I know there are like 100 posts on here about this, so I apologize for starting yet another one. But I am really not sure what to do here. D (3yo) has been potty trained for about 2 or 3 months. He has hardly ever had any pee accidents, night trained almost before he day trained, and it's generally gone really well. Except for pooping. In the 3 months he's been potty trained, he has pooped on the potty probably 4 times. It's come to the point now where I can tell he needs to poop, I sit him down, and he freaks the eff out. I let him get up and 10 minutes later he's pooped in his pants. He's holding it in, going days between poops, and then his belly hurts and it's hard and it hurts to poop. He has little to no remorse (not the right word, but you know what I mean) about pooping in his pants - he'll do it and then just walk over to one of us and say "I need new underwear," smetimes with a hint of a smile on his face. It's incredibly frustrating.

We've tried giving him prunes and juice to soften his poops so it won't hurt so much. We've tried having him put his feet up high so it's almost like he's squatting. We've tried rubbing his back while he's sitting on the potty. We've tried treats, prizes, reward charts. We've told him that he shouldn't poop in his pants because such-and-such character (on his underwear) doesn't want to get pooped on. We've even tried negative reinforcement - if he poops in his pants he doesn't get to watch tv that night. NOTHING has worked. He's in daycare and does it there, too. His teacher just says he'll get it and they're working on it. My BIL has a pool and D still has to wear a swim diaper in the pool. I actually thought maybe that would sway him but he doesn't care. At this point he just thinks a swim diaper is part of the deal.

When we ask him why he won't poop on the potty, he says he doesn't want to. When we ask him why he doesn't want to he says he doesn't like it, but he can't tell us why. Oh, we've tried him on his little potty (the only place we've had success) and the big boy potty (which is usually where he pees now). The few times he's gone, he's been SO PROUD of himself!

Any ideas or tricks I'm missing? It's incredibly frustrating and I feel like we're constantly on high alert for THE SMELL.