It all started with the flush of an automatic toilet. The terrifying sound marked the beginning of a two-year nightmare for Sarah Teres as she desperately tried to potty train her daughter Molly.
"It was awful" Teres said. "We tried everything including bribery and threats." Teres, the mother of three from Andover, Massachusetts, hoped her middle child would be toilet trained by the time she was 2½.
Two years later, the girl was still in diapers, refusing to use the bathroom. "I was going crazy," Teres admitted. "She wouldn't poop. She would hold it for days."
At wits end, Teres enrolled Molly in the Toilet Training School at Children's Hospital Boston.
"By the time the children come in with their families, it has become a power struggle," explained Dr. Alison Schonwald, a pediatrician who supervises the "poop school," as it's affectionately called by staffers. "The kids kind of dig in their heels and put a line in the sand." Health Minute: Watch more on the perils of potty training 
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Judy Fortin is a correspondent with CNN Medical News. Linda Ciampa of Accent Health contributed to this report.
