake and tried to eliminate as much of the typical starchy toddler diet food as I could. This was all to help make passing of poop really soft and easy on Jack. He went through the holding it for a couple hours two days in a row. The second day was so painful to him I was in tears on the phone to his pedi (My pedi told me this is very common especially with boys and it can last until they are about three. The hard part was she told me it's something they have to work through on their own. That broke my heart hearing there wasn't anything I could do until Jack figured it out on his own.) and my husband had to come home from work. It turned out he wasn't just holding his poop that day but his pee as well. Finally the pee came gushing out on the floor so my husband rushed him to the toilet to finish. The pain stopped so we assumed it was just pee. Nope twenty minutes later it was poop too. My husband went and sat down on the toilet to poop and had Jack come hang out with him on his little stool. He explained that sometimes you have to sit for a couple minutes to let it come out. My husband went back to work and a few minutes later Jack started crying that he had to poop. He ran to the toilet and asked me to sit on the stool and keep him company. Then he jumped up and said he didn't have to go anymore. He got to the door, turned around, and sat back down and pooped. It was amazing how proud I was of my little guy. About an hour later, he screamed in panic that 'poopoo was coming' so I told him not to panic and just to run to the toilet telling him he knew what to do. He went and that was the end of our struggles. This was all in the week we trained him. It didn't go further.

I suggest praise, prizes, and perhaps work toward a big prize. We had to work up to the poops. I took a tiny bud vase and told Jack he could put a cotton ball in each time he pooped. He would get a prize that he had mentioned he wanted when the vase was full. It was a tiny vase and he filled it in one day. The little ***:) This also worked to get him to go to the bathroom (pee) at school. My kid is a camel. He'd hold it from 8am until 3pm when I'd pick him up. He'd get through nap time, playground time and everything. 

Sticker charts can be helpful too. I liked the cotton balls in the bud vase. I think it took six to fill it up. I'm pretty sure I let him put two in for each poop. We kept the vase and cotton balls in the bathroom so he could do it after each poop.