To ask how to potty train a resistant 3 year old?

[MissScarletInTheBallroom]

Yes I know there is a topic for this but there's next to no traffic and people who have already cracked this and moved on probably aren't looking at it.

My DS turned three a couple of months ago. We have tried potty training several times with no luck so far.

He is starting school in September and HAS to be trained by then. There is no other option. I have taken tomorrow and Tuesday off work so we are on day 2 of a four day window dedicated to cracking this and it's getting worse, not better. I don't have any other holiday other than the last two weeks of August which we have booked off to go on an actual holiday and will be completely ruined if we have to spend it hanging around the holiday accommodation doing potty training.

I'm at my wits' end.

He doesn't want to sit on the potty.

He withholds for hours on end.

He gets increasingly angry and fed up and wants to go outside and play. Eventually I give in and we go outside and it's only a matter of time before he pees or poos in his pants.

Please help.

I mean you know your child best, but one who is being stubborn will definitely wait until nap time. I've known kids to do this.

That’s basically how I toilet trained my eldest. He is severely aurustic, non verbal and has very limited understanding but was fully trained by 3 years old, earlier than my youngest who isn’t autistic.

We would give him a drink, wait 20-30 minutes and then go into the bathroom. He’d sit in the loo and we’d play games, sing, look at books etc and then when he did a wee we’d all go crazy with praise and he’d get a chocolate button or piece of cheese (his two favourite things at the time) Outside of toilet training we didn’t offer those two things. I honestly thought it was going to be impossible but he’d cracked it within a week.

I haven’t read everyone’s suggestions, just your posts.

Have you tried ping pong balls in the toilet? It taught mine to stand and aim at the balls. They enjoyed playing while weeing.

Obviously, there were times when wee was misfired, but who cares (easy to clean up and wasn’t in their pants).

I wouldn’t worry too much about accidents at school and other children noticing. I work in primary and remember once when the children were in the school library, I saw a child clearly having a poo in his pants, I gently escorted him back to class to be cleaned up, the other children wouldn’t even have known.

I also used to race mine to the toilet before we went out. Reminding them that everyone has to wee before we go out as we don’t know if there are toilets there. They would always win and therefore go first.

Good luck, I can hear how stressed you, understandably are.

I've nothing to add. I just want to say you sound lovely and you're doing a great job.

I'm in a similar, but easier, situation. We're going nappy free day time with our just turned 3 yr old. And it's been hit and miss. He's now holding, and will only go on the toilet once I tell him to, he seems to have no awareness of needing. Once he sits on it he's mighty, but if I don't make him go every 90 mins he would just wet himself.

He starts the big nursery room in Sept, and ideally would be trained, but it's not essential. That said now we're this far I'm ploughing on. So I have buckets of empathy for you.

My 4 yr old trained in about 3 days when she was 2 1/2 and never had an issue or an accident. I suppose they are all different. But I relate to leaving it a bit longer, then wishing you hadn't!

He will get there. You will get through this. No advice, but lots of support to you.

Thank you for this.

What do you mean no luck? It’s normal for them to have accidents, it doesn’t mean they are not ready.

We used the Oh Crap book. Don’t give in and put nappies back on. If they are starting school they should be able to understand that you will not put a nappy on so they can continue to be inconvenienced by accidents or they can use the toilet.

I don't like Oh Crap generally - I think it is 99% a load of, well, crap.

I kept recognising things in it which I KNOW are total bollocks and it made me sceptical of the author's other claims which were new to me. Plus I find her peppy, know-it-all, judgemental tone absolutely infuriating and I think the insistence that you have to do it exactly her way or you've failed can fuck right off. And I think setting an alarm so you can take your sleeping-through baby to the toilet is madness. MADNESS.

But I do admit she has one extremely good tip which is to dedicate a day to watching them, she reckons naked, but I think the PJ shorts would work too - because it's just that awareness that you need to know immediately when they go - just basically observe what they do body language style when they are on the verge of having an accident.

What I learnt with DS2 doing this is that he would have those predictable signs before he actually recognised it himself. It was tiny and subtle - he would basically turn his toes inwards. DS3, I don't know. He is also nearly 3, and sounds similar to your LO. We had one perfect half day and since then he has utterly refused the idea of pants or anything and if he doesn't have a nappy on he will repeatedly cry, lie down on the floor and ask to be changed, try to climb up to the changing table where the nappies are kept etc.

We are lucky in that we have the opposite - school starts really late here (we are also abroad) and they have absolutely no pressure to be out of nappies as long as they are by the time school starts (and all the teachers/doctors insist that they will be - and even stuff like sticker charts is actually discouraged because they say it's pressure. Well, a sticker chart worked wonders for DS2.)

What we have been doing over the last few weeks for DS3 to try and get him over the upset is not insist on pants in the morning, but every time he had a bath, we'd get him undressed while the bath was running and suggest doing a "bath time toilet wee wee" and he'd usually perform for that. After a few successful times of this, DH started encouraging him to do a "bedtime wee wee" on the toilet, again much praise for this and he was happy about it. So we've added a "morning wee wee" and then occasionally he'll randomly inform us "Wee wee coming out!" so we say "Oh, well done! Shall we do a big boy wee wee on the toilet?" and often he will say yes. Nursery have told us that he has done wees on their toilet (and once, half a poo) as well.

So we are still in nappies (pull ups) but using the toilet usually 1-2 times a day but sometimes more than that. He still does lots of wees in the nappy as well. And there are times that he doesn't notice that he's going e.g. he had a fresh nappy on after swimming the other day and either a very fast flow or just a bad nappy placement meant that a damp patch appeared on his shorts anyway. He is now getting happier to be without a nappy although honestly I am not sure how he'd react if I tried to put pants or trousers on him with no nappy. I am thinking of having a day where we just conveniently "run out" of nappies unexpectedly and show him that so that he thinks there is no other option.

I had a very resistant almost 3 year old, similar to you tried younger but had baby and it was impossible. She could hold on for 24 hours.

In the end she responded best to not reminding at all. We "ran out of nappies", put the pants on, told her she would get a sweet for doing something on the toilet, and left it up to her. Went out as normal just took spare clothes. It's not a big deal if they have an accident outside anyway. Had some accidents and some tears but it didn't take long.

A 3 year old can probably be dry at night straight away in most cases , you could at least try him for a few nights. Get 4 plastic sheets and layer them up. If not go back to night nappies

I think 3 year olds are often too old for a lot of the advice. They are too big for potties, feel embarrassed being half naked and resent being bossed around.

I did my second child before 2 and although it took much longer until he was reliable, at least we avoided the emotional stress!

You have my sympathy. Potty training is so stressful.

Your child's nursery should be supporting you with this after you've done the first few days - send him in with 6 spare sets of clothing and let them crack on.

Not sure how much help this is but DD was a similar age to your DS. She was absolutely adamant that she didn't want the potty, despite clearly having good bladder control. We had weeks of flooded nappies because she would hold it in and then do a massive wee. One day she just announced that she wished to use the potty and that was it. Trained herself within 48 hours. Fingers crossed OP!

Also, ignore the "bribery is evil" troll - looks like they have been deleted now anyway.

If you had all the time in the world then you probably wouldn't need extrinsic motivation, but it is a mighty useful tool to ease them down a path a bit faster that they would prefer to dawdle on. It definitely has its place.

I’m going to agree with other PP’s and say he’s not ready.
However, a little step stool to the toilet and Cheerios cereal (or similar) how many can you aim for, worked with my middle boy
Be aware, splashes are bound to happen

I agree Oh Crap is crap. We’ve had a nightmare toilet training my 3.5 year old. He’s sort of there but still a lot of accidents and regularly soils his pants. All we can do is be patient and hope he’ll get there. Very stressful though.

OP, I know this is a very unhelpful comment (sorry!) but your stress definitely won't be helping.

I have seen so much inappropriate parenting from parents while potty-training, layering developmentally inappropriate expectations onto little children. Lots of passive aggressive behaviour, if not actually anger, when kids had accidents in inappropriate places because it was inconvenient and embarrassing for the parents. I sympathise with the parents - it's really tough - but it's bewildering for the kids. There is no universe in which it is acceptable, for example, to sit your crying toddler, pants down, on a potty in a public park for 20 minutes and bark at them "we're not leaving until you've done a wee!" I'm not saying you'd ever do that, but that's an example of the madness that I've seen descend on some parents when it comes to potty-training. And if you have to take an unreliably-trained child to the theatre or cinema, put a pull-up on them rather than freaking out when they have an accident!

My ten pence worth would be to take the long-game and focus on what you can do to make potty-training bearable for you so that you and your DC aren't stressed about it. Ideally imo accidents should be greeted with "oh well, never mind, you'll get it soon" and triumphs with high fives, hugs and stickers. But it's hard to do when you're fed up.

For me, the answer to this was wearing pants under pull-ups when we went out. This contained the mess somewhat but my DC still had that feeling of wetness so they learned when they needed to go. So if I were in your shoes, I'd buy loads of cheap pants, remind your DS where the potties/toilets are, get lots of fabric cleaner in and then just go out as usual but pop a nappy over the pants.

My youngest was difficult to toilet train, we finally managed it a few months ago (around 3yrs 9mo). What finally did the trick for us was buying lots of cheap hot wheels cars and some little plastic pots to put treat foods in, wrapping them all up in some tissue paper and putting them in a basket, we then told him that every child that uses the toilet gets to take a present from the basket (he has an older brother too so didn't want to exclude him from it). He was trained in about a week like this (and almost immediately went dry at night too). The only downside was he went from not wanting to use the toilet to wanting to go every 5 minutes to get a reward 😅 So I implemented a rule that he had to wait at least 30 minutes between wees and stretched this to 1 hour as he got better at it.

Just take away nappies (except for nighttime if you prefer). Put him in pants. And go with the flow. Have plenty pants and trousers as spares. My Ds is 3 end of July and is currently out of nappies, he just shouts potty and we run and I help him. A few weeks ago he would just pee in trousers. It wasn’t an ideal time we’ve been out at various places, trips in car and he needs to get baby sat at grannies tomorrow, but he’s only had one accident and that was the first poo. I’m being very chilled about it all…he’s my third and I started them too young. He seems ready now. I’d just be calm, pees go in potty’s. Clean up mistakes and repeat. Don’t make it difficult with loads of gimics. Good luc

Glad I’m not the only one that thinks ‘Oh Crap’ is, well, crap 😂.

I absolutely hated Oh Crap. I found No Cry Potty Training Solution book more helpful, and also the NHS Poo Goes to Pooland app PPs have mentioned. You have to remind yourself that although you feel as if you're the only one in the world with this problem just now (the school situation is really unhelpful) in reality literally thousands upon thousands of parents have been through this. Some with kids considerably older than yours. Assuming your DS has no special needs then he WILL get it with time and you have NOT done anything wrong. I also think it's highly unlikely that in a class of three year olds (and some two year olds, from what you said?) that he will be the only one having accidents after they start. People have very elastic definitions when they say their DC are "trained"!

Definitely keep the nappy off for naptimes (not nighttime - night is a whole different ballgame) and try to stay as calm and neutral as possible when there is an accident - hard, obviously. I found sympathetic (you understand this is hard for them) but pragmatic (but this is just something everybody needs to do) type reactions worked best. Lots of positive reinforcement for even tiny wins, even just getting him to sit on potty or toilet for a couple of minutes, and not much attention for accidents (oh dear, what a shame, wee goes in the potty doesn't it, you know where the dry clothes are don't you). Don't be afraid to escalate rewards - start with tiny rewards just for small wins, then move on to requiring something a bit more from him once you think he's comfortable with the basic stages.

Well we've had two poos in the last hour. One went in the potty and was rewarded with smarties and a sticker. (Only caught because I was nearby with the potty and DH recognised the poo face.) The other one was an accident in his pants at the park.

One in the potty is great progress! And if that got a reward whilst the accident in the park interrupted the fun then hopefully it’ll start to sink in.

For a potty training child, seeing something happen in the potty does really help to begin normalizing it as a process, even if you've rushed them there yourself. It starts to click, "oh, that's what it looks like/feels like to do it in there". Definitely a win!

Yes sounds positive progress OP, great to get one in the potty & give a reward. Good luck with it!

I would like to add my sympathies, it is hard!
my son was also 3 when I realised it had to be done. it took a lot of patience.
I found the when poo goes to pooland really good. I don't let my son watch very much, so I used that as the incentive, you sit on the potty, and you can watch. Also, I realised he was scared of the big toilet, so it was potties all the way. I take the potty with me everywhere. I bought a folding one that uses bags so minimal clear up when out and about.
I would take him to the potty for 20 mins at a time, about half an hour after getting up, and then half an hour after each meal. After a few days, he got the hang of wees, but poos took a while. I just decided that I can't go back to nappies, so made sure to have plenty of spares.
After a couple of months though, I started to get cross, not angry but to be very firm, poos go in the potty not in your pants. Every time. and it sank in. conversely, every time he managed it, he got a hug and a kiss and a treat and lots of praise.
Now, six months later, he is still so proud of himself. every time he makes a poo we get a loud announcement!!!

Just wanted to add to my message from before because I've read your updates and it sounds like you're really stressed. Understandable (I was too) but it's so important that he doesn't pick up on it, you need to act like it's no big deal and then he'll learn it's no big deal - and if he's not trained by 23rd, that's fine, nursery will support too and youll get there, the important thing is that youre on 'the journey'. I also think you need to change your expectations from "he'll be trained" to "he is training" - it's a process and he'll have an accident when you're out, definitely, more than one, including at your in laws. It's okay, there's not usually loads of wee and poos are contained in pants. It isn't going to be hugely disruptive when it happens and you just take wipes and changes of clothes with you and clear up as you go. It's easy to say but if you are able to relax a bit I think you'll both find it easier.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom so I did these as mine was also a car and truck boy

amzn.eu/d/eAU9akB

We sat and talked (multiple times) about the reason, reward, and information - but in reasonably simple terms

'We drink water which makes us wee, wee goes in the toilet - we eat food which makes us poo, poo goes in the toilet. We need to keep our clothes clean. When you wee or poo in the toilet we will put a sticker on the chart, when you get 5 you get a special truck'

Standing I found helped as I would explain just outside the toilet 'we drink water which makes us wee, shall we try?' Then give them some drink and get to stand in front of toilet - point at penis and say 'the wee will come from here' and I found him looking and concentrating on it would mean it would happen. We didn't really do every 20 mins or anything - around 1.5 hours unless has been drinking heavy etc as that was roughly how long between wees he would go anyway

It definately took a while but we had short simple talks on it regularly - varied where you can say 'what does drink make us do?' 'Where does it go' etc to try to keep it interesting but get it so it's really understood, simple, non scary and manageable for him

The working towards the trucks definately helped.. they sat in the bathroom as well as the sticker chart ready for collecting etc

Been following this thread all day, no advice here just commiserating as we're in the same boat. My daughter turned 3 nearly 3 weeks ago and has shown no interest in potty training. She even went as far as putting in her nappy when I took it off.

We started again yesterday after she had a dirty nappy. After showering I put on her underwear and she peed in the potty throughout the day no accidents.

Today we've have two accidents, one pee (she got distracted vacuuming) and one poo when DH was cleaning her potty that she just peed in. She kept saying sorry daddy, sorry mammy and we told her it is ok.
After shower she went to put on a nappy jersey and refused to wear underwear. We let her be and she went to play next door, came back clothes wet two hours later but nappy dry. Took off clothes and put her back in a vest and underwear. She has used the potty twice so far. I'm keeping her home the next two days to see how we go and will send her to the childminder on Wednesday with underwear and plenty of change of clothes and hope for the best.
Sounds like your boy is getting there, try not to stress too much.