Reply to Potty training - how to make the transition to underwear & other questions

Forum Index » Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

Reply to "Potty training - how to make the transition to underwear & other questions"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I just wanted to chime in with a recent lesson/success from our experience with our hard-to-train DD, who just turned 4 and is still in pull ups. We had a lot of the same issues as other PPs, including a total regression when we tried to take the pull ups away and really bad withholding issues.

We're working with a behavioral therapist and one of the first things she told us was to go totally neutral on whether or not she goes in the potty. We actually got a script we had to practice for a bit and then do with her, where we explained that it was totally up to her whether she wore a pull up or underwear, and also up to her whether she pooped/peed in the pull up or in the potty. We told her that we'd just gotten confused because we like to use the potty and so we had just assumed that's what she would want to do, but that we should have just let her decide on her own. But then we also told her we'd talked to her pediatrician about it, who confirmed all this, but that the doctor had said it was really important that she not ever spend time in a dirty pull up. So it was totally up to her whether she wore a pull up and where she peed/pooped, but the doctor needed her to change any dirty pull up as soon as it was dirty.

Well, low and behold, this is how we found out that she absolutely knows when her pull up is wet, because she suddenly started telling us immediately when she peed in her pull up. She even started changing it on her own (something we'd tried to get her to do before but she'd fought hard, as she'd fought literally every aspect of potty training). She used to just lie to our faces about her pull up, if we asked if it was wet, she'd always say it wasn't. Even if it was the pull up she'd slept in for 12 hours and we could see it was visibly wet. One of the reasons we consulted doctors/therapists about it was that we were really worried that she genuinely did not know when she was wet, but she just flatly refused to wear anything but a pull up and totally revolted at our attempts to just go naked or just have her wear loose pants with nothing underneath (like total meltdown, crawling under the furniture to get away from us, revolted).

Anyway, I just wanted to share this because I see this advice about "no pull ups ever" all the time on these boards. For these really hard-to-train kids, I think pull ups wind up being an essential stage. I don't love it (trust me, I'd give anything to be done with them -- anything), but my experience is that the thing stopping my kid from using the potty is not pull ups. It's her own stubbornness and a pattern of refusal that we likely made worse with our attempts to take diapers/pull ups away because we had been told "it was time". I wish we'd ignored the pressure back when she was 2.5 and 3 (which is when we started potty training) and just let her move at her own pace. We'd probably be further along in the process by now.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics