I am having a very difficult time potty training my little girl...I am now at my wits end! She is 3 & 1/2 yrs old. She has been peeing in the potty for almost a year but she refuses to poop in the potty. I have tried everything and I am out of ideas. She knows where she is supposed to go but she promises me that she will never poop again (everytime she poops in her pants). My son was completely potty trained at 3. My husband was here to help with him but now my husband is in Iraq so I am doing this all alone and I am about to loose my mind. My little girl has even started vomiting becasue of her refusing to not poop. I don't know what to do. Any suggestions will help me!
Thank you so much for everone's response to my request! I really appreciate everyones advice. I have made my little girl clean up her own messes but that didn't seem to help much (she likes to clean). So now I have started reading her a book while she uses the potty and that has seemed to help, she still doesn't like to go but once I start reading to her she relaxs enough to go!
Heard this DVD is a huge help - Potty Power for Boys and Girls. Might be worth a try...we ordered one but haven't gotten it yet.
http://www.amazon.com/Potty-Power-Boys-Girls/dp/B0002B55D...
i am having the same exact issue....i am out of options, so i have been ignoring it, in hopes that this "control issue" will pass.
ok...sit down.. I know this is going to sound harsh but I was given this piece of advice by a childcare provider with a masters degree in childhood education. Make her wash out her pants and panties. My daughter did the same thing to me when she was 3 1/2. I tried everything from rewards, trips to Chuck E. Cheese, new books, toys, icecream, and yes even 1 spanking. Nothing helped. We are not allowed back at a local McDonald's b/c of a poop accident that my daughter had there, but thats a whole 'nother story. The only thing that stopped it was making her clean out her panties. My daughter did not like having to wash them out and get her hands dirty. It only took about 1 week of her having to wash them out for her behavior to change. I know that this sounds very harsh but I found that my daughter understood that going in her pants wasn't healthy or a "good choice" and by having her clean up her mess she was more willing to try to make it to the potty. I hope this helps I know first hand how frustrating that can be.
I am editing this to say that it doesn't sound like from your post that she is doing it for attention like the other responses indicate and thus my response:
Well, first either talk to your pedi & maybe try some stool softner and make sure she is drinking enough water, massaging her tummy and warm baths all help. It may actually hurt her to have a bm. And the longer she holds it in the more it will hurt. My neice was the same way. She would go poopy on the potty for me (probably because I wasn't mommy), but I would also let her squeeze my hand as hard as she needed to to get the poop out. She would literally be in tears most of the time because it hurt so bad. So the reason (probably) she can't do it on the potty is because she is afraid of it hurting and when she is allowed to get off the potty and go play she relaxes and has the bm.
I would never punish a child who didn't make it to the bathroom in time. They are young and learning and are going to have accidents from time to time. And just because your first trained easily doesn't gaurantee any of your other children will do the same.
Good luck, I hope I was of some help to you and your daughter!
As with some of the other responses, i too have a little girl, she is now 7 but she was a pain to potty train, she would go pee in the potty but not poop...soon it became an attention thing because she never would poop in the potty, so of course when she went in her panties it was frustrating so it began to give her the attention ...they dont care if its positive or negative attention. So I also made her wash her panties out...i would get her naked and put her in the tub with warm water running and hand her some pump soap and let her clean her and her panties up.....and she will protest and cry but after about a week ....she was going in the potty. hope this helps...its called tough love!!
Hi A.,
I am a mother of 3 boys. A 6, 4 ands an 11 week old. My middle son was soo difficult to train. I was soo fed up!
I would leterally take him potty, he would pee and I would ask him if he needed to poop, and he said no, so we finsihed up in the bathroom, and we were walking into the living area, and low and behold he pooped his pants as we were walking. GIRL, that made me soo freaking mad! Needless to say I made him clean it up, I mean rinse his underwear out, and before we did that I put on the pott yot finish, he got some poop on the toilet form his leg, I sprayed that down w/ lysol and made him clean it up. I wanted him to see what I had to do, I know it sounds mean, but it worked.. he hasnt pooped in his undies since!!
Good Luck!
Let me know what you try!
I'm not one for tough love. Pooping in the potty is scary until they get the hang of it.
With my DS we kept him naked 24/7. (he was only 2 at the time) because every time we put clothes on him he would poop in about 3 seconds. It got to the point that he HAD to poop. I knew it, he knew it...hell everyone around us knew us.
So I told him to sit on the potty...the tears flew and the crying got worse and worse. I went to the kitchen and grabbed a sucker told him if he pooped in the next 5 seconds he could have it. He pooped and never looked back (granted he spent the next 2 days pooping constantly to get another sucker!!)
You know what I have learned with mine is it is very discouraging. I have a boy who is going to be 3 in April and refuses to use the potty. But the newest thing we are going to try is every hour on the hour we are going to put him on the toilet and make him sit there for 10 minutes. If he goes within that 10 min. then he can get off but otherwise he has to sit there and wait it out. This is what I have heard worked for other moms. But you have to be persistant with it.
Good luck and I understand.
M.
