My 3 yo daughter is potty training right now - has been for a while. When we put her to bed or put her in her room for quiet-time, she will say she needs to go potty - even though she just did before we put her to bed. She will sit on the potty for a while and not ever actually do anything. She is obviously stalling bed/quiet-time. I'm not sure how to handle this since she does need to know that when she says she needs to go potty, she can go; but I don't want her to be able to use it as a stall tactic.
To take it one step further. She often will have a BM accident while she is having her quiet-time. I think she has figured out that if she does that, then she gets more time with mom and even a little bath - again, a way to stall. I'm thinking of eliminating the quiet-time all together, but I like have some quiet-time myself too and she really still needs it (sometimes she will even lay down and go to sleep).
Anyway, any help that you could give me, I would appreciate it! Thanks!
Thanks for all the suggestions. We are ploughing through this issue. The bedtime stalling isn't much of a problem any more - just dealing with the accidents now (even more of them). To answer one of the questions that was posted, the reason she has a little bath is because she gets poop or pee all down her legs and all over - I think it requires a bath - not a long one, but something to get her clean.
Sorry it took so long for me to update this post, I don't have a ton of time to get on my laptop these days.
My DS used to do the same thing. He'd also poop every time he got put into a time-out (which didn't happen often, but he'd poop every single time). Smart little buggers, aren't they?
I told my son that I knew he was doing it to get to stay up and that I was going to start putting him in a diaper for sleep/quiet time. It took away the benefit of the added attention, and our son lost interest pretty quickly once we did that.
Good luck!
O.
My daughter did this as well...the stalling, except it wasn't just the potty. What I did is after her evening bath I would set a timer to the time I wanted her in bed with lights out. We would then go through our bedtime routine of teeth brushing, getting jammies on, using the potty, cleaning up toys etc. When all that was done we could read stories, sing lullabyes or cuddle until the timer went off. this way the more she stalled the less positive attention she got, but the faster she does those things the more fun time with mom she gets. it has worked so great for me! hope it helps.
We had a similar issue with our daughter who is now 3 1/2 when she was potty training. Except she was also holding her BMs until she had an accident. We made a chart and gave her a sticker for going to bed or nap on-time and for doing her BMs in the potty. We made sure to explain as simply as possible what was required for a sticker. After so many stickers she got to pick something from the treasure chest - inexpensive little stuff from the dollar store. Plus, we heaped on the praise for the good stuff and tried to limit any reaction to the negative behavior other than to remind her about the chart. After awhile, we started to phase out the chart and just stick with the praise. We had a little resurgence in accidents and issues after our son was born but we were able to go back to the chart briefly and get her back on track pretty quickly. I still try to give lots of praise for pottying and she seems to respond to that well. Hope that helps!
Why a bath? I had this same exact problem with my son, it is hard because you don't want to discourage them pottying especially during training. What worked for us, is I had my son go before bed, then if he said within 10 minutes he had to go again, I asked him to go then after that it was, "well you lay there for five minutes and hold it and if you still have to go, you can go", ninety percent of the time he would fall asleep and didn't have to go. Kids need to hold it and if they just went and really have to go again they can hold it five or ten minutes, but if they didn't have to go that gives a good time frame to allow them to fall asleep. I got frustrated a time or two as it seems they are using that to keep getting up, however it does pass as a phase like all things they go through. Patience, hugs!
We had the same bedtime stalling potty thing when we potty trained my daughter. It was a pain, but we just waited it out, and she eventually stopped. It did take a few months, though. We had the same thoughts about it that you are having--that we should always let her go if she needed to, or let her try, even though we knew she was just dawdling to stay up later. You have to encourage them to go whenever they say they need to. Eventually, she'll get bored of pretending she has to go, and she'll start only going when she actually needs to. As far as the poop accidents, I can't speak to that, but I bet it is probably for attention.
