u/floralbingbong

Our son (2.5 y.o.) has a cousin 6ish months older who we see and play with a lot. He will regularly hit / push if he doesn’t get his way. When the hitting / pushing happens, his parents immediately address the situation, and fortunately our son is never actually hurt, but I’m unsure of how to handle *our* side of things when this happens. As of now, we obviously go up to our son and ask him if he’s okay, but it feels like we should do more than that? For instance, do we then explain to him why hitting / pushing is not acceptable behavior? I don’t want it to feel to him like we’re scolding *him* for being on the receiving end of hitting / pushing, but also don’t want him to pick up this habit from his cousin. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but wanted to get some thoughts from you all.

So we are up against a classic situation - started casually potty training about 2 months ago, was going well, then he had one large, hard stool and has been withholding ever since. We’ve been working with his doctor and have tried all the usual things - eating lots of berries / apples / kiwi, dried prunes, apple and prune juice, half cap full of miralax, probiotics, Grun gummies, and he still is averaging only 1 bowel movement every 5-6 days. He stays home with me so I know exactly what he eats and when. When he gets the urge to go, he will physically tense up and run around saying “poop hurts” or “butt hurts” until the sensation goes away. We’ve obviously slowed way down on potty training and told him it’s okay to poop in his diaper if he needs to. Sometimes he says he wants to try the potty and we do, but he never sits for long. When he does finally go, it’s very soft (sometimes even diarrhea). It clearly is less a constipation issue and more of an intentionally withholding issue.

There have been 2 times that he’s made it to day 6-7 so we’ve given him a pediatric glycerin suppository, which work of course, but we hate to do this. We are continuing to work with his pediatrician, but wanted to gather any experiences here in the meantime. We have a new baby coming in July and would love to help our little guy before that big change happens.

So we are up against a classic situation - started casually potty training about 2 months ago, was going well, then he had one large, hard stool and has been withholding ever since. We’ve been working with his doctor and have tried all the usual things - eating lots of berries / apples / kiwi, apple and prune juice, half cap full of miralax every day, and he still is averaging only 1 bowel movement every 4-5 days. He stays home with me so I know exactly what he eats and when. When he gets the urge to go, he will physically tense up and run around saying “poop hurts” or “butt hurts” until the sensation goes away. We’ve obviously slowed way down on potty training and told him it’s okay to poop in his diaper if he needs to. Sometimes he says he wants to try the potty and we do, but he never sits for long. When he does finally go, it’s soft (sometimes even diarrhea).

Anyway, we are continuing to work with his pediatrician, but wanted to gather any experiences here in the meantime. We have a new baby coming in July and would love to help our little guy before that big change happens.