Reply to i'm desperate -- weird potty issue

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[quote=Anonymous]My son just turned 4. His potty training history is: We started potty training him right around 2. He took to it pretty quickly and barely ever had accidents. He was in a pull up at night, which was almost always dry in the morning, until he decided himself that he no longer wanted them around age 3.5.

BUT -- he will only go to the bathroom if me or my husband stops what we're doing, walks him to the bathroom, and stands there while he goes. He does everything independently (pants, washes hands, flushes), but he ABSOLUTELY will not go if we are not physically standing with him.

This means that he holds it all morning at school (he goes five mornings and is home by lunch time). He won't go with our nanny*. He won't go with grandparents. He won't go with friends or teachers or coaches.

If we aren't with him, he will just hold it. The most extreme example of this was recently when he spent the afternoon with his grandma because we couldn't pick him up from school, so he held it from before school (8a.m. ish) until about 4:30 or 5pm. It got so bad that he sort of acted funny personality-wise that day (and I know there's some urinary connection with acting crazy, so I'm not surprised).

Because my husband and I both work in a hybrid fashion, one of us is usually with him in the afternoons. And we haven't had a weekend away from the kids since he was younger (and that weekend, my mom just put him in a pull up because he was young enough that he'd go in the pull up but refused to go with her, even though he was potty trained. He was probably 2.5).

I'm at a total loss. It's a total mental thing at this point. Maybe it's stubbornness, maybe it's control. Maybe it's anxiety. I've said everything, tried everything.

I guess we could plan a weekend away and just see what happens, but I think that will either be a massive headache/challenge for the caregiver, or he will give himself a medical problem because he will just hold it.

Help!

*The only exception to this statement is that, after a long stubborn battle from around 2.5 to about age 2, he finally went with our nanny. So that made it exactly three people he would go with, and again only if we were physically standing with him. But we moved last fall, and now we have a new nanny, and he has yet to go with her a single time. [/quote]

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