3.5 yo continuous accidents, trying for 9 months!

[countrygirl983]

My partner has been potty training his 3.5 yo daughter since April 2024, and she is still having accidents (mostly poos) in her pants every couple of days. Obviously there are loads of factors but is this normal? She has had stretches of a few weeks when we thought she had cracked it but then she backslides. My partner has her 50-50 with her mum, and her mum is not communicative about what goes on during her time, or proactive about cracking it. My partner did the original long-weekend of initial potty training himself despite her saying she would help, and she has made slow progress since then but consistently poos her pants.

She is in a mix of nursery and days with her mum, both sides of grandparents and my partner - also not sure about how potty training works on her days with her mum's mum due to lack of communication from that side. So she has a lot of transitions to deal with (also on a 2-2-3 day model split between my partner and his ex). She has nice underwear, steps to reach the toilet, etc. We've had sticker charts and rewards work, we have books, we have done loads of the tricks like bubbles/ glitter in the bathroom. My partner is trying to transition her to have longer blocks of time between him and his ex, now that she is older, hoping it will help her to have less frequent transitions. Nothing seems to be sticking.

My little boy (same age) is also around her a lot and she sees a good example from him - he cracked it in 3 days and has never had an accident, and also naturally night-trained himself a few months ago with no input from me. I know he is probably not the norm and we don't compare her to him.

She's a clever girl and good at communicating on everything except this. When we try and ask her about what she can feel etc. she clams up and just repeats whatever she thinks we want to hear. She is on medicine to help constipation but we're not 100% sure that is the issue. She will go off quietly and poo in her pants no matter how many times we try and communicate about going to the toilet. Sometimes it's small and sometimes a proper explosion, including at nursery. On the couple of occasions my partner has lost his temper it seems to slide off her back. By nature she is cheery, quick to temper and quick to recover and pretty stubborn! She loves pretending to be a baby and will put on a baby voice when she wants something etc. and we've recently tried to gently discourage this in case she is getting something from all the attention around it.

Any tips or perspectives? Most things I read say you have to not put pressure on them, but how are we supposed to get her to care?

Well she's screwed , basically, no consistency in the approach.

Also sounds like her life is a bit chaotic and unstable.

I wouldn't say it's chaotic - her weekly schedule for childcare is very set, as is her routine for switching between households. I would agree that it's a lot of different environments for her to deal with though. The 2-2-3 model has worked well up until now while she was young, and my partner wants to transition it now to longer blocks of time so there is less moving about for her.
My partner's approach has been consistent with her star chart/ rewards system, reminders and support to use the toilet, and additional incentives to be in the bathroom. We are hoping to do what we can within our power - unfortunately we can't control some things i.e. when she is not with us.
Her routine with my partner and me is consistent, stable, peaceful and child-centered. Her activities, bedtime, rules etc. are all as good as they could be in my opinion. In those terms, her little life is much less chaotic than many nuclear families (i.e. not blended) that I know, where the kids go feral and are sent upstairs at bedtime with an iPad.
I do think your message is pretty rude and unhelpful to be honest. Why even bother commenting that?

It sounds a very difficult situation. Soiling issues are very much a psychological and whole family problem. You will not be able to solve this without a consistent programme and good communication between her parents. It sounds as though this poor child is exerting control over the only thing she can. Who is prescribing the laxatives, what are they and what is the programme?
Has your partner spoken to the ERIC helpline for advice?

I mean it's never going to work unless everyone is doing exactly the same thing, it's really sad there's no communication to ensure success for her, she'll never get it without consistency, it doesn't matter what you do. I know that's not helpful but it's really the only thing that's going to make a difference xx

Is there any reason your partner has not discussed this with his daughter's gp?

Are you using the Bristol stool chart to work out whether this is impaction with overflow/ witholding? If you could figure out the problem you might be able to be more consistent.

Thanks everyone. We'll look into ERIC and the Bristol chart. His ex was the one who has DD registered at her GP, so she took her there and got the Movicol - all we were told was that it could be a mixture of constipation and psychological.

I think you're right that the main thing will be to just keep trying to get more communication from his ex and keep trying to get a coordinated approach. It's been the same about bedtimes, meals, etc. so the poor thing is having to deal with two homes with two totally different sets of rules and routines. We do try to let her have as much agency and choice as possible over things. It must be so hard at that age to have no control over things, even in a nuclear-type home.

Her father has every right to communicate with the nursery staff and the gp to obtain a copy of the movicol regimen and a supply of the movicol if he explains that his ex will not provide either. The child has the right to be given her prescribed medication and treatment regularly and correctly. Anything less is neglect.

He should NEVER lose his temper.

So he does communicate with nursery staff as he picks up/ drops off half the time, and he does have a supply of the medication - he just didn't attend the actual appointment and only got what the Dr said second-hand through his ex. His daughter is given the medication by them both according to instructions.

That's all very well but can any of us as parents say that we have never lost our temper with our child, ever? Sorry but I just don't buy that. I'm positive that even the best parent of a young child has had moments where they may have raised their voice or spoken more harshly than they would have liked. What matters is that we repair afterwards and model the behaviour we would like.

Could you have her for an extended time, say a week, and try one consistent approach with her?

We tried the oh crap method with ours, which starts off having the child naked from the waist down, so that they begin to realise what's happening down there. I only say this because it might stop your child from soiling her underwear if there's no underwear on. Obviously you'd need to keep the house nice and toasty. It might work, it might not, but it could help your daughter connect the dots between the feeling of pooing and needing to physically go to the toilet.

Also, has the mum/dad followed up with the GP around the constipation issue? If she's doing a poo every other day, could she ease off the laxatives? No idea, just a thought.

That depends if it is a disimpaction regimen or not.
Her dad needs to contact the gp and ask for a copy of the instructions. If mum won't share, he has to get the correct information direct.

That would be great - that's what my partner initially did with her to kickstart the training but maybe it would help her to do that again, at least for a long weekend.