2.5 year old girl potty training woes...

[Anonymous]

I nanny part time for a 2.5 year old girl; 2 (10 hour) days per week. I told her parents I have tons of experience potty training kids, which is definitely true. But I've never had this much difficulty before, and now I'm feeling bad that they've trusted me to help and nothing we've done is working.

We started potty training her back in June, two months after she turned 2. It was a slow process; she was very stubborn and not very motivated. I suggested that they take her out to pick out her own big girl underwear, we made charts, and used small toy prizes as incentive. Those things helped, and by the end of August she was doing pretty well. Then, the last week of August, her family took a 6 day trip to the beach, and she completely regressed. When they came back she was worse than when we began: constantly having accidents; we'd sit on the potty every 20-25 minutes for 10-15 minutes at a time, she'd sit there, insist she didn't need to go, and the second she got up she'd pee all over the floor.

It's been a long, difficult fall, but by Jan 1st she was at least "pee pee" trained; she hadnt had a pee accident in quite some time, although she still refused to go poop in the potty. I told her mom last week, when she earned her potty prize on the last chart, that maybe it was time to shift from getting prizes for going potty a certain number of times, to going poop in the potty a certain number of times. Well today is the first day of that, and she has had two pee pee accidents! She hasn't had a pee accident in weeks, and she had two in a row this morning.

She's been to see the doctor and everything is fine physically, it's mostly just a power struggle. I'm just so frustrated and I feel bad for her parents, and like I said, I feel guilty because I know they were trusting me to help get her potty trained and it's been over 6 months and she is still having multiple accidents a day! There was nothing different about today than any other day; no reason for her to have accidents today. She hasn't had any other major changes in her life (still an only child, very stable home life, etc). I feel like we're tried everything, and worked as hard as possible to make the potty seem fun and exciting without being scary or a big deal. We were also giving a sweet treat each time she went in the potty, too. What else can we do? I feel so terrible for letting her family down. I've potty trained dozens of kids and it's never been this much of a struggle or gone on for this long.

[Anonymous]

So stop. Just back off for a few weeks and try again. Nothing will jam things up more that struggles and stress around potty training.

[Anonymous]

We've already taken a break, once. We took a break of two full weeks in mid September. It didn't help at all, and in some ways seemed to make things worse (she likes diapers, wants to wear them, etc). It seemed to only confuse her. She is In Preschool three days a week also, and at preschool she has to wear underwear (I'm told they encourage using the potty and help with going to the potty but don't really potty train there), so that is another reason her mom doesn't want to take a break (she can't wear diapers at preschool).

[Anonymous]

Make it a rule that she has to pee in the potty before you go and do something she wants to do (park, etc). Bottomless, no-pants, naked until she pees in the morning and afternoon. With boys, I float a couple cheerios in the toilet and they try to "sink" them -- but that won't work with a girl.

Pooping is generally more difficult when you start after two - no real advice there! Keeping her diet healthy so that she poops on a schedule helps.