Dry all night, accidents in day

[anna26anna]

Hi there,
My son is 2y9m. He's been potty-train(ing) for a couple of months now, and it's pretty frustrating for all involved. He is dry all night (so obviously has bladder control?) but still has regular accidents during the day - most days there's at least one, although we've been three days accident-free now. The trouble seems to be that he just doesn't go to the bathroom when he needs to. He's a pretty tough and independent 2 year old, follows his older brother's lead in as many things as possible. He occasionally takes himself off to the bathroom (uses the toilet rather than potty, prefers no child-seat as can support himself now and really seems quite comfortable with this), but generally only initiates the bathroom trip when he needs no.2.

Many times in the past couple of months we have felt like calling it quits but he will not go back in nappies. Instead we've persevered with taking him to the bathroom regularly, reminding him regularly, etc. With three children and one just a baby, though, we miss sometimes, and we've had horrid accidents (he's been mortified as well as me!) in brother's Reception classroom, at Mother/Toddler group with nobody prepared to help as 20 toddlers milled around, etc.! The longer this goes on, the more I see that it's bound to be damaging to him, but I just don't know what to try next. We've done the positive reinforcement thing with a choc button for any wee or poo, it helped slightly but didn't really persuade him to the bathroom at those times when he really didn't feel like going.

(For history, older brother is almost 5, baby sister 16 weeks). With both boys, we got in the habit from about 18 months of having the potty available at bath-time, so by 2nd birthday both were doing frequent wees and poos. DS1 potty-trained quite quickly (3 days, at 2.0 yrs). With DS2, we had a couple of days try at 2yrs, but the bladder control didn't seem to be there so we left it. I wasn't that keen to try so soon after the arrival of his new sister, but he started taking his nappy off around 2y6m and wanted to go for it - so here we are.

Has anyone had any similar experience, or do you know of any sources of help/books I could read to help with some ideas?

Anna

[belledechocolatefluffybunny]

Little children often get really carried away with what they are doing that they forget about the toilet until it's too late. Do you regularly ask him if he needs it?

I can't reply to your reply, I'm off to bed.

[anna26anna]

Hi belle,
Thanks for your reply. I don't think it's that he forgets. He will often have an accident very soon after a reminder (and he's told us he didn't need to go). I did think for ages that perhaps his bladder control wasn't spot on yet, but now that he's going 12+ hours at night, I can't believe that that is the case. I'm really puzzled. (My SIL tells me I just had it far to easy with our first child, and that this is the real world )

Anna

[frankenfanny]

I don't really have an answer, but my son was the same, dry all night from 18m,but frequent day accidents. I never made an issue out of it or put him back in nappies, just made sure me and the nursery were prepared for floods! He gradually got better and longer in between accidents and was reliable from about 3 1/2. People said it was because he was too easily distracted in the day.

[Roo83]

My ds was the same, dry at night from day 2 of pt but took a good few months to get him dry in the day. He still has the occ. accident (this week worse than most!!) but I def. agree I think its when he's distracted as all accidents have been when he's off playing.