2.5 y/o afraid to poo on potty - desperately need help!

Sheridan - posted on 01/16/2011 ( 3 moms have responded )

Hi, my husband and I decided to start toilet training our daughter who is almost 2.5 (2yrs 4 mths to be specific) 5 days ago. So she's pretty new to this, but to my surprise has pretty much already got the peeing downpat. Today for example, it's 1.30pm and she has so far had no wee accidents, she can recognise when she needs to go and she goes and sits on her potty and happily does a wee.



We decided that before we started that we would not push her to do this if she wasn't ready, but like I said, doing wees on the potty seems to have come naturally to her. We started by putting undies on her but found that they were too confusing for her, so we decided to just take off everything from the waist down. She runs around with no nappy/undies/pants all day and she's happy with this because it's easier for her to go when she needs to. In fact, she now hates it when I put a nappy on her for sleep. Successful wees in the potty/toilet (she occasionally chooses to go in the toilet rather than the potty) are treated with a heap of praise and congratulations and cuddles, and her rewards are that she gets to flush the toilet (something she seems to love to do) and a sticker that she puts on her potty to 'decorate' it. Accidents are treated fine too, I know that heaps of accidents are part of learning so I just say something to the effect of 'it's ok sweetie, it's just an accident, mummy will clean it up' and then gently remind her about the potty for next time.



So far though, the poos have been a problem. She seems to only realise its happened after she's done it, which is ok because it's a learning curve, but she gets very upset about it, which I originally found a little surprising as we have never punished her for accidents. She did some on the floor today and I encouraged her to run to her potty to finish it, and she sat down on it but quickly got very very distressed, she did NOT want to poo on the potty, or the floor, or anywhere it seemed. When she was in nappies, she was more than happy to poo in them and most of the time didn't even bother telling me when she had done one. Today she got upset to the point of hysteria over the idea of having to poo in the potty; she was crying alot and I was trying to calm her down and reassure her that it was ok, poo's go in the potty and then mummy cleans them up for her, that she was ok and safe and mummy was here with her to help her... nothing made a difference, she just kept saying that she didn't want to poo in the potty, but she won't tell me why (she has fairly good language skills for her age). I asked her if she wanted to do it on the toilet instead and she didn't want to do that either.



She's not constipated - in fact, quite the opposite, so I know that's not the problem. She has visited both myself and her dad when we've been to the toilet before and seen us doing number 2's and has been fine with that, so I thought that would help normalise the process for her too. I don't know what to do because I don't believe it's right to push her to do it when she's clearly very uncomfortable with the whole idea, but my main objective is that I don't want to see her that upset about it again. I very rarely see her that upset about anything, ever, and I hated watching her so upset and being unable to calm her. I don't want her to feel traumatised by having to poo, because that's not what potty training is about. The only thing I can think of is putting her back in nappies, but I really really don't want to do that because it will be regressing, and she's clearly ready for weeing in the potty anyway.



How can I help her to feel ok with pooing in the potty/toilet with the least amount of trauma to, well, all of us?