3.5yr old and struggling

[tappingout]

My boy is 3.5 years old and is very strong minded. He has been delayed with all milestones so I did expect this to be delayed too.

I feel a bit pressured to have him potty trained, but when I've tried he shouts No No No. ive tried him to sit on with clothes on and off, three different potties, a toilet seat etc and he gets so upset. He wriggles off crying and shouting no.

I've been told not to force it as it makes them worse and have anxiety, but how long do you leave it before it becoming more of a problem?

He knows when he has had a poo and will ask for nappy changes. He will sometimes say he has had a wee but not always so those signs are there. His nappies are getting less wet in the mornings.

He only drinks water and he is so good at drinking and asking for more.

Does anyone have tips from a similar experience of how to get started???

Hey all,
Does anyone have any tips for potty training ?
I have been doing it for what feels like forever and my little one seems to have reached a wall.
She isn't going any further forward and progressing and I'm a single parent and exhausted
She's 3.5 and will be 4 in December .
I just feel like she is thriving in any other areas and just can't grasp the concept of this.

I feel like it's all my fault and can't shift the anxiety in my mind of I have failed her as a parent because I can't get her to reach the overall task

Please help anything advice you could offer would be amazing

I came on here to post about my own 3.5 year old boy and can relate so much to your post so wanted to let you know you aren't alone!

DS was at the same stage as your DS just before he turned 3, absolutely no interest and screamed and fought every time we tried him with a potty or the toilet. Spent a fortune on special seats but nothing made a difference.

About a month after his 3rd birthday he suddenly decided to wear pants. Lots of accidents for a week or so but within 3 weeks he was reliably dry during the day and going to the toilet himself. Still poos in his pants to this day, months later, but up until a couple of weeks ago he was pretty good and had very few pee accidents.

He's just regressed over the last few weeks and back to having 5 or 6 accidents a day, I'm at my wits end with it!! Nothing has triggered it, but he just literally doesn't seem to care about peeing or pooing himself at all. I have 2 months to get him back to normal before he starts preschool (won't take them unless potty trained) and honestly feel close to tears about if, it's so frustrating!

@snowflake29

Ahh sorry to hear you're having battles of your own. It's so hard. I can't believe they have refused to take him unless trained, that's so bad as all children are different. My boy luckily goes to nursery and they are aware of the situation and very supportive.

Did he just ask for pants or you offered and one day he was ok to try?

We've had a nurse who works with the HV come out and offer advice, and she says to just not push it and wait h til he is ready but I'm so scared he won't be in time for school. I already gets lots of comments about how he isn't trained and their kids were at such and such age which just adds pressure.

The nurse advised me to look at a website called ERIC - this may help you being as your son made a good start x

Mine is 3 and a bit and I'm having the same challenges. My DD trained herself at 2.5 and I was hopeful DS would be the same.

He understands the toilet, point blank refuses to go near the potty, but says no to training full stop. He'll come and tell me when he's done a poo and loves to see it flush away but doesn't seem to get the connection between doing the poo and bypassing the nappy.

I tried to keep him in the garden during the nice weather with no nappy on (he refuses pants) and he would know when he'd weed but not make any attempt beforehand to tell me or to get himself to the potty left outside.

My next plan is to just keep him outside over the summer holidays, nappy free and see how it goes. I mean, they'll do it eventually surely? 😬

My 3.5 year old will not pee on the toilet. We put pants on him last weekend and only once he told me he wanted a pee so he peed in the drain outside coz his father was on the toilet. Otherwise he just peed in his pants like they were nappies. Sunday we were out so couldn’t try then. Need to have a few solid days of pants only, no nappies. He’s advanced in other ways so I thought he’d take to the toilet /potty no problem. .. 🥴 parenting has ways of surprising you

Firstly, dont let anyone pressurise you!
My boy is now 3.5. When he turned 3 we started to get really stressed as all our friends kids were already trained. We had pottys and special seats but he just wasnt interested at all. So we stopped trying. After a few months his preschool mentioned that he had been showing interest in the toilet. We decided to try during half term when it was quieter so he could get more attention from the staff. We sent him in with a bag of spare clothes and let them get on with it. After 2 days he didnt have any wet accidents and after 5 days he didnt have any poo accidents. It was amazing!

So, if you can get help from nursery/preschool then definitely speak to them. Seeing other kids use the toilet definitely helped my boy.

Try really hard not to stress about it. They will get it eventually.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to comment and offer support.
It's so reassuring that I'm not alone in have an over 3 year old not toilet trained. Just feel like a failure. I know it will happen but I find myself stressing thinking 'this is never going to happen' mad I know!

I'm waiting for the summer holiday to try him in the garden with just shorts on and see how we go. I will have 4 weeks where we can focus and really try.

I wish you could pay someone to toilet train them haha

We used chocolate buttons too and it worked so well! One for every time he sat on the potty then one for when he weed and he'd get two if he pooped. Took about a week! He was 20 months and soon got the idea that there would be a treat! Xx

I'm in NI and the nursery/preschool system is different. He's in a private nursery 3 days a week who've had him since he was a year old and they're more than happy to deal with potty training and are very helpful, the issue is here they go to a free preschool the September before they start school and those settings insist on kids being potty trained, but will help in emergencies.

Yes one day he just said something about pants and I asked him if he wanted to wear them and he said yes. It was awful timing as was the week before we were goi g on holiday, but he had been so resistant to it until then I just went with it 🙈

I just don't know what to do now. I've tried ignoring him completely when he is an accident and just changing him with no reaction at all, I've tried making him change himself and put his dirty things in the wash, bribes and sticker charts don't work either.

I'm sure they will all get there eventually but like you I feel like I'm massively failing at this part of parenting!!

Hey,
I think you might want to start a post of your own to get more responses but I didn’t want to ignore as I could have written your post almost word for word!