My little rascal wont poop in the kohler
 

He is just turned 4 and refuses to let it out without a diaper on.
Tried everything: the bribe, the read-a-book-whilst-you-go, the All Out Of Diapers! lie.

The boy's mom worries he'll make himself sick. I'm more worried that he's thinking pampers are a lifetime commitment.

Anybody with a novel idea?

(btw you don't know stubborn if you don't know this kid)

Cloth diapers.

A comedian once defined Panic or perhaps terror (pre-hoopla) as being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic and suddenly realizing that you've just finished a large coffee and a bran muffin.

enough said? :D

put him on the potty and squeeze him until he poops

" Oh sonny , don't you want some of this delicious CHOCOLET (exlax ) ????"

I feel for you... when my daughter (also very stubborn) was about 5-6 she decided she just wasn't going to, period. She'd go for days at a time in between, with predictable results. At least your son isn't holding back completely.

Have you tried a mini-toilet seat? Could there be some fear of falling in issue?

Maybe you should just let it go for a while and revisit the issue in a couple weeks (i.e. forever from the 4yo perspective). Frustrating as it is, if it becomes a battle for control, you're doomed.

my son went at about the same time every day so when my wife and i had 4 days off we decided it was time. when the witching hour came around, we set him on the pot and told him to go. he fought it, but we wouldn't let him up until he went. he is a motorcycle nut so we got him a couple of magazines. he sat there and "read" his books until he couldn't hold it in anymore and did his business. fortunately, my son is a clean freak like me so after a couple of days he realized it was cool not messing up his pants.

Peer pressure? Any older siblings or playmates to help him out?

Enough is enough. I'd remove the diapers and let him see you tossing the rest of them away. Put some (easy to wash) pants on him. One or two incidents should fix it. Be as supportive as humanly possible - he's not gonna like it but he can't stay a baby forever. Once the britches are on, do not pressure him to poop - let him tell you when he's ready.

Other ideas:
Take him to the store and let him pick out a mini toilet for himself. Assure him that its his toilet and no one else is allowed to use it.

Keep telling him that he's a Big Boy now and that all his friends are pooping by themselves.

Tell him that you talked to [Spiderman/Hulk/SpongeBob/whoever] and he said to use the toilet. Embellish it some. I've had good luck with the superhero thing.

Buy a big giant candy bar and put it where he can see it. Explain that its his as soon as he makes a deposit and not before. Tell him its a reward from Spiderman/whoever. Bribery is fine if its used sparingly.

Report back.

The super-hero undergarments are pretty reinforcing as well. Let him pick out his own but they are only for kids who use the potty.

spiderman also said you have to stay in your room while mommy and daddy have a couple days alone time.

the hulk said get me a beer out of the fridge on your way back in.

Let me just say, lookout, that if my son ever again attempts to pick the lock on the door to Mrs. Dallas' and my bedroom as he did last weekend, he may need to go live with Spongebob.

But, back to the subject, this all sounds good, but be on the lookout for the reaction of just holidng it all in as long as possible.

Why (if you don't mind me asking) do you have a lock on a door inside your home?

Most of the bedroom doors in my house have locks...

My experience matches what's been said above, for the most part. I took Jamey to pick out some "big-boy" underwear (he picked Spider-man, Spongebob, Buzz Lightyear and Shrek), and told him he wasn't wearing diapers anymore. I was really pleased that he told me he had to go the very first time. But we did have a couple accidents, which proved very motivating. All in all, potty training was much easier than weaning him from the bottle.

Why (if you don't mind me asking) do you have a lock on a door inside your home?

Better the trauma of a kid accidentally locking themselves in and having to disassemble the doorknob, than the trauma of a kid accidentally walking in on an intimate moment.

What Clodfobble said.

yep, lesson learned the hard way here. try explaining why daddy came home from work early to "snuggle" with mommy just once, and you'll start locking the doors.

I have a keyless thumblatch on the inside of the master bedroom door to protect against that sort of thing but even a two-year old can open it from the inside (it can only be latched from the inside). I thought Steve meant that he had a lock on the bedroom door that he has to use a key to access from the hallway outside. Any boy worth his salt is going to try to pick it at some point. http://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/cool.gif

edit: did not see Steve's post (2 above this one) before posting this.

I remember learning as a child that bathroom locks could be popped open from the outside with a paperclip.

But I only used this knowledge for good, not evil.

Actually a thin screwdriver works well on ours.

I always did the slide the credit card in the lock tongue trick.

Used to bust into the boss' office at my old job when he was out and we needed something, because he was too paranoid to give his secretary a key, but too cheap to buy good locks.

That's a deadly combination!

I had a lot of fun the day that the boss stupidly locked his keys in his office.

He was flustered, didn't know what to do, his wife (who was the bookkeeper for the company) was 'down the shore' and unavailable to rescue him, and more importantly, the keys to the Beamer that he needed to be driving in the next five minutes to go to the meeting to close a deal were in the office. Same keyring that the sacred boss' office key was on.


I let him sweat for a while, then walked over to him.

I looked toward the far end of the office and pointed and shouted "Holy mother of god, do you see the size of the rat!"

And opened the door.

"You must have been too anxious about the meeting and didn't realize that the door was a little ajar. All you were doing was jiggling the doorknob. You must not have tried pushing. You better ask the landlord about an exterminator."

That's OK, just tell the kid you were having a fight so as not to upset them.

Locks on inside doors can be a blessing if someone breaks in. They might buy you an extra minute or two that could save your life. ;)

Here in DC a few years back, we had a rash of home robberies by a group called the "polite burglers." They spoke the King's English with a proper British accent and were very considerate of the victims when they woke them up to show them to the goodies. They would apologize for brandishing weapons ("absolutely necessary, you know") and would thank the victims for the bounty.

They were highly skilled and never set off any of the alarms installed in the houses they robbed. Since then, I installed the locks on the inside of our bedroom doors.

I don't recall that they were ever apprehended. Happy Monkey? Garnet?? Anyone??? Beuller????

"snuggle"... that's a good one.

How did you explain mommy being handcuffed to the bed?

When my daughter was potty training. she went poop in the potty and then for no reason just started to refuse. For her it was a control issue (of her bowels and her mom!) the Dr. suggested to not make an issue of it and let her control when she goes in the potty again.....it worked but it did stink!

Well, any progress??

I'm interested B/C I'm thinking about training for my 26mo old daughter. Anyone with any good advice? Bad stories? I don't plan on using pull-ups, do plan on using cloth diapers/real undies and plastic pants & the M&M's as a reward trick.

Just wing it. Every kid is different. Our son was going without diapers during the day at an earlier age than our daughter. On the other hand, our daughter has never wet the bed even once, and our son continues to practically every night at age 6.

Whatever you do, don't give her a chance to turn it into a control issue.

And don't let anybody else tell you there's one single "right" way to do it.

My mother-in-law has told me many times the story of my husband's brother and bed-wetting... apparently he was still wetting the bed nightly at the age of 9 or so. She ended up buying this bedwetting alarm from some catalog. They would have to go into his room after he was asleep and put it back under him every night, because he would take it off the bed. When it went off, usually four or five times a night, she would get him up, clean him, and wipe his face with a cold washcloth to make sure he was really awake. She said it took about three weeks of this routine before he stopped wetting the bed.

My 6 year old still pees her pants. I am baffled. I took her into the doc to make sure it wasn't a medical problem, they say it is very common. To who? I have tried cheering, rewards, punishment, ignoring it completely. My only comfort is telling myself she will have figured it out by highschool(hopefully).

Try to be patient-my last child was 4 before she would go potty in the toilet-When it does happen, praise them a lot (my daughter still asks after 6 months if I am proud of her when she goes!) Just remember they don't go to college in diapers!