WIBU to make him stay in wet pants?

[Poppyred85]

Partly posting here for traffic, potty training thread seems quiet...
Ds is 3.5y. We have been potty training since end October 2016. We did it by taking him to the loo often and gradually left it longer between trips. He can hold wee for hours and will tell us he needs a wee if he's doing something he's not interested in e.g when out food shopping. Until about 6w ago we would ask him if needed the loo and if it had been a few hours we would take him even if he said no. We then started doing a reward chart to encourage him to tell us. He gets a sticker every time he tells us/nursery/whoever that he needs the loo and when he's got 10 he gets a toy. This seemed to improve things a bit but not much. Most of the time I ask him, if he says no I then remind him about the sticker and he will often then come back about 5 mins later to say he needs a wee. Over the last week we seem to have gone backwards again. Yesterday he held on for about 4 or 5 hours before finally telling me he needed to go after repeated prompts from me. He then went on to do one at the table in the middle of tea. This morning despite regular asking he pooed in his pants. This afternoon he did a wee all over the kitchen floor again after repeatedly saying he didn't need one. I don't know what to do anymore. I have always been patient and said "try and tell mummy next time" but today I got cross and told him off and left him in wet pants for 5 minutes. He's starting pre-school in September, other children at nursery have called him poopy-pants(which he thinks is funny) and I don't know how to move forwards. He was 10 weeks prem but no ongoing issues and is very bright. WIBU to leave him in wet things for 5 or 10 minutes to show him it's better to go in the toilet?

Sorry the thread moved on quite a bit while I was trying to post!

My DD still wets regularly at 4. Potty trained at 2 at her instigation. Then about a million regressions. Nothing worked, and now she just gets herself changed without fuss. She gets it, she just can't be bothered to stop playing, it always happens when she's playing. I probably trained her too young in hindsight.

You could do the wet pants thing but I don't think it will work. I get your frustration, potty training is hell.

It's frustrating but I think YABU. Plenty of children in preschool are not toilet trained. I'd be very surprised if he was the only one. And if anyone is making fun of him for not being in pants then this should be dealt with by staff as it is not on.

You still have plenty of time to get him clean and dry before Reception so try not to get too stressed out about it.

Totally agree with PP about the consequences being a very boring routine of shower off, new clothes, helping to clean up the floor and put the clothes into the machine -no fun or laughing or games. You need to do this every time with a "what a SHAME we have to do these boring things everytime you don't use the potty! If you had we could be playing/watching fave cartoon/reading a nice book etc. Next time you need to go try really hard and we will have more time for nice things". My two luckily took to toilet training very easily, I found the less I made a fuss about it the better if there was an accident. I then mega praised for wees and poos in the toilet.

Never ever would I do this. Toilet training should not take 10 months. He's not ready. DS was 4 and went in his terms and very quickly because he was ready.

You have my sympathies. My dd is 4.5 and starting reception in September. All year at nursery she was wetting and pooing herself because she wouldn't tell you when she needed the toilet, wouldn't go, and wouldn't tell you when she had been. It has been awful. The school, gp, and HV all agreed it was behavioural. She's improved in the last few weeks and for the last month she hasn't had any accidents - touch wood it'll stay that way but I'm not counting my chickens.
We got there though by just going back to basics and praising, rewarding, ignoring. The rewards we started off doing a star for every time she remembered to go to the toilet and after three stars she got a treat like riding her scooter to school. Gradually we increased the stars until she needed to go half a day before a treat and then a full day. After a while of that we just phased it out as she'd often forget.
So far it works.
With regard to leaving him in wet clothes; it won't work. Because DD wouldn't go to the toilet or tell us, nursery would often leave her sitting in it for up to 3 hours. She didn't care.

FFS - shaming a child because they don't have bowel or bladder control. Really crap parenting.

I tried to train DS - after about a week I realised it wasn't working. Put him back in nappies. About six months' later, he told me he didn't want to wear them any more and he didn't. The end. Took 3 days and he was reliably dry. And no psychological trauma!

If what you're doing isn't working, stop doing it. You've been doing this for nearly a year and it's not working

My way was painless. Some of you seem to be making it a really unpleasant experience for you and your child.

Why not go the whole hog OP and wash him down in ice cold water whilst sympathising pleasantly?

YABVU and cruel. Can't believe you would even consider doing that. Your poor child.

Please lay off the op - she is absolutely desperate. The last thing she needs is to be berated.

Nursery teacher here - I agree with previous posters re getting him to change himself/clean up after an accident.

He'll soon realise that it's less work to just go to the toilet in the first place rather than peeing/pooing his pants.

Sorry you're having a tough time of it though.

What she's doing isn't working though 99%. Upping the punishment/shame factor isn't the way to go.

Are the people advocating that berating her or are they giving her sensible advice?

I won't stand by and watch people condone child cruelty, no matter how desperate a parent is with their child's inability to control their bodily functions.

I tried to potty train DD twice for a couple of days at a time and it failed. Then one day, she got up with a wet nappy, soiled her next nappy and then took her next nappy off and declared she didn't need them anymore. She was 2, closer to 3, so she potty trained herself because she was ready. She did have the occasional wee accident because she'd leave it till the last possible moment and would wee on the floor metres away from the loo - even when she was 5/6.

Your ds may just not be ready. Is there any reason you need him potty trained? Could you leave him a few months and take a view then? Or just let him run around naked in the garden. What about doing wild wees to water the trees? I know some parents taught ds's to do a standing wee on a table tennis ball in the loo. Maybe something like this to make it more fun would interest him?

I agree, she shouldn't do it - which is why I suggested other things in my above post and explained that it won't work. Nobody is condoning child cruelty. She is probably asking because it has previously been suggested by mumsnetters as a method of getting children to learn how it feels to be uncomfortable. I know because I've started many threads about the same issue over the last couple of years and have been told to do this several times. She is asking for advice as she has been worn down. Until you've dealt with 30 pairs of soiled pants in one day then you've no idea how she is feeling.

And calling it "crap parenting" is berating her, yes.

I wasn't talking about the OP when I said 'crap parenting' 99, but I'm sorry if it read that way. I was talking about the whole routine of showering off, cleaning up and talking about SHAME all the time which has been advocated.

Your approach sounds absolutely spot on. I hope your DD continues to 'get it'.

If I were In your shoes (I have a 3.5 still in bedtime nappies) I would put him in pull ups for a week or two. Whatever is going on in not sure he sounds completely ready. Maybe he just needs a break from it and to relax.

Explain that when he stops having accidents he can have some super hero undies/ lightening McQueen etc anything that he loves.

I think you should count today as a lesson and I know it's hard when you're so frustrated but berating for an accident isn't on. If he drops his pants and pees on your car in a car park-that's worth a ticking off (my DS did this).

Tomorrows a new day.

This post would get a resounding "yes" on nethuns

he's still very young, mine weren't fully consistantly dry at that age. It's a really difficult thing for some kids to get the hang of. Some kids do it over a couple of days, other kids take a long time, they're not being naughty so don't punish them!

Have just realised my post could have sounded a bit harsh - my apologies, it wasn't to (have mad hormones right now so blaming all on that!)

My point, simply put, was that - whilst frustrating - there will be a time when DS is dry; but that I know when you're going through it (which I now have ahead of me in spades!) it can feel never-ending.

Just love your child and do your best as that really is all that you can do....

And know, for a fact, that he will NOT be doing it at 18

Gah!!!!!!!!

"...wasn't ^'meant' to [sound harsh]"

Thanks for the replies. To be clear, he is aware when he needs to use the toilet/ potty. I questioned this myself months ago and observed closely that the problem is not that he doesn't know when he needs to go- as I said before he will tell me as long as he's not doing something he's interested in- and shows physically that he is aware (squirming, pulling at the front of his trousers) but it is obvious that he chooses not to go, as he'd rather keep on playing. I got cross with him this afternoon (as I think we all as parents do sometimes) but have apologised to him for that. We have already been getting him to put clothes in the wash etc when he wees but sorting him out/helping him when he poos, and whenever he has an accident he sits on the loo. Having read that a theory as to why children seem to potty train later now than say 20 years ago is that nappies are so absorbent they don't feel wet in the way terry nappies used to and so was thinking about whether he needed to feel wet in order to understand why we use the toilet and whether by just changing him/getting him to change he wasn't getting it, although I acknowledge this afternoon I acted while cross, and as I say apologised to him for it.
For those who have questioned my parenting, love or respect for my child, and in some cases suggested I am being borderline abusive to him I can only take your point of view but be grateful for the fact that we have been through more together as mother and child than many of you will ever even imagine and as such have a close and strong bond both with each other and as a family. While there would be no point in posting anything if a person were not interested in different opinions, perhaps you could think in future about how you phrase it and that for some you could be hurting or dissuading from seeking advice when they are struggling. We are all people with feelings.

Surely you can't be potty training your child for 10 months? He's obviously not ready and regardless of his age or what others at nursery are saying I think you need to leave it and try later.

My DD3.5 has been toilet trained for a year and more often than not insists she doesn't need a wee then 5 minutes later does desperately. So whenever one of us goes we take her with us and just plonk her on. She often protests she doesn't need one as she's opening her bladder and doing the wee! Just keep picking him up and putting him on.

Take his pants away try it bare bum for awhile my son was like this and this was the only thing that helped

Honestly, I know it's frustrating. My DS took a loooooooong time to be fully potty trained during the day. He was 4.5 before he got the hang of it.

You sound (sorry) like you ran out of patience and humiliated him. It won't help. It won't teach him a lesson, other than he was made to stand in shame with wet pants for everyone to see what he did wrong.

It's hard, but you just gotta swallow your frustration and change him promptly with minimal fuss and eventually it'll stop.

Having read that a theory as to why children seem to potty train later now than say 20 years ago is that nappies are so absorbent they don't feel wet in the way terry nappies used to and so was thinking about whether he needed to feel wet in order to understand why we use the toilet

IMO that theory is bollocks!

firsty (and more quantifiably) back when I was a baby and we were all in terry nappies, babies were forced to be potty trained very very young, that was expected at the time and dicipline was used. This caused long term problems. So attributing it to the nappies rather than to the more extreme and earlier potty training methods at the time is a bit of a leap

and secondly and more anecdotally, I used cloth nappies for one of mine, that kid potty trained later than the others who were in disposables.