Having a tough time getting your todder-in-training to go POO on the potty? We're gonna dive right into talking about why you can't get your toddler to go poo on the potty. We're going to be talking about poop y'all.
My mommy clients and my potty training consulting clients are always asking me about this one specific problem: they can't get their kiddo to go poo on the potty! A majority of my consulting appointments are all about this! Why they can't get their kiddos to go poop on the toilet or even the small little toddler potty on the floor.
As a nanny and a child caregiver for over 39 years you can imagine I've potty trained a lot of kiddos! I urge you to take a look at my youtube potty training video series parts 1 - 5. You'll probably find a lot of tips and tricks in there that will help you with this.
So here I'm going to cover some very important tips and tricks that you can implement during your potty training process to avoid those poo poo problems. This is actually a pretty common issue. Most toddlers get the pee part down pretty quickly. Depending on the age, depending on the developmental stages, it's the poo part that always takes longer to learn and become comfortable with. Poo is the hard part! That's the hard part: the poopin'!
Try giving your child a nice warm bath, if the poo urge starts to come in the tub, your child might start saying: "Mommy I need help! I need my diaper!" "I need my pull-up! I need to get out of the water!" "I need to put my diaper on!" I would just say: "Sorry sweet heart, mommy forgot the diaper" "Mommy forgot to bring the diaper in the bathroom" or "Oh they're not in here, they're in the other room. Sorry oopsie" "We'll just go here in the potty! Look the potty's right here!" "I have your little toddler potty right here on the floor, let's just sit on the potty!" "We don't have any diapers, sorry the diaper fairy came and took all the diapers"
That part's up to you because that's a little bit of a fib. You might not be comfortable with fibbing to your child - again up to you. But there's nothing wrong with not having that diaper available because you “forgot” to bring it into the bathroom! And have that toilet there instead! The whole idea here is to get them weaned off of using diapers and pull-ups for going poop. If we always offer a diaper, they're always going to think: "Oh all I have to do is cry! All I have to do is scream? All I have to do is pull mom's trigger and she's gonna give me that diaper!" She will eventually give in and give me a pull-up and I can poop in it!" There has to be a line drawn of no turning back!
Okay sorry this is the point where we just have to do some tough love and tell ourselves I'm not gonna give in and give you a diaper to go poop in. Now obviously of course if this is becoming a medical issue and your child absolutely will not go poop unless there's a diaper and they're panicking and freaking out and crying or getting sick and turning red - then ultimately the diaper has to be given to your child because that's the only way they're going to let any poop come out. We don't want your child getting so backed up that they explode or get sick or get a fever or get sepsis! We don't want it to escalate to get to that point.
But if you can at least coax your child to try to go poop without using the diaper as a safety net or at least not put the diaper on their body. Maybe place it in the toddler potty or hold it and catch the poo when it comes out and then take it away look see you didn't need a diaper. Whatever... do all the things! Try all the tricks! Do what you got to do to get your kid to doo! Doo doo! Go poo! Get the poop out!
If your toddler in training is having a hard time being comfortable on the potty, I would definitely for sure - for starters recommend using a small toddler potty on the floor! The big tall adult grown up toilets are just too high off the ground for them. They're too far up, they don't feel grounded. They can't have their feet on the floor to push and press and use those muscles or stabilize themselves to feel comfortable. It's just easier for them to have the floor to press on with their feet firmly and steady and feel a little bit more balanced on the potty. When they're on the big grown-up adult toilets they're just too far off the ground and their feet are dangling and they feel NOT secure and unstable and wobbly. Unless they have something to hold on to, they're just going to feel a little bit more insecure because they're having to hold themselves on the seat of the toilet and lock their body down and try to ground themselves somehow. It's going to use certain muscle groups that are required for pushing the poo out. So they need that stability and they need to be able to feel secure and safe and not high off the ground like they're gonna fall.
Remember: one small scary incident or a negative experience on the potty or "about" potty could cause serious delays and setbacks! For instance if your toddler falls off the potty or falls forward or wobbles and stumbles a little bit or slips or something, those are going to cause fears! Those are going to cause negative associations that are going to make your child afraid! Which is why some kiddos have the problem with going number two on the potty because they may have already had a negative experience.
Some kiddos will say: "No Mommy!” "No potty! I don't want to go potty!" or "No I'm scared! I'm scared of the potty! The potty hurts! "I don't like the potty!" These are all words and cues that you need to pay attention to, to figure out why what what's going on get to the bottom of why your child is afraid to go potty.
-Does it hurt?
-Does it flush too loudly?
-Is it too high off the floor?
What are those things that your kiddo is afraid of? What makes them scared of the poop? Is it the wiping process? Maybe the wiping needs to be a little more gentle? Maybe you don't want to use toilet paper, maybe you still continue to use the soft cloth baby wipes, the wet wipes - something that's more comfortable and familiar to your toddler going in their hiney.
Maybe going poo hurt them at some point? Maybe there was a stretching or bleeding and it hurt them to have the poop come out. So now they're going to always think that poop always hurts!
A little child psychology 101 for you here: If you give your child a choice between A or B - you don't get to choose C… “Its either this one or this one - which one do you want?" “Do you want blue or red today?" "Do you want to use your blue shorts or your red shorts? You get to pick! No not green, no not the polka dot ones, these are your two choices! You get to pick! "If you give choices to your toddler, it puts them in a place of control. It gives them an option! Same goes for the potty! Same goes for toilet options! "Buddy would you like to go pee pee in the big potty or the small potty? No, sorry no diaper, no that's not an option. "Pull up? Nope not an option" "Would you like to sit on this potty or that potty to go poo?" "Would you like to sit on daddy's big toilet commode or do you want to sit on your own personal small toddler potty on the floor? Which one do you want" "You get to pick, but those are your options." Having the small toddler potty next to the big commode is a great option because then they're both right there side by side and you can say: "Which one do you want? This one or this one? The white one or the blue one?" "The big one or the little one? You get to pick which one do you want to sit on?"
Your child is going to say "Oh no I don't want to! I don't want the potty! I can't! "No… I'm going to cry, I’m going to scream! I don't want the potty!" They're going to run away, they're going to throw a fit, they're going to cry. Tough love here. We need to teach our child that there's no turning back! This is the only way to go. There's only one option! The only place to put your pee-pee or your poo-poo is in a toilet or a potty. We don't put poop in our pants anymore. We don't put poop in our diapers anymore. We're done with that, we've outgrown that. That's the baby stage. "You're a big boy! You're a big girl!" We have to get to a point where there is no turning back. That's the goal. That's what we're striving for here. That's what we're working towards: getting out of diapers, not pooping in the cotton underpants and the new training underwear! The only place to put pee pee and poo poo is in a toilet.
If you think about this: how long are you willing to let your child keep pooping in a diaper? How old do you let that continue until? Like… how long do you let that go? At what age do you feel like your child should not be pooping in a diaper? Six? Seven? Five? You need to have that conversation with yourself. And if that means that your child is going to be a six or seven year old in diapers then you've got other issues to deal with. Like play dates and school and bullying and teasing and maybe not being accepted in a daycare or preschool. That sets your child up for some serious problems in the future!
I'm not saying rush your child. I'm not saying pressure your child or your toddler. I'm not saying hurry up. I'm not saying it has to be done by the time they're three or by the time they're four. But the older your child gets, the more awkward it's gonna get! That they're still pooping in their pants at school or on the playground or at grandma's house or whatever.
I'm just trying to help you understand how far this could go! How far this could escalate if you don't get on it and work on it now. I help mommies from all over the world with their toileting for their child. All different countries all different cultures some countries have their babies potty trained very young nine months old 10 months old under a year old. This is actually more along the lines of elimination communication not necessarily potty training. But they are sitting them on a toilet on a potty and having them eliminate on a toilet. This happens in other countries and other cultures where maybe it's too costly to have diapers and disposable pampers and and pull-ups and such. In fact if you look back at the history of potty training: decades ago, potty training didn't last until two three four years old. Most kids were potty trained by the age of two because they only had cloth diapers. They didn't want their kiddos in those cloth diapers at age three or four years old. By the time they were walking, they were potty trained! In this time and age we've actually become a little bit spoiled with our disposable diapers! They're convenient, they're absorbent, they're disposable, all those things that they didn't have back in the olden days! And in some countries now still today, they don't have that available to them or they're just too costly for them. So they've got their kids potty trained pretty young!
By most standards a child is developmentally ready to be potty trained by the age of 18 months to two years. 18 months to two years is an ideal window, that doesn't mean your child needs to be completely done potty training by the age of two. That just means by age two your child should already have begun the process of the potty training adventure. That gives you a window of time from two years old until three that they should probably have gotten potty training pretty down by now. I'm not saying they should be done completely potty training by three. But it is ideal and it is the most common age to be done potty training by because three years old is when you're starting to put your kiddos in daycare in preschool and by then they just expect that skill to have been learned.
I actually created a potty training video about this very topic: teaching your kiddos to be comfortable using potties and public restrooms and preparing them for preschool. It's a two-part series. It's called "Potty Training Before Preschool". Lots of helpful tips and information in here about how to get your kiddo comfortable with using public potties and restrooms that aren't at home. You might want to check it out!
If your child has special needs or learning disabilities or any kind of delays then naturally it's going to take them a little bit longer to potty train than a typical child. All the more reason to get started young. Two years old should be ideal to start the potty training adventure. This is not just my opinion, this is common knowledge amongst medical experts, potty training specialists and pediatricians. They all say 2 years old is about the time frame that a child is developmentally ready.
If you have any questions please leave a comment! Thanks Again! You can do this mommy's! With a little bit of patience, some compassion and a lot of love. I'm Miss Jen thanks for visiting Nanny Knowledge with Miss Jen.
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