Beyond potty training - toileting behaviour help

[haie]

Hi, sorry to post here- but there's just more traffic and advice here.

My almost 3 year old, has been out of nappies for a couple of months now.

She's mostly got it. But she makes it hard for herself and I don't know how to help.

She clearly needs to go and jumps around on the spot for ages and holds it for ages and ages, but she just won't go. I encourage her but I mostly ignore it, because I know she just won't go unless she wants to go ( prompting or taking her to the loo doesn't really work with her ).

There's a lot of ' I need the toilet ' where she seems absolutely desperate, like yesterday in the car ( about 3 minutes before we got home ). By the time we got home ( literally 3 minutes ) she suddenly didn't need it anymore so desperately, but held her crotch for ages and jumped around for ages and eventually went - a few hours after ' needing the toilet ' in the car.

She's been up since 6:30 this morning and was telling me she needed to go since she woke me up this morning ( she sometimes just wants my attention ). Anyway, she still hasn't gone, but keeps holding her crotch and occasionally saying she needs to go. Any attempts to take her, have failed.

She doesn't have many accidents at all, so she's able to hold it etc. but it's just quite difficult to predict and I'm on edge a lot and so is she. She also absolutely will not go before we leave the house etc, there's no point in trying. She only goes when she has 100 percent decided to go.

She's started a new nursery and has wet herself there the first couple of days and the third day she's been OK and finally did a wee there ( after a lot of prompting ).. but the holding it and not going for ages behaviour was already happening before. Although we had stages where she reliably told me she needs to go.

Things that might help.

1. talk about and watch things about going to the toilet in a routine. There's a bit in the Bluey episode Fruit Bat where Bingo does a tactical wee. That phrase has made it into our home. There's also a couple of good get well soon episodes about having a toilet routine and going to the loo.

2. sticker chart for going when asked. A sticker every time she does it and when she collects x number she gets a treat of some kind.

3. take her with you when you go for tactical / going out wees. Modelling the behaviour you want.

My daughter is a bit the same and does resist going out wees etc. she's almost 4 now and have been out of nappies since 2 and a half. She's just Miss Independent. We've used all of the above and over time she has got more compliant with the requests.

What also helped was she started to not like the potty or being treated like a 'little girl'. She wants to be a big girl now like her older brother. He is very good at doing wees on demand so that also helps.

Why doesn’t she want to go? Is it because she’s playing?

We tried to use the Bluey episode about tactical wees but she went apeshit and started shouting at us ‘stop saying tactical!!!!’

I’ve given up now. I tell her that if she wets herself then it’s her problem. I did try consequences too, like saying I wouldn’t play a game until she’d been for a wee. That kind of worked too.

Thanks for your advice.

I never thought there was so much more to potty training, once they actually 'get' it at the initial stage... but clearly, it takes much more than just the first bit !

I will try your suggestions.

I think I can honestly say potty training has been the worst part of parenting so far. Give me cluster feeding any day.

With my eldest, lockdown caused a huge fear of public toilets.

With my youngest, dehydration in the summer made her poos hard and we had poo issues until very recently. We did lots of positive encouragement but we did have to pull out the big guns and phone Father Christmas for her to finally get over it (she's very nearly 4, very clever and very verbal. I'd not say to do this with any younger child)