In most children, bowel control develops before urinary
control. This is the reason that many toddlers will let you know that
they are having a BM by their posture, gestures or facial expressions,
but very few will let you know that they are urinating.
So,
if your child has bladder control, chances are excellent that s/he has
bowel control. In most cases bowel movement training will almost happen
naturally. This means that BM's usually follow urination, so once
children are trained to urinate in a potty chair or on the toilet, they
will also have a BM while urinating.
You, as
the parent have already set expectations that both pee pee and poo poo
go into the potty, so that your child already knows what you expect.
You, of course, will give your child the extra praise the first time
your child has a BM in the potty, and in most cases, BM training flows
naturally after urine training.
This is
exactly what happened with my children. They had a BM while urinating
in the potty and of course got plenty of verbal and non verbal praise,
which reassured them that this was the expected behavior. Both of my
children did have a couple of small twists on BM training that I think
are worth mentioning.
My headstrong older son
had his first accident, which was a BM just as we were getting started
on the “Big Day”. So, during the potty training session, I used both
terms when I verbalized desired behaviors -- “Big boys pee & poo in
the potty”.
My organized methodical younger
son had zero accidents; however, he did have to learn a couple of
things about his own body. On the second and third night after his “Big
Day”, he woke me up to go use the potty, but when he sat on the potty,
all he did was pass gas. It took him a number of times of sitting on
the potty to pass gas, before he had learned the difference between
passing gas and having a BM!!
