4 year old wetting

[DinoGreen]

I posted this in Parenting but got no replies so trying again here for traffic, even though I know it’s not technically an AIBU ...

Hoping someone might have some advice as I’m at my wit’s end with my 4 year old DS.

We potty trained him at 2.5, in hindsight perhaps he was a bit young, but he picked it up quite quickly. However, after a few months he then regressed and began wetting himself a lot. Things improved again after a few more months, but ever since we seem to go through phases of him wetting. I finally thought we were there around 6 months ago, but in the last few weeks it’s started again.

He does not wet himself leaving a huge puddle on the ground and never has. He simply doesn’t go when he needs to and lets a bit of wee out. Then maybe a bit more and a bit more until he can’t hold it anymore and then he’ll dash to the loo. But this means that his pants and often his trousers/shorts too are wet and need changing.

He is absolutely capable of going when he needs to as the problem I describe above almost exclusively occurs when we are at home. If we go out for the day, he’ll happily stay dry the whole day. He’s at nursery 3 days a week until he starts school in September, and hasn’t been sent home from there with any wet clothes for a very long time. But when we’re at home, he just can’t be arsed.

I feel like I’ve tried everything - positive rewards for staying dry (he never manages to get the reward), negative consequences (no treats, time out) and natural consequences (making him stop playing, go and get changed himself, put wet clothes in the washing machine etc). He’s very articulate and I’ve tried discussing it with him, he simply says he gets distracted and doesn’t know when he needs to go.

He’s never been dry at night but I’m not worried about that. I just want to stop washing sometimes as many as 3 or 4 pairs of wet pants and trousers a day, if we’re at home all day.

As I said he goes through phases and it may be that lockdown/change of routine/starting school in September has unsettled him, but I really think it’s just that he can’t be bothered and I’m so fed up!

Any advice?

If he’s only doing it when you’re at home there’s quite an easy fix (and you don’t mention if you’ve tried it so sorry if you have!), just set an alarm for every hour and send him to the toilet, no ifs nor buts. Hopefully he’ll soon get annoyed and figure out that if he goes when he needs to he won’t have to stop playing to go every hour. I think it’s still quite developmentally appropriate at this age though to get so carried away with playing you forget to go to the toilet, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

Thanks Probablygreen and you’re right I should just do that. We do remind him frequently when we’re at home but if I get distracted myself and let too much time slip by, bam, there he goes again. I’ll try setting an alarm so we don’t forget to remind him either.

What about a reward for going rather than for staying dry?

I had one of these. I found battling with him over it made us more unhappy, so we just learnt to live with it. It did eventually stop.

He has ADHD and I suspect this contributed to it. He really struggled with turning his attention away from the thing he was doing.

The hourly alarm sounds like a good idea though.

Thanks HoldMyLobster. I think you’re right that there’s no point really in getting wound up about it, hard as that is sometimes. DS doesn’t have any ADHD or ASD traits that I’ve noticed, I genuinely think it’s just laziness with him! I’m going to try the alarm at home and see how we get on.

MereDint also a good idea to try rewards for going regularly, rather than staying dry, thank you.

My two eldest went through stages of this. Basically they were too involved in what they were doing to go to the toilet so ended up losing it while making a mad dash.

I don’t think an award for not wetting pants is appropriate, but the sending hourly sounds like a good plan.