Doctor mom

I feel your pain. My now 5 and half year older toilet journey started at 2 with holding on and then constipation. I did the dr. Becky toilet learning guide. So much of this resonated with where we had gone wrong so would highly recommend. We decided to leave her be and she decided herself to start using toilet at 3 and a bit having seen her younger cousin trained. I did my best not to even mention the toilet for that year or so but we did lots of ‘behind the scenes’ work from the Dr. Becky guide – messy play, tolerating mess, building up her confidence in her ability/independent skills, interoception- paying attention to bodily sensations. Even with all that she had the bad luck to get a rotten bug (thank you campylobacter) shortly after training which led to some poo accidents and triggered the withholding/constipation. We’ve been on the miralax (movicol here) roundabout for nearly 18 months. Just lately I’ve had a consultation with a specialist paediatric nurse and I’m very hopeful we are making progress. She’s on Instagram @pooandtheloo so would highly recommend following her for toileting advice. Personally I found any kind of coercion or even encouragement completely backfired for our clever and strong-willed daughter. Every child is different so you’ll be the best judge of what tack to take. Good luck and update us on how you get on. There’s a lot of us going through the same thing!