Potty trouble....please Help!!

To start with you should never reward a child with treats. That is why so many kids are over weight today. Have you tried letting her pick out pretty panties to wear? Tell her she can only wear them if she doesn't mess her panties. It worked well with my daughter and my neice just did this last winter with her daughter and it worked. We took her to town and she picked out princess panties. She was told she couldn't wear them until she learned not to mess her panties and use the potty. From that day on she used the potty. Good Luck, hope this helps.

L., I don't know how you feel about enemas but that's the route I had to go for my son. He was peeing fine but wouldn't poop. So I gave him an enema and sat him on the pot, he went immediately. Then he started going poop on the potty by himself, because he didn't want another enema.
Good Luck,
Angel

Hi L.,

sorry to here about the poop issue. I also have a 2-1/2 daughter and she was also doing very well on the potty, the same as you. I was wondering if it change for you because of a very hard poo that was painful? That is when it changed for us. I call her doctor and he said that is not very uncommon,he sees that all the time. Little kids in toddler stage most of the time do not get enough fiber in there diets. The doctor said for me to put her on an over the counter stool softner called (miralax). The doctor said just half of the dose that is reccomended. I give it to my daughter every other day, she now goes much better but still with a little trouble. The doctor said to do it for several months or until she doesn't associate pooping
with pain. Whatever you do don't put her back into diapers or you will just be starting over again. I hope that this is of help to you.

Take care,
T.

Hi my name is Kim I have 3 kids two girls and one boy my youngest was or should I say is the hardest to potty train I thought she was potty trained then things didnt work out between me and her dad so we went to Jersey and she refused to go on the potty and what worked for her was I just let her walk around in a tee shirt no underwear but it didnt work in jersey as soon as we came back to florida she was peeing and pooping on the potty she still has few accidents but I think shes just lazy good luck to you.

I'm no potty expert, but can tell you that if all else fails and she's really just not ready to poo on the potty, you can buy a few potty training pants for her and that will save you the cost of months of pull-ups or diapers.

Good luck! It won't last forever. :)

I don't know if this will be helpful, but when my children were very young I did in home day care. There was a little boy who I watched who would not poop. The parents told me that at home he would ask for a diaper and they would give it to him, and he would go in a place to be alone and poop, and then they would change him. I made it very clear that I was not going to do that, but he never asked me. They finally took him to toys r us and let him pick out something that he wanted. They took it home and wrapped it and put it on the back of the toilet and told him that he could open it when he pooped on the potty. When he opened it they explained to him that it was not so bad pooping on the potty and he had to keep pooping on the potty to keep the toy.

On a side note I always kept 2 training pottys when my girls were potty training. One was in the living room, unless the one time out of the month we had company I would put it away, this was because someone told me that most accidents occured because a child was affraid to miss something. My younger daughter loved to sit on the potty and just watch TV. The other was in the bathroom. I hate to close the bathroom door, I hate all small spaces. I also encouraged my daughters to come sit on the second training potty that was in the bathroom every time I had to go. Sometimes they went and we wiped and washed. Sometimes they just talked my ear off.

I think you are on the right track. Don't give up, it will get better.

This isnt the most liked way to do it, but this is how we got my almost 4 year old to poop in the potty...
After 1 week of potty training he was still going poo in his pants....he would not sit on the potty to go, he was scared of it i guess.....one night hubby and i had had enough, we sat him on it and forced him to go.....took about 15 minutes of screaming and i guess what you would 'groundhogging' it......but he went, and me and hubby jumped up and down screaming and making a huge deal about it, and that was the end of it.......dont give up, dont go back to diapers....keep trying mama!

L.,

I literally just went through this!! My son just turned 3 and was potty trained to go #1 at 2, but I could not get him to do #2. I did the same thing you are doing now - asking for help from Mamasource. Nothing that the other mom's told me worked - not that they weren't great ideas, but they didn't work for him. The best advise I did get was from my pediatrician - "Just let them be and they will do it in their own time - offer a pull-up for poopy". So, I started telling him that if he had to go poopy he could put on a pull-up. It wasn't more than a day or to that passed and he was asking for a pull-up to go poopy. After a few weeks, I told him he could use his pull-ups, but he had to go into the bathroom to go poopy and that didn't seem to bother him. Then a few weeks went by and I told him that I wanted him to try and sit on the potty to do poopy, but he could leave his pull-ups on. This wasn't easy and he would only do it a couple times a week, but I didn't push it.

Then I had a light bulb flash in my head! Other parents have told me about the paci/binkie fairy where the fairy comes and takes away the pacifier and leaves a prize (just like the tooth fairy). I thought that if it worked for the pacifier (which we never used) then why wouldn't it work for this. So, I started telling him about the "pull-up" fairy and what she was all about. How one day she would come and take away all the pull-ups and leave a prize in the place where his pull-ups were. And that he would have to go poopy on the potty because the pull-up fairy thought that he was a big boy. This went on for about 6 months and I talked about the fairy every time we put on a pull-up asking him when he thought she might come. He got to the point where he would run to get a pull-up for me and to check to see if she had come yet.

Anyway - when she came she left a toy. That night he struggled and decided not to go on the potty, but he didn't go in his pants. The next day he did go in the potty and we had a great party. However, the following day he went in his pants. So, I took away the toy that the pull-up fairy gave him. Later that afternoon he had to go again and went in the potty so I gave him back his toy.

I know this is a long story, but this is what I had to go through. It wasn't this hard with my first - he did start to hold it, but the Dr. said to give hims some prunes. I got some and he loved them - so much that he ate about 10 of them in a row. Not more than 20 minutes after the last one, he looked at me and ran to the bathroom. He couldn't hold it! :-) From that point on he was fine!

Moral of the story - everyone has to do something different and as long as you don't push it, it will happen.

Happy New Year!
Sam