Child mostly only pooing when squatting!

After a long 3 year journey of poo troubles, which up until now has primarily been due to undiagnosed lactose intolerance, a skills lag and now maintained by trouble with transitions and paying attention to signals, we’re finally into ongoing constipation territory. 😭 Tbf it’s certainly not a bad or chronic case, she is regularly pooing but amount and size of some bits suggests not everything. GP has checked and said she’s only a little blocked and not enough to start causing overflow issues. Advice for now has been to treat initially with dried fruit and move to laxatives if that doesn’t work.

However, her normal after dinner (and now breakfast) toilet sits are rarely producing anything UNTIL we help her squat on the seat and encourage her to push. I’m not sure if this is due to the constipation or the idea that the 10 minute sit with her tablet has just become 10 minutes of chill out time. In some ways it’s firming the association between pooing and the toilet and so far she’s quite happy to do it, but I can see her getting fed up with it soon.

So, did anyone else’s child go through a stage like this? Did it just pass when the constipation was fully gone or did you use to support in other ways? And ultimately, if she’s pooing, is this even a problem?

[Yaleamanda]

Seems like you have a good routine in place, stick with it

[Robinia]

I can highly recommend playing a harmonica on the toilet. I came up with the idea myself and it’s really helped my son to relax his sphincter muscles. I also get him to push inbetween playing. It’s fun and enjoyable so takes the stress out of sitting on the loo too. When he played game on there he was too passive. Now he’s much more actively pushing the poo out which is what is needed when they’ve experienced severe constipation like he has