4 year old boy withholding and not wanting to poo on the toilet

[EmmaB85]

Hi. I’ve been having trouble with my 4 year old boy for a while. Toilet training took a while and he’s only recently got better at letting us know when he needs a wee but he seems to ya e cracked that in the day mainly because of nursery. He still wears a pull up at night and still has wet nappies through the night. He’s never wanted to sit to see or poo he’s always weed standing at the toilet and he’s always liked to stand and poo in his nappy. Every time I tried to get him to sit on the toilet or potty he’d moan and say he wants to stand up and then he’d hold it. He’s always had a stance of when he’s pooing when he’s standing as if he’s trying to hold it and then it’d go away ( sometimes) snd cause constipation. He’s also had an anal fisher because of constipation. He’s now using movicol sachets daily that I give him at night as I don’t want him having accidents at nursery. He tends to go most mornings but in his nappy before he wakes. On the advice of ‘Eric’ we do toilet time every night after a shower or if I see him needing to go. He has toilet time blowing toys like whistles, trumpet, recorder etc and reward him with stickers for sitting on the toilet. Only about 5 mins or so. We had one success when he needed to go so I sat him on and he couldn’t hold but last night he had come out the shower, no nappy and he just stood ready to poo himself or on the floor so sat him on the toilet and waited ages but said he didn’t need to anymore. Then he’s woke this morning with it in his nappy. He doesn’t tell us when he needs to go and I’m just worried about him starting reception in September. He just always likes to stand and don’t what it is about the toilet because he was very excited when he did it and I made a big fuss of him and celebrated. Any advice please? Thanks

[ERIC-Charity Partner]

Hi Emma,

This sounds like constipation us - we have a good poster that mentions a few of the signs you mention - tinyurl.com/t9dqp7y

For advice you might want to call our Helpline again, and we can have another chat? For the meantime keep going! You are helping him through a really difficult time.

@eric