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Withholding
A Common Toilet Training Challenge
By Jessica Williams
Needless to say, just one traumatic movement like this was enough to frighten him into a cycle of never wanting to have a bowel movement again -- with or without the toilet. He went through months of chronic constipation, training his muscles to hold the stool, not release it. He went through a period of encopresis when his body finally had too much stool and liquid would slip past and leak out of him. We had to keep his stools soft with diet and medication until he could get over his fear, while allowing him to have healthy movements in diapers for another year before we could even consider training again. He was not fully trained until a little after his fifth birthday.
Withholding can be as traumatic as it was with our son, or a simple as a child who withholds from the potty, but feels comfortable having a bowel movement in his underwear or diaper. Take the advice of a parent who's been through the worst of withholding and chronic constipation: If you see signs that your child is holding stool back, or if your child suddenly becomes constipated frequently, be sure to talk to your pediatrician and decide whether you should post-pone training until your child is ready