Topic : Potty Training

my 2 year old son WILL NOT POOP IN THE POTTY!!  he won't sit on ANY potties (big or small).  he pees in the potty consistenly with no accidents.  but he insists on pooping in his pants!  we've tried reward systems, etc. but he won't sit on a potty.  he says he's afraid of the potty.  i've tried letting him run around the house without underwear thinking he'll need a place to go...BUT...you guessed it...on the floor!!!  i don't know what else to do.  HELP!

Hello,

I have a little boy who just turned two last week and he will not keep his diaper on. He has recently learned how to take his pants off and then his diaper.

He is resistant to the potty though but does know what poo poo and pee pee are. He is still reluctant to have me change his dirty diapers most of the time as I think he is just to busy playing to be bothered.

I want to start potty training him but my husband is very resistant insisting that he is just not ready. He only likes to play with his potty chair and the big potty scares him.

I did try letting him run around with a naked bottom and he would go outside to pee on the patio and even pooped out there a couple of times. Because my husband had to clean him up one time when he did that he put the kibosh on the potty training telling me he is not ready because he is pooping on the patio.

It seems like a novelty to him to let him do it outside as I am sure he has seen his father and brother pee outside many times.

That was a couple of weeks ago, now the last two mornings he has removed his clothes and his diaper by the time I go to get him out of bed and has pooped on his sheet, which tells me he no longer likes to feel it on him anymore.

My older son never did this...he was three before he could even identify what was going on in the potty direction and by then it was easy to explain. He did love peeing outside and pooped outside too and I would just always get TP pick up the mess and bring him with me as I showed him that the proper place to put the poo was in the potty.

I have done this with my 2 year old but am not sure he is old enough to understand me or not. He does communicate pretty well but the way he looks at me when I talk about the potty stuff seems like he is confused.

Does anyone have any suggestions or opinions? Think he is ready? Acting normal for being ready? Boys seem so much harder to train than girls. The underwear is no motivator at all for him but he does love being naked. Any advice from anyone who has trained boys age two?

Hi Everyone,

Two years ago, I was told that I'd have to teach a molecular biology lab to college students, and let me tell you, I never knew the subject so well until I had to teach it!!  So that made me realize that "teaching" is really the best way to learn something, if that makes any sense at all. 

So this gave me a new idea when it came to teaching my friend's four-year old son how to swim.  I "pretended" that we needed to teach his plastic toy doll how to swim.  I showed him what to do, how to do it, and then said he'd have to teach his doll.  So of course, he had to do it himself, and suddenly seemed to lose a lot of his apprehension.  Within two days, that boy was swimming and so proud that he was able to show his family and friends that he could swim!

Okay, so here's a suggestion for potty training.  Perhaps you could use your child's favorite doll or stuffed animal as an example.  Tell your kid that together, you need to teach this doll how to use the potty like a "big girl/boy" and then pretend to get really excited for the toy when it sits on the toilet, etc.  Pretend to throw it a party or something "BIG" and fun.  I'm sure this will actually take a lot more time and patience than other things, but who knows? 

I'm definitely interested in this topic because I have a 10-month old daughter who will be needing to learn how to do this soon!  I'll try some of these other suggestions, too, and let you all know what works! 

Take care and good luck!

For my son it didn't work because his problem was not peeing in the toilet  -- it was pooping.  He would go and hide so we knew he knew it was happening.  Sometime from February to June (I know this time frame cause he wasn't in school so when he went back he was potty trained.) he just decided to do it himself.  He would tell me he had to go and he still calls for help cleaning himself sometimes but overall he has it down now.  He was keeping dry through the night for months and just having the pooping problem during the day so we started him wearing underwear at night and then he wanted to wear them all the time...

Next I have to train my 2 year old daughter but I hear girls are easier to potty train -- we'll see.  So far, she sits on potty but forgets to take down her pull up but if you get to her and take it off she does go pee in her potty (sometimes even in the toilet!)  My big problem with her and pooping is she takes off the diaper when it is soiled and yesterday she decided to do this when she was supposed to be napping.  I went in to check on her as she was crying not sleeping to find her covered from hair to toes and the crib and walls were done too.  Oh the joys of motherhood! My hubby calls her his little artist....

I started my daughter potty training by putting her on the toilet when I saw she was pooping. It is the best way to get them over that fear. Yes I had a couple messy situations but I was doing that before she was 1 years old. 

If I saw her starting to poop (grunting and stuff) we would head to the toilet and she would finish there. 

Most of the time she was a scheduled pooper so at that time I woudl keep close eye on her and before I new it she was telling me she had to poop.  

Then I started working on the pee thing. 

If you have kids that hide when they poop, you already know what they are doing, try and get them to the toilet before they are done. That way they can't hold it, and they will see it is not as scary as they think... then remember you have to make the biggest deal out of it the first time and then a few times after that. I mean dancing around, call daddy at work if you can, etc. 

Hope this helps 

Tammy