After hearing endless stories of how difficult it was to toilet train boys, we finally bit the bullet and put Sam in undies one afternoon. We practiced pulling pants up and down to use the potty and all seemed well. He had a couple of accidents but that was ok. The next time we put him in undies, he would start to go, realise, stop and then go to the potty. Progress! Next thing we know, he wakes up completely dry from overnight, tells us every time he needs to do a wee, and that was that. In the space of three days Sam has become completely dry, including overnight. He stayed in a nappy for night time that was always dry in the morning, up until the night he woke us at 4am because he needed the potty. He's not been in a nappy since. Lucky us! Head still spinning at how quickly it happened.

Poos on the other hand... in the first few days where he only wore undies at home, we managed to catch a poo or two in the potty. Unfortunately, he went to day care and had a poo accident. And then he was at home with just DH and DH was mowing the lawn, and there was another poo accident. Ever since, he has completely refused to even try to poo on either potty or toilet. It's like he's become so scared to poo his pants that he's holding on so much that he can't even try to go. This morning became really stressful - I could tell he needed to poo (a few trips to the potty where he sits down and just says "gone!" are a bit of a clue), but he wouldn't. He wouldn't even pass urine. He'd gone all night and up for several hours, eating breakfast and drinking heaps of water and was holding on to his poo so tightly he couldn't even wee. Two accidents at day care and things are moving again, but I just have no idea where to go from here.

Putting him in a nappy to do a poo isn't an option. He just refuses to use it. The only thing preserving my sanity is the fact that we can tell a poo is brewing and can put him in a pull up if we have to go out, just to make things easier to deal with, but the result is always the same. He is so stressed that he holds on until he can't possibly hold on any longer and apart from those first few days, every single poo is done in his pants. At home he'll tell us, but at day care he didn't tell the carers. Don't know if he wasn't aware (doubtful), or just didn't care once he'd got it out.

I'm just all out of ideas. Having him hold on so he couldn't even pass urine this morning has got me scared and stressed. Anyone else had to deal with similar?

BW