Cold Turkey Potty Training for a 3 1/2 Year Old

I totally feel for you!! My daughter is having the same issue. She is absolutely terrified of pooping in the potty. She has been peeing in the potty for over a year. I got rid of diapers and pull-ups about 3 months ago, including at night. When she has to go, she will hide and go in her panties. AAAAHHHH! I have read some of the other moms' responses and I have also tried all of these things to no avail. I guess I will have to wait it out. Good luck to you and let me know what worked for you.

My son did pretty well and we had him potty trained at age 3; however, it helped to tell him that he had to "feed the alligators" that lived in the sewer. Of course, this may frighten some kids...but my son is fascinated with animals...so he thought it was fantastic.

my son did the same thing. It felt like he would NEVER potty train! He had the pee thing down, but he kept going in his pull up. Then we ran out of pull ups and I refused to buy anymore. I bought him a pack of cool underwear and told him he was a big boy and he needed to use the potty from now on. He might have had two accidents the first week, but after that he was completely potty trained. I wish I would have gotten rid of the pull ups a year sooner!

Cold turkey is what I did with both of my daughters. My oldest got the urine part down quickly at 24 months, but poop was harder. She did not wear pull ups at all. I didn't give her the option. After a few weeks of pooping in her princess panties and washing them herself (with some adult help), she started going in the potty.

This may sound crazy, my son ad the same issue also but I put a chocolate chip in the potty as he was sitting there and started cheering, "Oh you made a poopy look!" So it looked like he did it and it didnt hurt. He eventually just did it on his own though. I also did the pull up thing and just told him I ran out one day. Shell do it, dont worry!

When my daughter was 2 1/2, we went cold turkey with underwear from diapers. We had practiced for a few months going potty. She fought me on both peeing and pooping. After awhile, she got the peeing down, but still foughte me on pooping. She would hold it all day, and then finally couldn't hold it any more and poop in her pants. She would occasionally poop in the potty, but not often. This went on for three months, and she finally started going. During the training, we did the potty training chart I found online. You put a sticker on it each time they go potty. If pooping is the big thing, you could put a sticker each time they poop. We also tried M&M's each time she went potty or each time we reached the end of a row on the chart. She didn't seem to grasp the concept. We finally stopped doing it and did nothing other than say good job. If you make a big deal, some kids respond better. After stopping the rewards, she just started doing it on her own, with maturity, I guess.
Good luck! It drove us crazy for those few months! It's really hard when you leave home for a while, because you have to pack several changes. There's still a few accidents after they get it.

totally. My son, didn't potty train until 3 and half with pee, and still wasn't pooping. DONT push it. It will cause it to go on longer. We finally let it go, and let him know his best friend would go on the potty, so MAYBE he could just think about trying to poop on the potty. It was a good 2-3 months later before he had the pooping down. He would hold it all day until I put a diaper on him and then go, or ask to wait to take the diaper off so he could go in the morning.

My son was the same way; he caught onto peeing right away, but pooping took longer. It seemed like forever at the time, but it really only lasted a month or so.

We did try the "cold turkey" method. We spent a couple of weekends (since we work during the week) with him naked all the time. That seemed to enforce the idea of peeing/pooping in the potty.

It sounds to me like you should think about taking pull ups away. It may sound mean, but let her sit in poopy underpants for 2-3 minutes, then rinse the underpants herself in the tiolet. It may end up being more work for you, but only a few times because I can almost guarantee that she will NOT like being poopy OR cleaning up after herself.

The reason I know this works is because one of my first memories is of cleaning my underpants at about 3, my mom said it worked like a charm. I tried it with my oldest son (now 10) and we only had to go thru it ONCE before he decided that going in the toilet was a better idea.

I guess it's fine to poop anywhere, as long as someone else has to clean it up. If the whole world could learn to clean its own poop, what a wonderful world this would be.