Apr 17, 2009

More on Toilet Training an Older Child


Ok moms, here we go, more toilet training questions. My son is almost 4 ½ and although he got a late start, he has been urinating in the toilet for a while now. He even figured out peeing standing up by himself including using the cutout on boys underwear instead of taking them off. However he has not been having bm’s in the toilet. He did it once about a week ago, but only because I caught him mid-poop and we made it to the bathroom. He was very excited to poop and flush, so I thought.. whew, finally we are getting somewhere!

He has not done it since and now is also having urine accidents as well. He’s gone back to not telling me when he has to pee and even though we regularly sit on the toilet to try and poop, he never does. Then later I find him with dirty pants and he doesn’t seem to care. When I ask him what happened, why he didn’t get to the toilet and pee, he says "It was just an accident mom". When I ask him why he is still pooping in his pants he says, "I just wanted to". I can’t get any real answers and I don’t know why we are having a set back. Nothing has changed here at home. I got such terrific feedback from you all in response to my last toilet training post, I figured I’d ask again.

He seems to be somewhat more emotional lately, so I wonder if he’s going through a stage. At this point, he knows exactly what he needs to do and why. He can recite the entire path food (organ by organ) takes to get from his mouth, and how it becomes poop and ends up in the toilet. So I know it’s not a matter of understanding the mechanics. He does not fight me when we sit and try and he is not afraid of the toilet. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s just being lazy?

Should I just ignore this like I did with the urine? It worked then, I simply put the ball in his court and in no time he did it for himself. Your collective insights will be much appreciated by me and any other moms toilet training an older child.

7 comments:

My Journey said...

We took a very laid back approach to toilet trainer. My philosophy is when they were tired of wearing diapers they would train themselves and they did :) Personally I would give him absolutely no attention regarding the accidents. I would simply clean him up without comment and leave it at that. When you remove the attention aspect quite often the problem behaviour goes away. Another thing you could do is reward him for the times he does go to the toilet himself. I'd suggest something tangible like stickers or stars on a chart. Each time he goes he could pick his own sticker and place it on the chart for that day. That will give him a visual reward system that he can control.

HTH

gardengnome1 on twitter

siteseer said...

My girlfriend had a five year old that still wasn't trained. The problem fixed itself when he went to school... another kid asked what the sound was when he could hear his diaper (they used rubber pants over a diaper back then). The five year old never had another accident again. Peer pressure... not always a bad thing. Good luck I know it can be so frustrating and expensive.

DJ said...

My Journey: So far rewards have not worked for him, but I'm trying to be cool about it and see how that goes.
Siteseer: I bet rubber pants would be a deterrent today as well!

Anonymous said...

I cannot tell you how relieved I am to read about your child and the other commenters from your original post. My oldest was 4 before he was potty trained, now my second will be 5 in a few months and is still completely resistant. I thought surely I was the only mother who couldn't get a 4-year-old to use the toilet. Just knowing that there are other people in the same boat makes me feel a lot better. We'll keep working on it, and eventually it will happen. thanks so much for sharing!

Anonymous said...

I used cloth diapers on my kids and second the cloth diaper-rubber pants solution. I never went as far as to send any of my kids off to school in diapers, but I did make them wear diapers at night for a while after they were trained, and they all hated it! I mean really hated it! Big bulky night-time double diapers, pins, rubber pants! Not fun...

Marlene.

Erika Shupe said...

I, too, am so relieved to know I'm not alone in this. Our nearly 4yo has gone backwards and poops and pees in his pants all day long. I'm looking in to the cloth diapers/pins/rubber pants plan to make him more uncomfortable. Thanks for your comments and sharing...
Erika at LargeFamiliesOnPurpose.com

Erika Shupe said...

I, too, am so relieved to know I'm not alone in this. Our nearly 4yo has gone backwards and poops and pees in his pants all day long. I'm looking in to the cloth diapers/pins/rubber pants plan to make him more uncomfortable. Thanks for your comments and sharing...
Erika at LargeFamiliesOnPurpose.com

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