A mom wants to know how to get her son to poop in the potty. I posed the question to Dr. Mike Steiner, who works in the department of pediatrics at UNC School of Medicine and the N.C. Children's Hospital.

Here's what he said.

The question: My three-year-old will pee in the potty, but he won't poop. He just does it in his pants. Is there anything I can do?

The response: Every parent experiences this time of “toilet-training” with their children and there are lots of different ways people approach it. A few things to remember is that in the U.S. the middle time when kids usually toilet train is around 3 years of age (33 -35 months of age), so your son is right on track in terms of his physical development. Children have to be physically (able to hold their urine/stool, able to remove clothes) and emotionally (able to follow directions, able to communicate with you, be interested in other family members using the bathroom) ready in order to start using the bathroom themselves. Despite the universal nature of toilet-training, there has not been a lot of scientific research into how best to accomplish it.

It sounds like your son is well on his way to being fully potty-trained. A few suggestions at this point:

1. Don’t turn the potty-training into a battle or frustrating thing. If it becomes a source of conflict or if he is punished for stooling in the diaper you risk a major setback.

2. If you’re comfortable with it, you can allow your child to go in and out of the bathroom while other family members are using the toilet.

3. When your child stools in his diaper, you should take the child and the diaper to the toilet and let him empty the poop into the toilet and then flush it down.

4. There are parents who use a behavioral approach to toilet training, and reward kids when they poop in the toilet. It won’t be wrong to give him a sticker or something he likes when he poops in the toilet.

5. If his bowel movements are at predictable times, there are parents who have tried cutting a hole in the pull-ups and bringing him to the toilet at the time of his bowel movements and letting him stool through the hole in the pull-up into the toilet for a couple of days. The idea of this is to demystify stooling in the toilet so he realizes that nothing will happen when he goes in the toilet.

Basically, congratulations on your success to this point. It sounds like he won’t need diapers for much longer. I would recommend avoiding any battles about what’s currently happening and then use the ideas above or other ideas to “normalize” pooping in the toilet and slowly transition him over.

Every Tuesday, local experts anwer your questions about your health, your kid's health and related issues. If you have a question, e-mail it to me.

Check out our other daily themes at TriangleMom2Mom:

MONDAY: Meet!
TUESDAY: Ask!
WEDNESDAY: Eat!
THURSDAY: Play!
FRIDAY: Out!

WEEKEND: Relax!