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Parenting
littlestjerry
member
Desperate PT question
littlestjerry
member
in Parenting
Ok, so, DS turned 3 in September. We began potty training in mid-August because his school made us basically. He got peeing on the potty very quickly, and I can't remember the last time he had a pee accident. He pooped on the potty once maybe 2 months ago. He was rewarded with high fives, chocolate, and a new toy. He has not done it again.
He "hides" either in his playroom or under the couch in the basement or in our closet to poop. He does not care that there is shit in his underwear. He tells us that babies poop in their pants, but still does it, all while asserting that he is a big boy. We have offered everything under the sun as a reward for pooping on the potty. The toy he got when he pooped the one time sits on a shelf in his playroom, and he knows he can play with it again if he poops on the potty again.
I don't know what to do. His pedi said to encourage him to "hide" in the bathroom at the very least, but if we try to get him to poop anywhere but where he wants to hide, he clams up and won't poop for like a day. Then his belly hurts because he's plugged himself up.
The only progress I see him making is that he will at least entertain the idea of pooping on the potty by sitting on it sometimes while talking about pooping on the potty, but he never actually poops.
Is this normal? What do I do? Will this kid ever poop on the potty? It's been almost 4 months of PT, and I'm sick of cleaning poop out of his underwear.
And one more time for good measure: poop.
DS is 1DAF
"I realize I say the word fuck a lot, and I'd like to apologize but I don't give a shit." -Lewis Black
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Desperate PT question
Do you know when he's hiding to poop? Could be be hiding to have privacy and when he's in the bathroom he's got your attention?
Would he poop on a toilet in the playroom?
How often does he poop? Could he be constipated/in pain?
I didn't do rewards. I just reminded him that poop goes in the potty. Each time he pooped his pants I would take him to the bathroom, dump his poop in the toilet, have him flush, and repeat to me over and over again that poop goes in the potty. I would put him in the tub and wash him off.
I read a few things about it and even though I knew getting angry wasn't the way to go, it was hard. Bc poop in underwear. Every day.
I wish I had a magic strategy that worked but for us it was just time. One day, out of the blue, he just stopped. He started telling us when he had to poop and hasn't had an accident since. With him it was always about control. And a bit of readiness. But mostly control. So we waited him out. Sorry I don't have anything more earth shatteringly helpful for you.
The only thing that really helped was that another little girl at daycare would poop on the potty. It was a small, in-home daycare so the provider would take those two to potty breaks together to encourage each other. Once she started doing that with them it was only about 2 weeks before she would consistently poop in the potty.
Whenever we saw her go to her "pooping spots" we would grab her and run to the potty. She thought us running frantically was funny and the laughing helped her relax to go on the toilet. I really think seeing someone else her age go made the difference though.
Finally, I have her a pull-up bc I didn't want her to make herself sick. She took the biggest poop ever. There were times where she would hold her pee as well because she was afraid if she sat on the potty to pee her poop would come out. She held her pee over like 15 hours. Finally gave her a pull-up to poop and she ended up peeing in it and it took two pull-ups before she got all the poop and pee out.
She would literally scream and cry and shake if I tried to make her poop on the potty. She was terrified. She didn't even know why, she just was.
Finally, we told her she could have pull ups to poop until she felt ready but that she was not allowed to pee in them. We ended up doing that for almost a year. It worked for us- bc it kept her from holding everything in and causing more problems. She would wear underwear and always pee on he potty but when she needed to do poop she would ask for a pull-up, go poop, and then get changed back to underwear. Every few days I would ask her if she wanted to try on the potty. Sometimes she would sit. A few times she actually went but it didn't stick. Finally one day she said "I need to go poop on the potty". And she did. We had to talk her through it for the first couple days, sit with her and tell her "it's ok, just push a little, breathe" lol but that was it. Never asked for a pull-up again. After a week when I was sure that was it I was so damn happy I bought her a power wheels barbie convertible. LMAO.
TL;DR- I have no advice. PT sucks. Poop is the worst. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do! Hang in there!!
Oh and to add- she was a few months shy of 3 when pee trained and a little over 3.5 when poop trained.
I hope that he stops soon and realizes that poop on the potty is 10000000x better than in pants.
DS took longer to poop in the toilet as well. He had constipation issues from holding poop long before potty training, so I didn't push it with him during training and he eventually got comfortable with it. He would ask for a diaper/pull-up to poop and we let him until then.
Are you opposed to telling him he can ask for a pull-up to poop?
He's been peeing on the potty for a while, but we haven't pushed the potty training because if we tried to make him poop on the potty he would shake and cry. He pooped willingly on the potty twice -- both times because he was naked. We tried m&m's for potty treats and that did not work.
We took him to the store and let him pick out big boy undies, and a toy (preferably something with lots of figurines in one big box. We got a set of Octonaut characters, but our friend used individually wrapped matchbox cars). We keep the toy box in the bathroom and explain that when he poops in the potty he can have one of the toys. He's allowed to hold the box and look at the toys while he sits to potty; we count them and he names the characters and we ask him which toy he wants next. We talk about poop a lot -- he kinda seemed confused between pee and poop and gas so we had to explain that poop is brown and comes out of your bottom.
We only just started this on thanksgiving day (best thanksgiving ever, with a naked baby running around the kitchen and talking about poop all day.) He's had two (pee) accidents since but it's mostly because we put him in a pull up for church yesterday and because he was excited to go to daycare today and didn't want to take the time to pee.
He's turning 3 this month, so I know how frustrating the hiding and reusing to poop thing is. Good luck!
Finally, months later, he told her he wasn't scared anymore and just started magically pooping on the potty. Obviously she didn't show this to him, but she was like, "wtf?! I didn't even realize he was scared."
For my kid, we had this issue for a couple weeks. I started letting him watch videos on my phone while trying to poop. I don't usually let him anywhere near the phone. That worked while all the previous rewards did not.
Good luck. PT was/is seriously the hardest thing I did as a parent.