Toilet training 3 year old tried everything nothing seems to work!

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Hi,

I'm writing this message on the behalf of someone who i work for. She has 2 girls 4 months and the one who we are trying to toilet train who will be 3 years old at the end of the month.

Mum tried toilet training her in January with no sucess so waited till new baby arrived, and tried again in June for 5 weeks!!!.

During this time tried everything from praise to sticker charts to rewards (sweets, presents).

But she will not tell you if she needs to go to the toilet, she will hold it and hold it (so has the control) and will then stand there and wee on the floor. Even if we manage to get her on the toilet, with the use of reading her books etc, she will not go even though it is pretty obvious she does need to. We have had a bit more success with doing poos on the toilet, but only because we can manage to get her there whilst in the process.

So after 5 weeks mum gave up. Two weeks ago she has tried again, and has emailed gina ford for help, who replied with the fact that we need to get her behaviour sorted out first so that when we ask her to do something for us she does it first time without a big fuss. She said that then this way, she will be more likely to co-operate with toilet training. So this week, we designed a star chart, with pictures for things, like brushing her teeth without making a fuss, eating all of her breakfast, getting dressed, and if she does them, she gets a sticker to put on her chart, and then at the bottom of the chart she gets more stickers if she uses the toilet.

So all started off quite well at the beggining of the week, got the hang of being good gets sticker, but it doesn't seem to have made any diffrence with the toilet training.

So the point of this very long story is what shall we do next?????????????

Running out of ideas fast and fed up with toilet training taking over.

Thank you in advance

i'd leave it for a bit perhaps she just isnt ready. Let her keep her nappie off in the house and perhaps encourage the loo rather than a potty. Perhaps she likes the power with all the attention shes getting. I'm a great believer in letting the child lead the way.

i think waiting seems like the best idea, reassure her nappies are ok, and encourage her to sya when she's wet or dirty, then try it again when you know she understands what she means and can communicate it.
Perhaps then encourage her to try the toilet before going out and before bed, take it slowly.
Once children are ready it does come easily in my experience, it just takes some longer than others to be ready.

have you tried bribery ? whatever her favourite small thing is - in the case of my twins we are making good progress with jelly babies - so much so that I am now concerned about sugar rushes and am limiting it to half jelly babies !

With DS1 he had to do 10 wees in the potty to get a reward - in his case a toy tractor (but he was too bright - got his tractor and then gave up the potty training ).

I had a friend whose ds refused to use a potty or the toilet at all. Eventually they went and saw the Ed Psych just before he went to school and it was suggested that ds was put into washables - and could stay in nappies for as long as he wished BUT would be responsible for doing the washing. He lasted one day and was using the toilet every time 24 hours later........... very bright, just lazy, and a bit older than yours.....

Tried bribary, she got really upset when she could only have one smartie and not the whole packet.

This morning she wee right next to the post, so mid flow, i put her on it, and she seemed quite pleased that she had done it on the potty. So maybe thats a step in the right direction.

Gina ford suggested making her take off her wet clothes, and put them in the bucket with water to soak, but she thinks this is great fun!!!

leave it anothe month and take off the pressure, when she`s ready you can do it in a week !

no advice really, but just to say we have exactly the opposite at the moment. Weeing is fine, no accidents, always on the potty. Pooing he saves up and plops one in his nappy as soon as we put him to bed. This includes the hour or so before bedtime of crying out in pain and doing smelly farts. Ds is very articulate so we talk about it a lot, and basically he would love to poo in the potty, but physically can't. I guess he can't get the new angle right! But he also has a slight hangup about poo being dirty, so we always encourage him to help change the baby's pooey nappies, and talk about what a good boy ds2 is for having done a poo. Ds1 always likes to wipe ds2 up too! However, we still aren't there, so I don't know if this is doing any good.

I would wait too. I tried with my DS1 when he was 3 and he was absolutely not ready. Perhaps sometimes they are physically ready, but not psychologically ready? I know my DS1 was worried both about going to the toilet and he loved his nappies and found it hard to let go. Then one day he just went to the toilet and was dry day and night in 48 hours.

He was 3 years and 3 months.

Check out this suggestion. I know a few people who have followed it and swear by this technique (potty training in one day!) Child obviously has to be ready.

We did a modified version (cheering for each success, one candle for a wee, two for a poo over a period of a couple of weeks) - and it worked brilliantly. He soon cottoned on that he had to earn the reward - and everyone had great fun. At 2.3yo he is almost totally potty trained (wears nappy for naps and at night, and also for some long outings where there may not be toilets) but no nappies the rest of the time and no accidents (other than first week).