Three year old holding in wee...

[curlygal]

Not sure if this should be in potty training...

DS has been potty trained for well over a year now. From the word go it was all on his terms - I couldn;t get him to use the potty when I asked, only when he wanted to.

This has continued and is now at the point where he only wees once per day max. He often goes almost 24 hours without weeing, then does a MASSIVE wee.

Nursery have asked me about it and I said that it was just one of his things and assumed he will grow out of it.

Should I be worried? I don;t want to make an issue out of it incase I make it worse!

My dd does this (although to a far lesser extent).
It is not uncommon for me to still be asking her to go for a wee at about 9 or 10am because she won't have been since she went to bed the night before (7pm).
It drives me nuts cos i have suffered from frequent cystitis and know that holding onto it can cause big problems.
I'm pretty strict with her now though and if i feel she has gone too long without a wee then i will refuse to do anything else until she goes and tries - always with her maintaining that she doesn't need a wee and then it sounds like a bluddy horse!

I'm trying not to make a big issue out of it by forcing him to wee, he does the same - says I don;t need a wee then will do the world's biggest wee five minutes later.

I'd be more worried if he were a girl I suppose due to cystitis? Can boys definitely not get that? (feel a bit thick to ask!)

My ds2 holds on for ages, too and it was something that concerned me for a while. On his 2nd day of potty training, he was hopping up and down in agony by 2.30pm (having not peed all day), because he'd worked out how to hold on, but not how to relax his muscles to let it all flow out! He continued to be like this until very recently, but in the last week or two seems to have worked out how to make himself go at will, rather than through total bladder-bursting desperation.

Maybe your son also has a bit of an issue with actually being able to go prior to his bladder being extremely full? If so, it will probably sort itself out, as in the extremely long term (years and years), I think it can cause problems with bladder function to always leave it too long. Maybe you could try getting him to drink more, rather than focusing on the peeing more, and whether he likes it or not, that should lead to more trips to the toilet!!! And maybe make peeing more fun (eg standing up and peeing at a target??!!...). Making an issue out of going to the toilet in itself might make the problem worse, as either stubborness sets in, or worse, some kind of toilet-visiting phobia!!!

My 3 1/2 year old does something similar, he goes for a maximum of 3 wees a day. I was worried by this initially but I found that by putting him on the loo or by asking him frequently if he needed to go he was having more accidents (I think out of being stubborn-'I'll go when I want to, not when you want me to'). I then spent a number of weeks reminding him each morning that he was in charge of his 'winkie' not mummy, and that if he wanted a wee he had to tell me. If I think that it's been too long without a wee i remind him by saying 'you will tell mummy when you want a wee', rather than asking him if he needs to go or putting him on the loo, this (hopefully) keeps the ball firmly in his park and will make him responsible for his toilet habits. Seems to be working so far.....

My DD 2.8 does this too, it really is amazing how long they can hold it for! My experience is similar to Joe1977, my DD is very stubborn and doesn't want to be told what to do when it comes to anything weeing and pooing. Since we have tried to make it all as much of a non-issue as possible and plied her with as much water and milk as possible we have seen more improvement in the last week than in the previous three months in terms of taking responsbility for her own toileting and not holding.