Potty training at 3.5years old

[charley39]

Looking for any advice from people who have potty trained late. My DS is coming up to 3.5yrs. We were hoping for warmer weather by now to make it easier but that hasn’t gone to plan.
I’ve been reading the oh crap potty training book and it has spoken about 3.5 years being the max age before you can get into problems with bed wetting etc so now I feel I need to get going.
Partly it’s our fault for not pushing it sooner but DS has been quite sensitive to changes before so we’ve never just gone for it. He started to use a potty at nursery a couple of months back and they felt it was more of a following his friends kinda thing we we’ve had no success at home.

Just wondered if anyone has managed to successfully potty train this late? We have bought all new pants with characters etc but he won’t let me put them on him. Have tried putting them on his cuddly toys etc. He still happily sits in a nappy full of poo no problem. The book mentions about leaving them with no clothes on bottom to begin with but I know right now my DS won’t go for this. He’s very particular about certain things and can’t stand leaving his trousers off for a nappy change etc.

Yes, tried at 3. Was a nightmare and I gave up and buried head in sand. Then gave it another go at 3.5 expecting the worse. It was easy! With help of sticker chart and presents, he got it almost straight away.

@Calmingvibrations this is reassuring to hear!

'Oh Crap' is very popular, and I assume it works for many people, but don't feel bound to it. If no clothes on his bottom half is going to stress DS out, don't do it – it won't help him, regardless of how useful it might be for other children.

If he is sensitive to changes, would a more gradual approach work better? I know quite a few people who have started just sitting DC on the potty before bath time, or first thing in the morning, and letting DC get comfortable with that before trying full-on potty training.

@skkyelark yes every thread I saw recommended that book but I’m not quite sure on it so far.

So he randomly started using it at nursery so we went out and bought a potty etc and he started to sit on it and try. However after a couple of days the novelty wore off and he won’t go nowhere near it now. We tried a seat for the toilet but can’t find one to fit properly so he freaked out because it was too wobbly

To be fair, I think I'd be pretty put off by a wobbly toilet seat as well! We've got the IKEA one, which seems to have pretty good grippy rubber round the edge, but we're intending to get a 'family toilet seat' like this one, www.dunelm.com/product/family-toilet-seat-1000075939 (assuming we ever get ourselves organised). Something like that might be better for him, as it certainly wouldn't wobble? Also very grown up looking, if that would appeal to him. I think some children also feel better with a stepstool under their feet, not feet dangling in the air.

I think in your position, I'd be tempted to give it a complete break for a little while, even if just a couple of weeks, let things reset a bit – if he's got stressed about various aspects of it, I think it would be hard on everyone to just push through. Maybe leave the pants and potty out, if they aren't upsetting him, but not talk about them unless he wants to. Then start afresh, hopefully with a run of nice sunny weather perfect for playing in the garden!

@skkyelark yes think we will hope for some warmer weather soon and fingers crossed!
I mean why would we expect it to be warm in May

We trained DS using Oh Crap on our first attempt at 3.5 and all was well. We did it just after Christmas too so no warm weather.

I can’t explain how much I disliked Oh Crap. It’s not the only way to potty train!

If he wouldn’t like being naked could you do joggers and no pants? Chocolate buttons helped DS a lot.

Don't worry, it's not too late. At 3.5 he might be able to use the normal toilet seat without an insert, so you won't need to worry about wobbling.

3.5 is too late for a potty imo, I’d just go straight to the loo with a child seat. As long as he’s in nappies he’ll continue to use them and think it’s normal. We took our DS to the loo regularly and he would often sit there for half an hour with my iPad before he did one. Then we put normal pants and jogging bottoms on him, and there were lots of accidents but he soon realised it was unpleasant and he didn’t like being told off. It took a couple of months before he learned what it felt like when he needed to go and understood that he had to ask to be taken to the loo.

Our toilet seat is really wide for some reason. Months ago I did try just sitting him on our toilet as he had said he wanted to try however he panicked because it’s so big.
He annoyingly saw me scrolling through Amazon and keeps asking for the little mini toilets but I don’t want to go down the route of then having to drag that everywhere with me I have found an adjustable seat insert so maybe will go straight for big toilet he just seems really nervous around it. Like I can’t get him out of the toilet when I need to go but he’s not keen.

What about the warm weather when he was 1.5 and 2.5? I have never understood parents who leave it so late to potty train. After 3+ years their toileting routine is entrenched and it is harder than ever to train them. Mine were both clean day and night by 18 months and yes I am bragging and no, it wasn't hard, in fact it was very easy. Experts may think 'child led' is the way to go but a child can't lead if he doesn't know where he is meant to go!!!!!

Don't know about potty training late, but our DS is also 3.5 now and we've had some sleep issues recently. I found for the first time we could really have a conversation about it - which he actually was able to understand - and things resolved quite quickly in the end.

So whilst I think it could be a bit harder from a "habit" point of view, you might be able to chat about it with greater understanding than when they're younger, which could be useful.
Best of luck.

We did it with our ds at 3.5 and it was super tough. I had tried at 3 and felt that he wasn’t ready and there were always reasons for delay that felt valid at the time. But I really wish I’d done it earlier. He seemed to enter a new phase of arguing with us around 3.5 and because the toilet stuff wasn’t an established habit by then it became what we argued about. We got there eventually but it took ages. We did use the Oh Crap method and I know there are loads of points in the book where she basically says anything beyond 2.5 is the ‘danger zone’, or situations we found ourselves in for which she recommended family therapy. That was all a bit worrying but we couldn’t turn back time. When I was at my lowest with it all my friends would point out that we clearly couldn’t give up and that we’d get there eventually somehow. But I did worry he wouldn’t be sorted before he started school at points. So I super hope for you it is more straightforward, and in my desperate googling found many people who said doing it later had worked fine for them. So maybe we were just unlucky. But it was a loooong road. My dd had trained no problem and I am going to try much, much earlier with my other ds.

We trained DS when he was 3.5. It was honestly really easy! He’s very treat driven so on the first day I took his pants off, gave him a bottle of water and sat on the bathroom floor while he watched his iPad. I knew if he started to wee I could get him on the potty and give him a chocolate button as a reward. He did it and he was pretty much accident free from that point!

Might be a bit controversial but have you tried skipping toilet seat for wees and try to get him to do those standing up on a step? We started younger with my DS at 2.5 but he found this much easier than sitting on the toilet. But it meant that getting him to sit on the toilet for poos took a bit longer, we've only just cracked it and he's 3.5!

@Lollee really not helpful to me tbh I can’t exactly turn back time now but thanks for that.

@sar302 yes his understanding and language has come on leaps and bounds the past couple of weeks so hope this helps us. Thank you.

@Newmum397 hadn’t thought of this but he actually stands in the bath and does a wee most of the time so could give this a go.

Thanks everyone for your experiences!

With the worry about the big toilet, sometimes they think they will fall in, but I always let them have a look and show them how small the hole at the bottom of the toilet is and that they wouldn't fit, so not to worry.

Yep we did it it 3.5yo, just followed oh crap..no bottoms for the first 2 days, then just baggy shorts, then trousers. After 7 or 8 days we then introduced knickers.

Don't do pants too early as they feel like nappy and can confuse them

DS2 is 3 and I've been trying since last summer on and off and he just wasn't ready. I've been giving him bits of his Easter eggs the last few weeks if he used the potty and the incentive of chocolate got him wanting to do it and then it just suddenly became a habit. It was stress-free once he was ready for it.

I'm a bit skeptical of that book linking potty training age to wetting the bed. Night dryness is linked to them producing a hormone and can't be trained so it sounds like they just want to sell copies of the book.

So out of nowhere this evening he said he needed a wee and ran to the potty. I thought he was just mucking about like he’s done in the past. He then told me to listen if I could hear his wee and we had lift off! First wee at home and he was so proud of himself! Will see how he is in the morning but may just go for it now!

I think you should just go for it. I think oh crap is a bit scaremongery in places, but I agree with the message that you don’t go back once you’ve started unless very good reason. I think you just have to accept that he will have big feelings about it, so will you. The feelings are ok. You just need to go through it. If freaks out, talk to him about it and support him, validate his feelings etc. I’m sure you do all these things. You sound a bit scared of it all - I get it - but honestly you can both do it. Help him have confidence by believing in you both.

Ah brilliant, good for him

DS thinks the book "Pirate Pete's Potty" is hilarious, if you think a book that talks about using the potty might encourage him too.

Well done your DS! We left it till age 3, went staright into pants and joggers as it was cold. We had 3 days with lots of laundry then it clicked into place and been surprisingly good since then. We had a paw patrol sticker chart the first week and said if it was full we'd buy a present of DCs choosing. So DC got to end of the first week having filled all the stickers and got to choose a new toy. Sent 4x changes of clothes into nursery for the first 2 weeks but so far haven't needed them. You might have a couple of bad days then it may all just fall into place. If I was you I'd go for it now, ditch the nappies completely during the day, just be prepared for lots of laundry over the next 3 days

@Undersnatch yes I think the book would have helped if I had read it a year or two ago but reading it now I’ve done everything they tell you not to do already so think that panicked me slightly!

@FlaviaAlbiaWantsLangClegBack thanks for the book recommendation!

@hemhem Yes I made him a sticker chart months ago and finally he got his first sticker! He kept saying he wanted more last night so I told him he now needs to do more on the potty so hopefully this will work!
Will give it a go today and see how he does