Help! 3 year old has started weeing and pooing his pants

[debster]

I'm sure this has been covered before but I can't find the relevant thread. I would be so grateful for some advice/reassurance/help!

My ds is 3y and has been fully potty trained since he was about 2.5 (i.e. wee and poo, day and night). However, in the last couple of months or so he has started weeing himself. This began as isolated incidents every couple of weeks but has now got to the stage where he is doing it nearly every day, sometimes up to 2 or 3 times. It always happened at nursery so we discussed it with them and they started taking him to the toilet every 15/20 mins or so whether he needed to or not. This would work for a week or so but after a couple of days of not being forced to go he would start again. In my opinion he appears to be lazy as he will stand there and jiggle from foot to foot insisting that he doesn't need to go. Of course when you make him he does have a wee. If you ask if he needs to go he says no. It is so frustrating as we can't work out why he is doing this. Why won't he say yes when we ask him whether he needs to go or not? Things came to a head today when we were at a friend's child's birthday party. I asked him whether he needed to go and of course he said no. When it was time to go home we discovered that not only had he weed himself but he'd pooed his pants as well. And not just a little skid mark but a full on poo. I was so disgusted and angry I'm afraid when we got home I just let rip and after a bath and dinner just put him to bed with no stories. I know not the best way of dealing with it but after all this time I was at my wit's end as was my partner (and he's one of those irritatingly laid back people!) To add to everything I'm worried that if it's not laziness but an attention seeking thing what will happen when I have our second child due in October?

Anyway, please does anyone have any ideas about what's going on? Do we need to talk to a health visitor? What can we do? How do we deal with it? We're really desperate for an explanation.

Thanks Debster.

Try not to get too anxious and upset because that is passed to your child who will then become worse. I had the same problem with my 4 year old 11 YEARS AGO and thought it would never resolve.

The trap my husband and I fell into was constantly asking him if he needed the toilet. I completely understand the frustration when they say no then immediately soil themselves but you must try not to show any anger. Calmly change clothes without making too much fuss.Avoid constantly asking toilet related questions as your child will become frustrated.

Can you relate it all to a certain event. Was it actually starting nursery that triggered it? Had your son been constipated and has a painful experience passing his poo that has caused him to hold on until he can hold no more? Be careful not to restict fluids hoping to avoid accidents, that will not help.

This is definately a problem to discuss with your health visitor. A good book to read is Richard Green's 'Toddler Taming' which helps you to be more relaxed about these dilemmas.

We are having an almost identical problem with our ds, who was 3 last month. He was also potty-trained by 2 and a half, clean and dry day and night. Just after Christmas he started having the occasional accident but I put this down to his having been unwell-he had the measles, despite having had the MMR.He only wet himself at home-never with the child-minder. However, he started nursery school after half-term and the accidents have increased in frequency.He is also wetting the bed every night.( Strangely, though, he is still not wetting himself while with the childminder, yet he does it both at nursery and at home.)We have tried every approach from the calm "clearing up without comment" to getting cross with him.I have 4 older boys and have never had this problem before other than brief regressions at times or stress or illness.

We have recently been through the same with our ds who is now 4. It started when we were preparing to move almost a year ago and continued in varying degrees while we moved, had another baby and he started a new preschool. Frustrating though it is I would advise you to bear with it (I remember sighing heavily when told that myself!). I too lost my temper on more than one occasion but this was counter productive as he wasn't trying to be naughty and didn't really mind being wet. Small rewards such as a star chart worked for a short while but, at the end of the day, it had to be his decision to be dry and clean. Fortunately the preschool were very patient over his accidents and they have become far less frequent since Christmas.It has also helped that he is now tall enough to pee standing up and with easy fastening or elasticated clothes this has made the whole business much more straightforward. He has also become dry at night for the first time as he says he is now a Big Boy at 4 and no longer needs nappies.Fingers crossed we're over the worst! Good luck, but I don't think you can really force the issue unless there is a medical reason for the relapse.

Thanks for your messages. We have tried all sorts of tactics ranging from bribery to taking him to the toilet every 20 mins. None of which have worked. We are now starting on the ignoring it phase. We have decided that unless he says he needs to go to toilet we are not going to manetion it at all. If he wets himself then so be it. We feel this is the only way in which he is going to learn about taking responsibility for it himself. (God he's only 3!) I feel that if we keep making him go to the toilet then he gets more lazy as he feels he doesn't have to think for himself. Anyway, we'll see how it goes. By the way he started having minor accidents about 5 months ago when he moved to the 'big' hall at nursery. However, he is really settled there and loves being with all the older kids but ever since then it has been getting worse - we just don't know why. Maybe an attention thing? I really hope he is over it by the time baby no. 2 arrives in October.