Toddler Wont Poo on the Potty?
Part 1
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'!
Start building those positive poo associations right away. Right when you start the potty training adventure. Try to think of interesting, creative, ways to make potty time a fun, happy experience for your child. Rewards, treats, bribes, silly potty songs, celebration, praise, things that are positive associations and positive reinforcement. Maybe they can earn some screen time on their ipad or their phone. Maybe they can earn a popsicle for later in the afternoon or a picnic party with mommy or daddy. All those positive associations that you want your kiddo to have with going potty - especially number two.
Make sure potty time is fun for your little one! Make sure to always celebrate those potty successes, especially when there's a number two! Celebrate every potty success as if it's the first one and it's the best one and it's the most amazing potty success you've ever seen! Maybe you could even bring a coloring book or some stickers or some crayons or something that they can do as an activity on the potty to keep them busy and distracted so that they won't be thinking too much about what they're trying to push out of their body.
Sometimes it's challenging for a toddler to sit on the potty pushing out their poo pushing their tummy moving their bowels. Sometimes it hurts. It might be scary for them. Sometimes there's a pain associated with it, sometimes there's a negative association to the smell. It's unfamiliar - they're used to going potty in an enclosed comfy snug diaper that keeps everything enclosed and tidy and neat and out of sight out of mind behind. So for them to be sitting on a potty open and exposed and pushing, it might feel open and vulnerable and unsafe for them while they're trying to balance themselves and hold themselves upright while they're trying to control those muscle groups and pushing on their tummy and their pelvic floor muscles. That can cause some tearing and ripping and bleeding.
Sometimes pooping is associated with a tummy ache I mean think about. How many times you as an adult have had to go number two and it's rumbling in your tumbly and it hurts and it's kind of pressure and it feels kind of sick. So imagine all those things that your toddler is thinking about and going through and processing while they're sitting on the toilet just to have a poo. It's just easier for them to go in their diaper where they've been going poo since they were born. I talk about this in a lot of my other videos.
Some toddlers actually have a negative association with the smell of their poo or the color of it or the consistency of it. It's messy, they've been having it wiped off of their bum out of their diaper since birth. So now they kind of associate that with being messy or dirty or sometimes the look on mommy or daddy's face is disgust or "stinky or pew or yuck" and these are the babies that we need to be very careful not to use words like yuck or pee-yoo or gross or uh and gagging sounds and expressions on our eyebrows that they're looking at and watching you as they're changing their diapers after a poo or cleaning them up after a poo on the potty it's stinky. It's not fun. There are ways to get around this which i will talk about later in the video but for now you just need to make sure not to use negative potty words when you're cleaning up a mess. Don't say yuck, don't say gross, don't say pee-yoo or ew. Keep it happy keep, that smile on your face, matter of factly, nonchalantly. We're gonna clean this up lickety-split, easy peasy lemon squeezy! Easy peasy! Then there are some toddlers who actually feel like they're losing a part of their body when they're going number two. It feels like something's falling out. Especially if they can see it coming out of their body. They're like "whoa what's that? Do I need that? You know... "that's a part of my body, it's a part of me" and they don't understand that it's something that they're trying to eliminate. Elimination. They might have a connection to it or they might have a little bit of separation anxiety or some separation issues with that because they think it's a part of their body or something that is falling out of their body. Especially where it's coming from and how that feels if you can empathize with that.
This is all very psychological and it's a lot of work for some toddlers. So we have to be very patient we have to empathize. I don't mean to sympathize like "oh poor guy I feel sorry for him, I'm sympathizing." Empathize with your child! Put yourself in their shoes! They're learning something new, this is a life skill that they're going to be doing for the rest of their life. So you want it to be pleasant you want it to be something that's not scary, not dirty, not yucky, not messy, not traumatic. I understand more than anyone how frustrating and exhausting this can be - but you're the parent. You're the adult, step up! You need to show up for your toddler! Nobody else is gonna do it for them. Unless you hire me because, that happens too. Don't give up on your toddler. Give them chances, then give them more and more chances. Set them up for success. However you think that should go for your toddler. Only you know your toddler as well as you do so use your best judgment and find ways to help your kiddo and set them up for those potty successes.
Don't give up on them - but don't press a method or a technique that becomes stressful to your child, this could cause some serious regression and possibly anal retention. Unfortunately anal retention could become a serious issue, it could become a medical issue. It could cause your child to become constipated, their digestive system could get backed up, bloating, uncomfortable to the point of not being hungry and not eating their meals, loss of appetite. Then they won't eat, then they won't drink, then they get dehydrated. In the event that there's severe constipation you may end up seeing a pediatrician and they're probably going to prescribe some sort of laxative or stool softener. I personally don't recommend stool softeners because the way those work is they actually draw moisture from your intestines. They pull water content from the intestines, so this causes dehydration and your kiddo's going to get dehydrated and get headaches and be grumpy. Not a very good combination during the potty training process.
So it'll help your kiddo to keep their stool nice and soft consistency make sure that they're getting lots of fiber and fruits and veggies, not too many carbs, not too many starches. I know what kiddo isn't going to ask for mac and cheese or pasta? But try once in a while especially if your kiddo is showing signs of constipation, try once in a while just swapping out one of their carbs or one of their starches for a fruit or a vegetable. Or maybe make them some fruit smoothies that they really like. Hopefully swapping out some of these starches and potatoes and breads and pastas with a high fiber vegetable or fruit will help with that constipation and make going poo a lot smoother for them. Maybe try to sneak in some pear juice or prune juice. I've heard these really work well and I know a lot of kiddos don't like the texture of these juices but if you could sneak it into a smoothie or into their normal favorite apple juice or whatever. Then that will probably help with the constipation too.
If your child is indeed constipated and you're sure that's what the issue is, you could even try some of those probiotic gummies for children or they even have high fiber probiotic chews and gummies and tablets or powders or even some probiotic yogurts that are made for the digestive system. I'll leave some links for that down below for you. But helping your child avoid constipation and keeping them hydrated will definitely help you with the whole poo process. This will keep your kiddo regular this will help you with their poo-poo schedule and knowing when the time of day is that their poo is coming their their "poo window" I call it. This will help with potty training in general just to know what time of day your kiddo goes number two. Then you can plan ahead. You can have that potty ready, you can be ready for a clean up, you can be ready to sit that kiddo on the potty and give them a chance to sit down and relax and have their poo on the toilet rather than in their diaper or in their underwear.
I always recommend to my potty training consulting clients to take notes to make a journal of what time of day their toddler usually goes number two. That way you can kind of hone in on a specific time frame and be ready for the poo to come. Make a journal, take notes, put it in your phone put it on the fridge for everyone else in the house: "oh my toddler's poo poo time is 2 o'clock" or "oh my toddler usually goes poo poo right after lunch" whatever your toddler's poo-poo window frame of time is - is when you need to be ready to start watching for those cues. Watch for the body language "potty language". Follow your kiddo around make sure you're nearby and watching for those poo poo cues. The body language. Be a helicopter mommy hovering over that kiddo. Watch them like a hawk. You don't want them running off into their favorite hiding places to go number two!
You can do this mommy's... with a little bit of patience some compassion and a lot of love. I'm here to help. I'm Miss Jen thanks for visiting Nanny Knowledge.
Thanks for reading. This is the end of part one. The link to part two is down below. If you have any questions please leave a comment! Thanks again! Don't forget to subscribe to my youtube channel! Leave some comments there, give me a thumbs up, hit that notification bell.