Wits end

[Lucyannieamy]

I'm writing while very cross, sorry. DH has DD in the bath and I just need help :-(

We started potty training DD when she was 2 yr 4 months, last august. She was interested in the potty, had used it happily a couple of times so off the nappy came and the last year has since been living hell.

The incident that prompts today's despair. She is now 3 yr 4 months . I am sitting with her having tea. She has my undivided attention, DH and our 6month old are in another room. She gets down from table and does her tippy toes wriggle that suggests she needs to pee. I tell her I think she needs to pee, she runs away- then turns back and very defiantly says NO. 3 minutes later she comes back, "I need to pee". Pants already wet through, but does get some in the toilet. I am very cross (because she ran away and shouted no, I do try to make a point of not being cross when it is just a surprise accident) so I say no telly after tea and go and run her bath. She hides under the kitchen table (without pants because they are wet) and I refuse to play her game of chasing her out and carrying her upstairs. About 3 minutes later she comes upstairs and tells me she has done a poo in the kitchen. Big poo found under table.

It took 5 months, August to January for her to get all her poo's in the toilet but since then she has been reliably clean. Todays poo was deliberate. But we have not had a full week of dry pants at all for the last year. She needs to be constantly reminded - dry days only happen when we are busy, she will always use the toilet before we leave the house. Left to herself she just wets her pants.

I have no idea what to do. Should I take her to the GP? I already do sticker charts, which seem to just remind us all how bad it is.

I swear I am not taking my son out of nappies until he's 4!

She has found the ideal way to control you , and it is probably the only part of her life that she can control.You have my sympathies , been there and worn T shirt , however child now 19 with no obvious problems in that dept .

How would she react if you just put her back in nappies?Neither of my two eldest were reliable until at least 3.5 , youngest 2.6 nt sure why .We cracked it eventually with bribery for the eldest two but I wish I had just started later.

In the short run have large

My 4 yr old started having accidents in the last few months after being totally fine for over 18 months.
As with most things I find carrot is better than stick and sticker charts work for a very short amount of time. We need to keep rewards interesting.
And also no room for "accidents". So we started with "if you have no accidents for a whole day you can have x", then after a few days of that it goes to 3 days, then 7, then 10 with each time a slightly bigger reward. If there is an accident it resets to day 1 the next day. This whole event is masterminded by the "no accident fairy" who we leave the window open for whilst ds is in the bath on day 10 and whilst he is having his bath the fairy "flies in" and hides the reward for ds to find. All very convoluted but he totally buys into it. And the reward he wanted for 10 no accident days were fireman Sam pants - the irony!
We will try ANYTHING to break this type if behaviour and this worked for us!

I could have written your post, right down to ages and time, although we have had a couple of spells of being dry for 3 weeks and then just get weeks of accidents, like today 3 accidents not a single wee that hasn't been started in his pants even though I do ask him if he needs a wee. We had a long chat tonight about how he needs to do it cos he starts pre school in September and he is very excited about that, and says doing a wee makes him sad, yet he does them at what looks deliberately. What has been said about control makes sense and I think the idea of bribes, for ever increasing time makes sense, plus some sort of factor for taking himself or asking to go rather than being prompted. Again the best days for us are when we are busy and say need a wee before we go out, get in car, etc