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.

Well done! Stick with it. It's disgusting and you'll be washing clothes for ages but he'll get it eventually.

We had a bucket in the bathroom to soak poo clothes and clothes with pee that hadn't been immediately rinsed. Honestly it sucks while you're living it, but I know lots of kids who don't get it after a couple of days and need a few months going cold turkey before it clicks.

We had some issues. My advice is take away all nappies altogether. Make it fun. Sing a silly song. Put something funny down the toilet to
poo on top of. Bubbles? We did raisins 🤷‍♀️Get him laughing . It worked for us.

A sweet for every pee on the toilet and a small toy (wrapped up) for every poo.

I bought around 20 small toys and the issue was fixed before I had finished the bag of toys.

You're on the same timetable as me then it seems (over the next two days at least). Solidarity!

Tbh I think a large part of the issue is your attitude. You are massively combative and basically have many different points you aren’t willing or able to compromise on.

yes, you have a baby. As do many others who have done this - that’s just parenting and par for the course. I’ve done it twice and each time had a 6 month old who didn’t like to be put down.

you don’t want to stay inside but you have very limited time in which to do this. If I were you I would have stayed inside for 4 days. Yes it’s a pain in the arse, but you only have 4 days so every single accident counts. You need to be on them and watching them constantly. It’s extremely tedious but you don’t use screens which is an advantage as screens make it impossible for them to not zombie out and pay attention to going. I have a garden and very active boys but they didn’t go in the garden during training because they needed to just be playing near the potty. That’s it.

you’re basically just complaining about everything without any solutions. I disagree with posters who think it can’t be done - UK is very lazy and think children can go to school with nappies and that’s bollocks. You can definitely do this / it’s difficult when they hold on/battle with you it is almost certainly a control thing. My first potty trained in 3 days no accidents but then refused to use any other loo inside or outside the house for about a year. Control. Didn’t have accidents but just held on all day. I had to just wait him out. You can’t really wait him out on this as you don’t have the time so the only thing you can do is have the potty there and calmly say you can’t go out until he’s used it. I know you said this causes distress but he knows where it is and it’s up to him to make that choice.

have you also checked that he doesn’t have a UTI, if he was saying his willy was sore? As that will make potty training impossible.

taking hiM out so he can poo in his pants is a mistake IMO as it normalises the feeling of an accident and then he won’t mind it. Same with letting them wet trousers - I always found mine didn’t give a shit about discomfort if they had had an accident, and the only method was to keep asking/catch them about to go and get them on and reward them. That’s it.

night time stick with nappies for now and see how you go. My eldest still needs them and my second it became clear after a week of being dry during the day he was also just dry at night.

@Coldsore MN can be extremely unpleasant towards parents of children who are for whatever reason struggling with toileting issues so I’m not surprised the OP has been ‘combative.’ I don’t personally see it though.

Whenever I’ve looked for support on here Oh Crap is just pushed relentlessly as is the idea that it’s been left too late, the U.K. are full of dreadful lazy parents and so on.

With potty training and with lots of other things, parents tend to insist a thing is right or wrong based on their own experience of their one or two children. I’ve been guilty of this - we did gentle sleep training with DS and it worked after one night and I’ve definitely probably assumed it would with all children! But I deeply regret reading the Oh Crap book. The tone is awful: so judgemental and its claims are not true <eyes DS> we’re six months in and are still having regular accidents and soiling in particular. I don’t think we’ve done anything wrong or DS is behind or anything, it’s just for whatever reason this is tricky.

Yet so often threads where parents are struggling invite attacks - often claiming the parent wants teachers to clean the child up, lots of complaints about bygone days not having this issue. It’s worth remembering that smacking, shouting and humiliation were used far more frequently than now and I certainly remember having an accident at nursery and being smacked for it (I am 44.) I don’t want to go back to those times and I don’t think anybody does. Some children will get this quickly and some slowly. What they all need is patience and positivity and encouragement. I am human and I’ve been frustrated with DS on occasion which I deeply regret. It just is: they will all get there eventually. And hopefully before school.

I haven’t mentioned “oh crap” - I don’t really find any of these potty training books (or sleep training books) helpful, because as you say, every child is individual.

OP is clear she has a time frame though and therefore this needs to happen. It’s not helpful people saying her child isn’t ready etc. I’m sure the bulk of 3 year olds are ready, and I do think it makes sense that there’s a bit of a sweet spot - when they are old enough to get it/physically able to hold it, and before they are obstinate enough to argue and control. Part of the reason I despise travel potties is because I think if your child is ready, they should be able to hold it until
you find a loo and not need to shit in what’s effectively a bucket
in public.

I don’t really think anyone has attacked the OP, I think people are offering advice and the response is just to slam
it down for whatever reason.

Getting it right for every child. The premise of child protection and education. Where is that?

I have four. Two adopted, then two biological. For completeness.

Dd1. Age two.

Ds1. Age nearly three.
Dd2. Age 3.5
Dd4. Age 3.5

None of my children have been "trained". Each and every one has felt ready and wanted to wear pants.

I've seen it all, I work in a playgroup two days and a nursery two. Parents following x, y, x, g, h, b.

If the child is not ready they are not ready. You can "train" them yes.

But I can say I have four children who have had maximum two accidents each ever. And one who is still in nappies at night. She's still three.

The ages are the ages they were ready

Some of this advice might help.

https://www.instagram.com/stoolwithholdinghelp?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

we used the “oh crap” potter training book, available on kindle.

It sounds like he may well have the control just not the desire.
Can you get dad to turn it into a cheeky/ ‘forbidden’ father-son thing.
Get dad to take him on one side and tell him the real reason that he wants him to learn to pee in the toilet is do that they can do a cool thing together. Have dad sneak away with him and show him how much fun it is aiming at cheerios he has thrown into the bowl. Have dad just be a master at it first few times with no pressure that your son has to try too. Let the idea sit with your son for a while. Hopefully he will have a competitive edge that he wants to try too. Let them keep it a secret for a while so that there are some ‘fun’ toilet episodes behind mummy’s back then get them to do a big reveal.
It might end up with pee everywhere at the start but it would get things going.

Tbh I think a large part of the issue is your attitude. You are massively combative and basically have many different points you aren’t willing or able to compromise on.

Yes, absolutely this. It was the "this must be done in a week" juxtaposed with "I don't want potty training to mess with his bilingualism" that made me raise a large eyebrow. He's got an entire lifetime to learn a second language, come on now, get your priorities straight.

You shouldn’t be leaving the house at this stage. You need to invest time in training him.

Every time I have tried not leaving the house it has been counterproductive. I don't want to create a negative association with potty training.

Tell me you don't understand the challenges of raising a bilingual child as the minority language parent without telling me...etc.

Thanks for the support.

Thanks for this.

Yes I think this thread is a great example of what you are saying.

I've got some posters telling me I need to wait until he is ready regardless of the fact that I've explained that he is starting school in less than three months and we no longer have time to wait for him to be ready. And I've got other posters telling me, in really quite a nasty way, that I've "fucked up" by leaving it "too late" and implying that my son is a horrible spoiled brat because he reacts badly to being cooped up inside all day.

Thankfully I'm pretty thick skinned and able to filter out the crap and just focus on the advice which is actually well meaning and might be of some use.

I think you've sometimes got to do a less efficient but more realistic version of Oh Crap depending on your circumstances. Take him out with a travel potty and loose trousers if you need to. If he's got to be back at nursery in however many days keep up with the no nappies at home and then take the nappy straight off after pick up.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom I can REALLY emphasise with your situation.

And that poster who told you that you fucked up, is just rude and trying to get a rise out of you.

I had the same situation as you before my DD turned three. I also posted here and told other mums how she was behaving - withholding, completely refusing to sit on the potty or toilet.

Not many people actually had much advice or experience, aside from saying that she's 'not ready'.

After quite a few failed attempts, I decided to just stick to it. I didn't want her to be 3 and a half and doing the same stuff anyway. But my decision nearly went the other way, because of people saying to just wait.

That's all you did. You didn't fuck up. You just listened to the camp that says ' not ready '.

Don't wait any longer, it's OK for people to keep saying wait until they're ready but for some children, the older they get, the longer they can hold the toilet and it's a nightmare trying to train them at this point! My second was like this.

My first wouldn't use the potty so I tried straight to the toilet and she clicked immediately. My second took much longer, she could hold for full days, it was a nightmare! We used lots of bribery in the end.

I would try using the proper toilet first, you never know, he might take to that more.

You've received some good advice (as well as some shockingly judgmental and smug responses). Have you spoken to any parents of your DS' friends, since the rest of the children in his nursery are already toilet trained? Maybe there are approaches that are specific to the country/context you are living in. Even particular words and phrases that all the children are familiar with. I realise that may mean using the majority language which you understandably want to avoid, but possibly inserting a word or phrase into your conversations with DS could help you move forward? Just a thought.

Children tend to be toilet trained later these days than they were in the past. When my DH was growing up, all children were trained very early according to MIL. But it was understandable, since no one in their country had a washing machine at home (all laundry was done by hand) and disposable nappies didn't exist there in those years. No one wanted to spend ages washing nappies so there was a huge incentive to get children trained as early as possible. I don't think there's anything at all wrong with waiting until later, though sometimes an older child can be more resistant than a younger one. But that isn't always the case, so your approach of trying to wait until your DS showed signs of readiness seems perfectly fine to me. ETA: I know you can't wait any longer, I'm just saying that there was nothing wrong with waiting until now IMO.

No, you don't get it.

I work full time. I am the only person who speaks English to him on a regular basis. His father and local family and caregivers all speak to him in his main language.

All the advice from people who actually know a thing or two about the subject is that I should never speak to him in anything other than English. If I speak to him in his other language he will realise that there is no need for him to speak English and he will choose to only speak his other language because it's much easier for him. The studies are very clear. You have to be absolutely consistent all the time.

He will be potty trained eventually. He has no learning difficulties and he is clearly not going to be nine years old and still in nappies. But if I start speaking to him in his other language at this critical stage in his language development just because I'm desperate to do anything which might facilitate the potty training, it will undermine all the hard work I am doing to make sure he speaks both languages.

In any case, that's not the point of this thread. He understands what I am saying in English anyway. He just doesn't want to pee on the potty.

OK.

So it's nearly 10am.

His nappy has been off for more than two hours.

He hasn't peed yet.

I've offered him juice and squash and he didn't drink it.

I've repeatedly asked him to sit on the potty.

Most of the time he's just refused, sometimes I've succeeded in bribing him to sit on it but he hasn't done anything.

Now what?

Because physically restraining him and forcing him to sit on the potty seems quite abusive.

What would your next move be?