my daughter, who just turned 3 on 12/21, has been more or less potty trained since August, so 5 months now. she still pees her pants very frequently. my question is...is it normal to have these frequent accidents or should i be worried. and what if anything, can i do to help her stop this. she understands the concept, but just doesn't seem to go to the toilet when she feels the urge to urinate. by then way she never has a poopy accident. thanks for your help.
In children, this is called "girls". Both my girls did the same thing. My oldest was 4 & still would have accidents. Then just abruptly, she stopped. It's while they are playing & get so involved in what they are doing, they just don't want to stop to go to the bathroom. They want to keep pushing themselves to do more.
I just wanted to say thank you for this request. I was actually about to make the same request about my daughter. She's almost 3 1/2 and still has the same problem. The only thing I've found is that if I let her go "bare bottom" with no pants or underwear, she'll make it to the bathroom every time. But once those underwear go on, it's like her safety net and she's not as worried about stopping to use the potty. Speaking from personal experience, we tried going back to diapers or pull-ups when she had an accident, but she didn't care. As it is, it's a challenge to get her to use the bathroom when she wakes up in the morning to get her out of her pull up. We've gotten to where we tell her we're going to beat her to the bathroom, which will motivate her to at least go in there. Good luck! And it's nice to hear that I'm not going through this alone!
Hi there B.,
My daughter, Lily, will be four at the end of March. She's no longer having accidents in the daytime but she still wears a pull up at night. Up until just a few months ago, she continued to have daily accidents though. I'm sure your daughter isn't out of the norm. ;) Have you tried switching her back to pull ups in the day time? With Lily, we would put her in underwear in the morning after she went on the potty. Then, if she had an accident, we'd put her back into a pull up. The next time she made it to the potty, we'd put her back in underwear. It helped motivate her since she liked the big girl underwear.
The other thing we did that helped a lot was setting a timer. It's kind of obnoxious, I know, but it helped. So, I would set a timer for 20 minutes. When the timer went off, I'd ask her if she had to go. If she said no, I'd reset for another 20 minutes. After she said no three or four times, I would ask her just to try. We would sit on the potty and many times she would go. I found that she would get so involved in playing that she wouldn't want to stop to go. So, me asking her constantly helped her learn that whatever she was doing would still be there when she returned from the bathroom. :)
Do you have a potty chart? Nothing fancy I just wrote "Lily's Potty Chart" at the top of a page of construction paper. She got one sticker for pee and two for poop. Hee hee! She still likes to put stickers up even though she pretty much all trained! :)
I hope some of these ideas work for you! Good luck!
You should not be worried. She is probably just too busy playing that she does not stop to go to the bathroom. I work with grade school kids and the Kind. and 1st graders still have accidents. I would make her stop playing and have go to the bathroom and she will learn that her things will be there when she gets back. If a while goes by and things do not get better, call her DR and talk to them.
Has she ever been completely dry since out of diapers? My 4yo is the same way. It looks like she is just being ornery and not going when her body tells her to, but I honestly think she can't help herself. ((Of course, we've been out of diapers two years and this is still going on.)) In adults it's called overactive bladder; I'm trying to find out if the same is possible in children. I would go with your instinct: try all the tricks for getting a child to go to the bathroom and look at her personally to see if it's voluntary.
