3.5 year old keeps wetting himself

[Springbaby2023]

Please help! My 3.5 year old DS keeps having several accidents a day, despite having been toilet trained for well over a year. We didn’t push him to train, he just did it himself in a matter of days. Was then dry for months on end but over the past few months he’s started having spells of accidents. He is very articulate but won’t talk about why it’s happening. His latest spell has been going on for two weeks now and I’m getting really frustrated with it, today he has come home from pre school with so many soiled clothes. Pre school don’t help as they don’t take them to the toilet, just remind them to go and for whatever reason he is resisting at the moment. It’s definitely worse at pre school than at home when I will take him to the toilet before we go out for example. I’ve tried a reward chart, talking to him about it, ignoring it. At a bit of a loss as to what to do and starting to worry that this will still be happening when he starts school in September.

anyone got any experience or suggestions?

Stop making a fuss, you will be making it worse.

Put back in pull ups, get a GP appointment to rule out any physical reason.

Regression in this area is very common. Sounds like he doesn't like the toilets at preschool, this is common. He will grow up.

No chance I’m putting him back in pull ups after 15 months of no nappies / pull ups 🙈 I will book a GP appt next week, wasn’t sure if I would be being wasting time

GP appointment. It may just be a period of regression that you'll have to battle through.

However I would second using pull-ups until you've ruled this out, as it may not be his fault. Put pants on underneath so he still feels wet if you want.

I think what tends to happen sometimes is that the rewards for going stop and using the toilet becomes a chore. Rule out a urine infection first and start rewarding him at bedtime for staying dry all day, get him back in the habit of wanting to try.

We never did rewards for it, we’ve ironically only started them now due to the accidents. I will take him to the gp on Monday. He’s had a couple of regressions before, especially when DS2 was born, but they’ve never lasted this long.

The rule I tend to live by is, if it's outside the range of their usual behaviour then a GP trip is justified.

@frenchnoodle Than you, it’s normal ish in that he has regressed before but I will defo call them on Monday

Honestly, my daughter regressed a bit when she went to preschool at 3 and she was trained before 2. In her case, it was FOMO related - she had worked out that she didn't need to go as soon as she felt it and the feeling went away again and she had some leeway before the feeling became persistent and urgent. At which point, you really have to back yourself to make it. And she didn't always.

Of course, worth getting checked out. But my experience was just that reinforcing that you go when you feel it was enough

@Springbaby2023 just wondered how you're getting on a year on? I could have written your original post...

@aliceisland Hi! My DS is almost 5 now and still has occasional accidents. He basically seems to regress if something sets him off, so we worked out he didn’t like the toilet seat at pre school, they changed it and accidents stopped. Same with a broken lock on a toilet door now he’s at school. Any illness, big life change and it seems to start a run of a few days of having accidents then it’s like a switch and he stops again. The accidents are definitely becoming less frequent though and it hasn’t been an issue at all with him being at school. Good luck, it is so frustrating isn’t it.