I'm toilet training with NO success!! I'm just about ready to tear my hair out because I feel like I've tried everything. My son is 4 years old and moderately physically disabled but very comfortable on his toilet seat and mentally he is on par with other 4year olds. He has been aware of the toilet for a couple of years. We tried potty training with little success so as he got bigger and with no success I decided we'll move to the toilet. Well we've been trying for a good year and consistently for the past 4 months. Pull ups for kinder and undies at home. I've tried reward systems, ignoring accidents, I'll put him on the toilet every hour only to have him pee himself 5 minutes after I take him off, I got three lots of poo in undies yesterday!!! The problem is he knows he needs to go to the toilet but if he is busy doing something else and I ask him if he needs to go he says 'no, I'm playing' or he'll sit there and smile at me cheeky and say 'I did poo in my pants mummy' and start laughing. It doesn't bother him at all to sit in wet or pooed pants inFact he'd rather stay like that so his games don't get interrupted. I've taken the more passive/ignore it approach in the past because that's the advice I've been given from his OT but I'm now at the point where I'm going to start using time out and removal of toys when he does it unless there is someone else with some words of wisdom. I'll take just about any advice given at this point!! Thanks
2 Replies
Cheeky boy :) I've toilet trained lots of kids mostly with autism so different to your child but the principles are similar. Has he ever managed to void on the toilet? Some kids (like my boy) can't seem to relax when sitting at the start and it's more a case of catching them in the moment. Can he stop mid stream if he starts to void and you say 'stop'. There is an awesome toilet training specialist in Australia who has compiled a lot of information about how to train tricky kids. I don't like recommending her book too much as the language she uses is outdated but the information contained is excellent and well set out.
My son is 3.5 yrs and we have tried for 18 mths to toilet train we were at our wits end we finally took him to our gp to investigate after urinalysis and ultrasound to make sure everything was physically normal we took him to a developmental pediatrician all tests came back as normal :/ the dr suggested we try the boss of my bladder and sneaky poo programs. So far it's working I would highly recommend these programs in 2 weeks my son has gone from wearing nappies and flooding the nappy each time he urinates to wearing pull ups and now underwear he is so proud of him self. The book really helped me understand what was happening when ur at ur wits end I would highly recommend boss of my bladder