Mums' stories

Hi, I had the same problem with my son at that age (he's now nearly 5!) All of the comments above are good. What worked for us was very similar to Sian22. My son would literally run the length of the house when he wanted a poo, thats how we could tell.......He refused to go on his potty at all, so I admit we took a step back to go forwards. I would put training pants on him and sit him on his potty, then after a couple of occasions of him getting comfy with this i started putting an open nappy inside his potty like a liner, then eventually i managed to pull the nappy away as he sat down and make a massive deal of it when he did his poo in the potty, and he realised it was no different an experience to when he thought the nappy was there! The other main part of it all was not punishing him or getting upset with him if he had an 'accident'!

hi sweetie dont worry its normal my son takes 3 steps forward and 4 steps back with potty training ive been thro it all, he will not do a poo in the toilet or the potty, just clean him up and dont make a big deal of it he will do it in the end i promise, it takes kids different times 2 develop he sounds like a typical little boy 2 me x

Hi ya. SOunds a tricky problem which I have yet to experience....however, apparently when I was a baby I had the same reaction to the "pooing" thing always wanting somewhere dark to go !! What about putting the potty in a mummy-made den ? Make light of it and then gradually"wean" him out of it. Has he seen mummy/daddy on the toilet ? This might help as well.....or so I have read. I dont know whether that is a stupid suggestion but guess anything will help ?? Good Luck. x

I swear by super nanny. She has alot of useful tips. I would ignore it when he goes any where else but on the potty. Sticker charts are a good idea, my children love stickers and will do anything to get a new one. Potty trainin is harder than people think!

Hiya.
I dont have first hand experience of this sort of problem however I do have a friend who experienced a similar problem with her son.
First of all though, I also have a son who turned 3 in last August and he only became potty trained in June/July of last year so please dont think that your son is slow by only just becoming potty trained. Apparantly as parents we feel alot of pressure to have our children dry by 2 and a half- 3 years but in fact many children arent completely ready until nearly 4 and health visitors etc dont see a problem unless they get to that age and arent showing any signs of becoming dry. Also I believe that boys tend to be potty trained than girls.
Anyway, my friend had a similar problem with her son. He was quite happy to wee on the potty and even used started to use the toilet but he just flat out refused to do a poo on either the toilet or potty.She was lucky in that her son would tell her when he wanted a poo and would ask for is nappy on. What she eventually tried was sitting him on the toilet or potty with his nappy on when he wanted to poo. It got him used to sitting on the toilet to poo but he also had the familiar feeling of doing it in his nappy. It took a while but eventually they did make progress and he is now happy to poo on the toilet. Does your son seem to poo at a certain time everyday? If so, maybe you could start putting his nappy on around that time so that he isnt doing it in his clothes or behind furniture. Alot of experts say that once you start potty training you shouldnt out the child back into a nappy as it confuses them but I found with my son that it was quite a comfort to him to know that at certain times he would be put back into a nappy. If you can get him to poo in is happy at certain times then maybe you could try putting him on the toilet with it on so he gets used to sitting on the toilet.
I found with my son aswell that he is very curious about where is poo goes after he either does it in the toilet or when his potty is emptied into the potty so we have talked about that and we also allow him to flush the toilet as he seems to like doing it.
I hope that some of this has helped at made sense to you and wish you luck. Its hard with potty training, I know I wsnt really sure where to start or how to go about it with my son x