I have been working on potty training with Rhiana for 3 days now and things are going pretty good. Today she stayed dry all morning and only had a pee accident in the afternoon. She also had 3 poop accidents in the afternoon. She seems to be a bit scared of pooping on the potty. She is also not telling me she has to go, so every 20-30 min I take her to the potty. I keep telling her to tell me when she has to go to the potty and she says 'yeah' but doesn't let me know. So that all being said here are my questions:

1. What can I do to help her poop on the potty?
(cleaning poopy panties is not fun!)

2. Is there anything I can do to get her to tell me she has to go pee or does that just come after a while of potty training?

Thanks
Crystal

Set a schedule of going to the toilet and sitting on it for several minutes. Like once every half hour or so with her. Kids get distracted easy and forget. Maybe get a few potty books that are only allowed to be read while on the toilet (stuff like Mo Willems' Time To Pee, leap frog has a potty board book, stuff like that).

Pooping, I resorted to bribery on that one. I didn't want to leave her in pull ups (used cloth mainly here, but when out in public and at church and stuff we used pull ups) and cut a hole in the rear like I had seen suggested in potty training books for parents. Thought that was ridiculous personally. She was told that when she chose to poop in the potty, we would go and find a great poopy present. She was big into dolls at the time so she got to choose from some preselected ones at the store. Took a week of talking it up. I tried spanking her for not obeying about the poop and everything I could think of. We've been totally trained for a year and a half now (though, occasionally we do get so busy we forget to go and end up rushing to the toilet in an emergency and having a bit of a leak...)

I'm potty training the youngest right now, so I know what you are going through. Have fun, (well, like dealing with body fluids is fun...) and don't stress. Deal with direct defiance as it comes and try to think of what motivates your child. What works for one more than likely will not work for another.