Help! My 4 Year Old Won't Poop in the Potty!

I have a three year old who does the same thing, I know it's frusterating, but if you catch acting like he has to poop make him go to the bathroom. I know you don't catch them everytime, but that is what I have been trying to do.

I think your 4 year old is typical to not poop on the potty.
The body requires more work to poop than pee and their bodies are too small to be in a good position to push. Keep trying to make it fun and it will happen. I would stop punishing because it could lead to the child stopping all together which would be so much worse than your current situation. It will happen some day but not today. Instead, think of all the great things your brilliant 4 year old can do.

Do NOT Punish!! It will backfire and result in more serious behavioral problems in the long run.

How long as he been potty trained? Many kids will be potty trained to pee in the potty but then take another 4-6 MONTHS before they are pooping in the potty. Make sure he has a step stool so he can push with his feet - it's darn near impossible to push poop out with dangling feet.

Has he ever pooped in the toilet? If he's been peeing in the toilet for a long time and now having poop accidents it could be encopresis. It's very common - 1 out of 10 children ages 4-10 have it - but it's usually misdiagnosed as the child simply 'not trying' instead of an uncontrollable issue. It's when a child gets impacted (constipated) so much that there is a hard lump of poop inside and soft poop flows around it and into the underwear - the child CAN NOT CONTROL IT. Most parents don't realize the child is constipated because he/she is "pooping" one or more times a day and it's soft. Most parents simply think their child is being defiant and choosing to poop in their underwear when, in fact, they can't control it.

Talk with your doctor. Get an x-ray (the only real way to tell if he's impacted). Then discuss it with a pediatric gastroentologist becuase most pediatricians aren't very knowledgable. Once it's diagnosed it can easily take 6-12 months or longer to get it under control... the early it's diagnosed, the easier it is to fix. The treatment is usually a cleanout (lots of Miralax - like 5-7 capfuls a day for 3-4 days), then daily dose of Miralax to keep stools soft (usually about a capful) and changes in diet (limit dairy to 1-2 servings a day or cutout completely, no mac & cheese, no apple juice/apple sauce, lots of fiber) to prevent further constipation while the colong shrinks back to it's normal size.

My little guy (now almost 6) was like that too. We tried everything. Then after a trip to his cousins where he feel in love with army guys, I came up with the idea of working for a toy he so badly wanted. I googled army guys, got a picture of a toy he wanted, and copied it. I then made it into a sheet of tickets, cut it out, and sat him down. I told him for every time he pooped in the potty, he got ten tickets. Afterwards, he was allowed to place his earned tickets in the jar (an old mason jar with the same army guy picture on it). Once the jar was filled, I explained, he and I would then go to the toy store and by it. He was actually excited about the idea. Once he started and saw the jar start to fill up, we were at Toys R Us within a week. Plus, he learned how to count and the value of working to earn something he wanted.

Please do not punish him. He is probably responding to something in his environment. It sounds like you have a very busy life. I have a child also on the autism spectrum and these kids take a lot of time. Mine is the youngest in the family so I have had different things to deal with. My 10 year old (boy) had a hard time up until 4 and even now has problems holding when he has to pee. I think we try to hard to make our kids fit into the "pattern" of how potty training should go but our kids don't read those manuals. They are different and we have to sometimes go back to the drawing board to figure out what would be best for this situation. I would not make a big deal about it but encourage him to go. The more attention he gets the more he may fight you. He will get tired of sitting in that stuff soon.

Have you tried the book EVERYBODY POOPS? Sometimes they need the reassurance that this is something that is natural and that everyone and animals , etc. do it too. There are video tapes and other helps out there, too when words from mom & dad just don't seem to do the trick.

Also, when Abbie went thru this after she was potty trained, I had her help wash out her underwear. It only took 2-3 times of her not liking that to make sure it got done in the potty! I told her I didn't like washing them out any more than she did and that it was NOT necessary to have to do it if she went in the potty.

i am having the same problem. let me know what advice you get and if it works. Thanks so much

I know this might sound strange, but have you tried just having him go around the house bottomless. That worked for my little guy (but he was 2 1/2). My son would start running around the house wanting me to put his pants back on, and I wouldn't. I would just keep saying "go sit on the potty, you don't want it to go on the floor". Eventually he would run and sit on the potty and go. When I started noticing that he would just go straight to the potty and go, that is when I started letting him go around in just underware and eventually all bottoms. We also did a special sticker chart. Everytime he went #2 in the potty he got to put a very special shiny star on the sticker chart. At first EVERY TIME he got a sticker he got a special prize (something small and cheap, but he liked it) eventually I started making it every few times. Once it got to a point where I had to remind him to put his sticker on, I quit reminding him, filled up the last row with stickers and gave him his last prize. I didn't make a big deal out of it being the LAST one, I just let him "forget" about the chart.

C.,

there was a thread on this site not too long ago about a medical condition where kids have a problem with the nerves in their rectum and don't feel the urge so they have trouble with soiling. It would be a good idea to have him checked out by his doctor just to be sure it is only a behavioral issue.

M.

Dear C.,
He needs a big incentive to go potty. My son did the same thing. I told him he could go over and play with Brandon's toys and we could eat pizza if he went on he potty. So he went on the potty and we went to play at Brandon's house. He did have an accident after that but for the most part it was successful. Found out something that he really likes and tell him we would do that activity but since you can't go potty on the potty we can't go. Tell him that he has to go on the potty for a week and then you will go to this special event to celebrate. Make it a big deal. I think he will come around.
L. J

C., my son is 3 and we just wnet through the same thing, he would pee inthe potty all day but when it came time to poop, he wanted a pull up. we tried everything too, fianlly we got one of those seats that you put on the potty, and we would "practice" going potty. one day he had to go poop and wanted a pull up, i told him that he at least had to try to go on the potty first, then if he couldnt he could have a pull-up. we "tried" about 10 times until he couldnt hold it in anymore and he pooped on the potty. he ws scared wheile it was happening, but after it was over he was sooo excited!! while we were sittting there we talked about all the brave people that use a potty when they go poopy, you know, spiderman, superman, etc...
good luck
C.

Hi C. - I'm a mom of an autistic 4 year old who wouldn't poop on the potty until that age. He would pee on the potty, but not poop. He's very high functioning, so I knew he could do it. I knew he could sense he needed to, but he wouldn't do it. We had one success when he was three and he was so freaked out about it, he'd never go again.

Here's what worked for us. Two of the teachers at his preschool (granted, this is pretty special, but if there's a teacher at your son's preschool or another adult you know who is REALLY good at potty training, enlist their aid) came to our home.

They brought a bin with a lid that had a big blue ribbon on it. Inside, there were prizes that I had purchased that included the CARS (movie) cars of every variety (if your son likes them and you can't find different ones, look on eBay), coloring books, etc. Anything that I could afford that would fill it up and were things he really liked. The first prize he would get was a big one and didn't fit in the box. It was something he really wanted.

The teachers also brought an 8 1/2 x 11 laminated sheet with pictures of Lightning McQueen, Mac, Thomas the Tank Engine, Geo Trax toys, etc. that they printed from the internet and corresponded to the toys that were in his treasure box. There were also pictures of the golden arches (he likes cheeseburgers) and a camera (likes to have his picture taken) as options for complying. I taped that up in front of the potty and kept reinforcing for him that if he went poop on the potty, he could choose one of those prizes.

Then, the teachers put him on the potty and sat with him for 20 minute intervals. 20 on, 20 off, etc. They gave him books to look at and explained to him that he needed to put poop in the potty so that he could get a prize. After the third attempt, he did it. We made a big deal of it and he got his big prize. We were sure to ask him if he was proud of himself rather than just expresssing our pride in his efforts. I had one accident the next day followed by three successes and have had no problems ever since. It was almost as if we had created a monster, because he liked getting prizes, but after a couple of weeks, we were able to cut back to stickers or small candies (like tootsie rolls) and then just praise. He now takes himself without a problem.

It really helped to have other adults that he knew and trusted around. It had been such a frustrating process for us that I think hearing it from his teachers took out the emotion involved when Mommy or Daddy were trying to inspire, help or when we finally resorted to punishing him.

A friend of ours spent three weeks preparing her son that on a particular day, they were going to throw out the pull-ups! In preparation for that day, she took her son to the store and let him pick-out all of his underwear, let him buy the special soaps and flushable wipes that are designed for kids and then let him pick out a prize for his first success. She kept talking to him about throwing out the pull-ups that day. As it was a garbage day, first thing in the morning she handed him a brand-new package of pull-ups and let him take out each one and put them in the big trash can. Then they watched while the garbage truck too them away. (She told me she felt guilty about the waste of money, not to mention the environmental issue with that, but was desperate.) It worked. That afternoon he went on the potty, got his prize, and has been doing it ever since. He tells people stories about the day that he became a big-kid. It wouldn't have worked with my son, but I admired the pomp of it!

Good Luck!