3 year old - nothing working, what else to try

[Amy71452]

Hi bumping this out of a thread I've posted on the parenting section about wider challenges. We were recommended to potty train her before the new baby.

I've tried her in her choice of pants, bottomless on the toilet and the potty, taking her at 30 min intervals. Despite all this is seems coincidence has only brought the rare successes. Has anyone got any other tips as we have to train her before the baby comes in January

Yeah, she's not ready. Don't push it on her or you'll create more issues and resistance. Just leave it a few months and try again. I've just potty trained my DD with a 7 week old DS and the baby had no impact on it, so don't stress about having to do it before baby comes

We'll give it a few more days but it is reassuring we're not a complete outlier by not having succeeded yet. I'm more worried about dealing with two in nappies than it slowing down her progress, it sounds like a nightmare

Honestly, she will regress when new baby arrives. Known it happen many times. Baby arrives, the older child sees the attention and acts like baby again. Between myself and friends I've seen wanting dummies back after giving them up months ago, accidents appearing after being dry for ages, wanting drinks in bottles like the baby, wanting more comfort at bedtime and more wake ups.

The baby coming will likely change a lot in her behaviour anyway and you're just going to have to parent your way through it, tired or not!

This is what I'm afraid of, the 4 year gap between my eldest and her meant my eldest was into the very supportive phase and wanted to help with everything and be the adult. I'm still hoping this might happen with her and she suddenly wants to do all these things. But with life changes I was scared we left these too late. Should we bother with the dummy before our new DD arrives? I still really want to take the risk on potty training in the hope regression doesn't happen, even if that seems most likely, as she'll not get much attention with 3 kids

I personally think people potty train their children too late these days.

30 mins is far too long to wait between eating/drinking then potty. I'd say 10-15 mins afterwards max.

Use a reward chart. My son loved choosing a sticker. We also have toys in the toilet to play with.

It takes effort but if you're consistent, you'll get there.

I've never potty trained my children. You don't need to.

What you need to do is what for them to be ready from a physiological point of view - and this varies from child to child.

Just because you've decided she is ready, it doesn't mean you can override physiology.

So you can either tie yourself up in knots about this or revisit it next year.

Thanks we'll try shorter tomorrow and as someone else said we'lltry longer on the toilet, I really want to give up today, but going to keep consistent and just hope we get somewhere. We've just had her help clean up another accident about 5 mins after sitting on toilet with nothing happening. Trying to remember the feeling of success will be so much better than the frustration now.

You just need to push on with doing what you need to even though life changes makes it more difficult or inconvenient. It's easy as you know to think 'well we're moving house next month and that will upset her', 'baby is arriving soon so no point', 'starting/moving nursery so that will disrupt her routine'. You almost have 3 young kids, there will always be something.

Just need to move along with it and accept there may well be accidents, tantrums, regressions and some very knackered parents along the way! These are hard hard years 😅.

If she isn't ready for potty now, you can always leave it for a month or so and do dummy now, which she might be more ready for.

Thank you for the advice I'm super happy this worked for you. Just curious and I don't want it to appear rude as I think your point is completely valid. What age were your children when they trained? I feel like everyone who says this to me had their children initiate when they were two, and I've no confidence this will work when they're three. I know this is a great way though as it worked perfectly for my eldest.

My DS did it when he was about 3.5. Dry day and night pretty much overnight. He did it when he was ready.

You need to keep doing it. At 3 she is definitely ready as she understands but there are more interesting things to do than go to the toilet lol. You just need to keep taking her every 30mins. This is why I’m an advocate of early training tbh - it might take longer but you’re done by 3 so they can focus on the interesting stuff.

You’re right. What works at 1 or 2 won’t work at 3. It’s actually much more difficult to properly train at 3 as kids start developing an ick about poo and wee & also anxieties about the toilet itself. It’s why countries where public toilets can be a bit disgusting or scary train extremely early lol

This tells you a bit more about how to train at 3+.

https://www.ninjamas.co/tips-and-advice/late-potty-training/#:~:text=Try%20to%20make%20potty%20training,can%20be%20a%20scary%20thing.

please don't stress. we tried when our daughter was 2.5 and initially it went well but she began having accidents one or two times a day then it increased to 4-5 times a day on occasion. we r
tried for 6 months. nothing worked. she was more absorbed in her activities than she cared about wetting herself. shortly before she turned 3 we took the pressure off and went back to nappies for 2 months. we made it clear to her that after holiday wee were going to try again. she was like a different child. no accidents at all. a week later we stopped nappies at night and she's never had one accident.

focus on the dummy. that will be messing with her teeth so is the more urgent thing to remove.

@Amy71452 just had the exact same problem. I tried when my daughter was 3 years and 2 months and she wasn't ready. I didn't push it and tried again a couple of months later. This time around she was potty trained in a weekend. The extra couple of months made a difference for some reason!

Thing is if her birthday is in August she could well be in full time school in September so you do need to get her trained before then.

Thank you this is a super useful article, I still don't know what I'm meant to be looking for with readiness, I thought that was an age thing. We've tried most of those things, there's definitely still a couple we can keep working on. We might pre-emptively book anGP visit in case we're nowhere by Sunday

Edited because I pressed send twice....

Thank you glad the break worked for you, next week we'll be taking the dummy away apart from bedtime whatever then outcome with potty training

Just as a bit of info: it seems ridiculous and yeah chaotic to UP the liquids, but it's giving a ton more opportunities to connect the feeling of full bladder + the realisation it's time to stop playing etc + the time to get to potty and get pants down and sit and do it. It's the connections they need to practice and if they miss the connection, important that they feel the wet sensation, and modern disposables are so good at keeping things dry that it interferes. If you can't get your hands on the thick terry pants (try Boots, there's one made by Bambino Mio) then no pants still works as they'll feel the trickle down the leg. It just won't be great for your floors 😆

A friend also recommends sneaking a spoon of rice krispies into the bowl so that you hear when she goes if you're sat together watching telly. I didn't need that but it's an idea.

Thank you! If we don't have success by the end of the weekend at least we know we've not blown it, and that means a lot

Hahaha... I'm not panicking about that far ahead.... just yet

In the meantime try smarties? She gets one sweet for every time she goes to the loo by herself, one for every poo, one for every wee? Maybe build in some bribery for front to back wiping too

Do the dummy now before the baby so she's well over it. Approaching 4 is much too late and difficult if the baby has one.

Potty training, just encourage toilet use as and when. Eg. Put her on toilet 10 mins after lunch. Mostly to make her comfortable using toilets but also to get her to start being more aware.

The advantage of a house which needs work is the new carpet is fitted at the end of next week! We're cleaning the smell, but then we'll have to be careful.

I like the rice krispie idea... so barmy it's genius

Thanks we're using white chocolate buttons her favourite although because of the lack of success it's been quite demoralising but I'm not sure if we can give her sweets just for sitting down on her own or anything which reinforces no success