My 3 1/2 year old has been toilet trained for a year but is now having frequent 'accidents'

[Jen44]

My ds has been toilet trained for a year but since xmas has had too many 'accidents' for them to be just that. He may go for a week fine and then have two accidents one day and one the next. There doesn't seem to be any pattern. It can be pooh as well as wee. When I ask him why he's done it he doesn't know.

There have been no changes to his life that we can think of that may be upsetting him, no house move, no new childcare or new baby.

I'm thinking of going back to a sticker chart like I did when we were potty training him a year ago but not sure what's best.

Any advice/comments gratefully received.
Thank you :)

Hi,

Having potty trained 3 I can strongly advise it can either be distraction, ie playing or just plain laziness.

Try the sticker chart again, and make it a routine going for a wee, so set times in the day, he will soon train his bladder to obey...he may not thank you at 21 when at the pub he needs a wee after 1 pint because it's 2 o'clock but heyho he'll be at uni or moved out by then :)

He's still quite young. My DS had periods of having the odd accident- one or two a day sometimes at about this age. Was worse when he started new nursery but not just this.

Personally I would just ride it out. With my DS it was when he was tired, often in the afternoons. That coupled with a combination of laziness/being too engaged in what he was doing.

He is now 4 and a bit and it is very rare for him to have an accident- still the odd one, again when he's very tired and I don't make anything of it.

Do you get him to put wet clothes in wash and get new ones? Just in straightforward way. Supposed to discourage them.

I saw someone on here recently say they thought accidents could be linked to growth spurts which is interesting...

I was discussing this with a friend recently. We both have daighter who potty trained at 2 and regressed at 3. It doesn't seem uncommon at all.

My ds is similar age and he recently had a few accidents too over a period of a week or two. I agree with other posters that it is probably not unusual at this age, they can just go through periods when they are more distracted or tired. He is still not dry at nights either, so I think he is just not fully at the complete-control stage!

We had this with DD although we were expecting DC3 and I think that she was attention seeking because of that. We found that we had stopped giving her attention when she went to the toilet because we saw it as normal and she was getting upset that she wasn't getting praise for going to the toilet, washing hands etc. We started giving her lots of praise to stop the 'accidents' and then she went the other way by going to the toilet all the time (every five mins at nursery one day). After I'd checked that she didn't have an infection, we managed to find a happy balance and all the problems stopped.

All good advice thank you. :)
In your opinion should I be getting cross or do you think this wont help? I'm not shouting but telling him I'm disappointed cos he's 'such a big boy etc... '

Also about night time - he is not dry at night. I'm not in any rush, think he's a way off yet, always wakes up with a wet pull up and frequently wet through pyjamas and sheets. He has however said he wants to stop wearing nappies at night so we've started taking him to the toilet as we go to bed but he is sometimes already wet and still wet in the morning