Pooping on the Potty - Everett,MA

Hi S., I trained my daughter to go pee and poop by taking her to the dollar store and letting her pick out a bunch of Disney princess toys. They had tons of little Disney toys for $1-$3.00. Then we brought them home and put them in ziplock baggies and I taped them to the wall above the toilet. Every time she went pee or poop or both she got to pick a prize off the wall. As time went on we downgraded to stickers and then candy and then just cheering. She loved getting to pick a prize and she wanted to go on the potty cause she knew the toys were in there and the only way she could get them was to go potty. Good Luck. I am about to start training my son and am hoping it will go quicker with him - keeping my fingers crossed anyway. :)

Hi there - it sure is hard to be patient with potty training isn't it? We had friends who had good luck with using candy treats, but we decided not to go that route. We wanted our daughter to feel like she is in control of her body and that we respected her autonomy in this way. (We set a gazillion rules and limits on her...but it is her body- we want her to trust her own sense of what feels good and not good with her body - this seems like one of the foundations of healthy self-esteem.) We were supported in this by the wonderful, very experienced teachers at her preschool.

So while we occasionally asked if she wanted to poop on the potty, we let her continue to poop in a diaper. We were getting tired of this, so we eventually did say she had to be in the bathroom while she pooped, as this was where we all went to the bathroom, and we began to wipe her on the toilet, too, which she accepted. Not too long after that, she decided she was ready to poop on the toilet and she did and there's been no looking back. But she was 4.5 when that happened. Not everyone's path. But there was no trauma in it, and she was sure proud when she mastered this.

Just wanted to offer another perspective. Trust yourself and your knowledge of what is best for YOUR child and YOUR family....and think about what you are teaching her whatever way you go.

Good luck!

A. - mom to a spunky, fun, kind 5 year old.

Hi S.,
This question has been asked alot so you may want to go through some old responses etc..

But I would try; when she does it in her pants, just have her help you flush it down the toilet. If you do not yell or make her feel bad she will come around sooner. See if she wants to put on a diaper before she goes poop. I just would hesitate to tell her she MUST do it in the potty, but that she could do it in the potty; then we don't have to change your clothes and stop everything...
Let her know that you understand it is hard to manage it sometimes but you are sure she can do it soon. The less pressure a kid gets about it, the easier they have learning it.

Good luck!
Clare W
Helping families remove toxins from their homes
www.LiveTotalWellness.com/Arizona

BRIBERY! My daughter is the same age and just had her first week with no accidents after 6+ months of potty training. I took her to Target and let her pick out any (inexpensive) toy she wanted. She picked a princess Barbie. I put the Barbie on top of the fridge where she could see it and told her that when she went on the potty she could play with it. It worked like a charm! Barbie stayed in the box until we had a whole day with no accidents. My daughter is allowed to play with Barbie for 3 minutes, the same length as her time-outs, each time she goes on the potty. If she goes without needing a reminder, she gets Barbie for 5 minutes. I got the idea from my neighbor and it worked great for her daughter, too.

Also, my daughter loves to play dress-up, and I wouldn't let her wear any of her dress-up clothes until the end of the day and then only if she had gone the whole day with no accidents. This one was probably as much for my benefit than hers, since I didn't have to worry about how to wash the items that aren't machine washable!

Good luck to you. This potty training has been my least favorite part of parenting so far!

I just got my son fully potty trained during the day. He will be 4 in Aug. and I was desperate to get him to do poop on the potty. We tried everything or so I thought. After 1 1/2 yrs. My sister told me to try no underwear just pants. I did no underwear or pants. we stayed in the house for 3 days and did potty training. I had him show elmo (his doll) how to go on the potty. And did that every 15 to 20 mins. Now he won't use the little potty anymore. He tells me that big kids use the big potty. Hope this helps.

Hi S., Its C. H, when my kids were toddlers, I have 5 from 14-8, I used train them to sit on the potty and they got to brush their teeth with a hand held mirror(the little lolly pop ones) and if they pooped in the potty they got to get their tooth brush dipped in mouthwash.

I also used M & M's to encourage more poopies in the potty.
Simple but it worked for us.

My mom used to make us wash out our poopie undies in COLD water in the sink! As we got older, we HATED it! So we ended up having less accidents.

Good Luck!! I celebrated when we FINALLY got out of pull-ups!

We recently went thru these issues. First make sure it's not physical -check with Pediatrician to see if she needs stool softeners. If it's not phsycical - I highly recommend the book "Everyone Poops". Also - we filled a bag in a special closet with a bunch a treats (bribes). We would go & look at them all & then discuss how they could only be earned by pooping on the potty. We would show the prizes off to all our company & explain what they were. We gave her M&M's for attempting to poop, and if she succeeded - we made a HUGE deal out of it - we would sing & dance as we went to the closet & she could rummage thru the bag to decide exactly which prize she wanted. Then she would call Daddy at work, or Mimi & Pepe to tell them about the poop & what prize she had gotten.

this may sound awful to you, but i gave my daughter m&m's. worked like a charm.

I would go and purchase some plain white diapers and tell her she has to wear them if she doesn't want to poop in the potty when she is ready to go in the potty like a big girl she can have her pretty big girl undies back.

My daughter decided to use the potty for pooping at about 3 & 1/2, after almost a year of fighting it and being constipated. Look up info on "TTRT" - that is, "Toilet Training Resistant Toddlers". The BEST advice I got was, Put the Child in Charge. With my daughter it was a control issue. The more we asked if she needed the potty, the angrier she got. My Mom tried bribes (against our wishes) - M&M, Toys, etc...again, it just angered my daughter. I read that if you explain to the child that it is, after all, THEIR body, and THEY are the ones who need to listen to the signals - they take that info very well. I sat my daughter down, told her she was the Boss - she needed to keep her body healthy, and to do that, she needed to let the Poop out at least once a day. In our case, I told her I didn't care if it was in a diaper or the potty (due to her Constipation issues), but that she needed to let it OUT, and that would help keep her body healthy. Her body was talking to her, and she needed to listen, and act. She liked that idea, and literally the NEXT DAY she started pooping on the potty, as well as peeing.

Good luck - treat your little one with Respect; she needs to LEARN when to do what where, and learn that she can do it without giving up control. Our kids need to learn rather than be trained, IMHO - so give it a try, and good luck!

My oldest was like this. So I finally started making her wash out her own underwear when she had an accident. I'd have a bucket of water and make her put it in there and rinse it out (with my help of course) and then I'd make her take a load of laundry including her soiled undies down to the washer (again with my assistance) and put it in the washer. I would start the machine of course, but she didn't like that she didn't get to go right back to playing while mommy cleaned up the mess that she had to help me clean it and she started using the potty. I really only had to do it with her a couple of times before she started using the potty. And of course there was a reward for her when she did it on the potty too and lots of cheering. When she did poo in her undies though I wouldn't get angry I would just calmly say this is what has to be done when we have an accident. Good luck!