# 4.5 year old still having accidents constantly



## mightymoo (Dec 6, 2003)

I wanted to get some opinions on this. My DD has been potty trained now for a year and a half, maybe a little more. She goes to school, she wears regular panties all day. She continues however to constantly have little accidents. I'm not talking about big clean the floor kinds, just crotch of the pants wet kinda accidents. She was doing just fine at school (she goes to a Montessori school for about 4 hours each day) but the last week I've gotten 3 pairs of pants sent home becuase she's had an accident. She is much worse at home. DH and I are constantly telling her she needs to go change her pants. She will argue with us that her pants are not wet. FWIW - she still wears a pullup to bed, she is not ready for night training yet, we've tried a couple times (in a non-pressuring way) but she just doesn't wake up when she goes, she'll sleep right through it. If she is awake, she uses the bathroom like she should.

Now, I have not made a big deal about this at all, in that I will make her change her pants if she's wet them, and I will sometimes say something slightly lectury at that point like 'You need to go to the bathroom right away so this doesn't happen' and reminding her that its wet pants that cause her vagina to hurt (she often complains that her vagina hurts - she means the labia really, though she hasn't said it hurts in a couple months now - its from sitting around in wet panties). She's been checked out by our doctor, she doesn't have anything physically wrong, aside from the slight rash sometimes.

So, I've been taking the 'this is a physiological thing' approach and just staying laid back, not really *doing* anything about it, but I'm unsure of whether I should be this laid back. She's getting closer to the age where she is going to start getting teased for it and she is already a very sensitive child especially when it comes to relationships (she has a hard time with the social aspect of school - how to respond to classmates, etc).

I will admit that embarrassingly enough I can distinctly remember having small accidents where I just slightly wet my pants at a fairly old age (like through elementary school), so I'm not sure it might not just be something I've passed down to her? I've been exploring this issue in my thoughts and I've asked myself 'why does it matter?' and really it does come down to the hurt feelings and embarrassment she will feel. I don't really care about me that much, I mean its not embarrassing me, I'm just concerned about her. I don't know how to explain to her the concept that she will be embarrassed without feeling like I'm ridiculing her myself, kwim? (e.g. 'The kids will say you are smelly and laugh at you' doesn't seem like the best statement to make)

Does/Did anyone else have this issue - how do you deal with it?


----------



## JERENAUD (May 21, 2005)

Yes Yes Yes! We did/ do. My daughter is 4 (and 3 months). She really seemed to 'get' the idea of using the bathroom right at 2 1/2, but continued to struggle. When she was 3ish we cut out dairy, which helped immensely but didn't solve the problem. I tried being patient, etc., all the usual MDC advice. I even tried some not so MDC advice, including sticker charts and (fairly mild) rebukes. If anything, it got worse. At the very end of October (she was 4 years, 1 month) I got so fed up I 'quit'. Up until this point I'd always made her change her pants, mainly to prevent rashes, encourage her to like to feel dry, etc. But, at the end of October I was just done. We had a week or so of many pairs of wet pants (even wetter than before), which I think was to test my reaction. I said nothing, not even when she was really wet. I had some personal boundary rules, in that I didn't let her sit on my lap with wet pants or on the furniture. But she could still sit beside me, get hugs, etc. Some days she'd sit down to do something and just calmly announce that she was going to sit on the floor because her pants were wet! But you know, here we are some 5 -6 weeks later and she's doing really really well. If her underwear get at all wet she goes and changes them herself and seems to have a much lower tolerance for wet now that it's her decision.

So, my short answer is that I finally got to the end of my patience and totally gave up! And I mean it - I didn't say word one about her obviously needing to go pee, I didn't say anything about wet pants, nothing. It took me so long to get to this point because i kept thinking that I needed to help her learn to recognize her body's signals. i thoguht that I had to 'make' her wear dry pants in order for her to avoid getting used to being wet. Turns out that she knew- she just needed to take responsibility for it.

I hope that helps some. I know I felt very alone to have a 4 year old who wet so much, but the more I talk about it (appropriately for her modesty) the more it isn't as uncommon as I'd thought. Just not discussed.

Erica

Quote:


Originally Posted by *mightymoo* 
I wanted to get some opinions on this. My DD has been potty trained now for a year and a half, maybe a little more. She goes to school, she wears regular panties all day. She continues however to constantly have little accidents. I'm not talking about big clean the floor kinds, just crotch of the pants wet kinda accidents. She was doing just fine at school (she goes to a Montessori school for about 4 hours each day) but the last week I've gotten 3 pairs of pants sent home becuase she's had an accident. She is much worse at home. DH and I are constantly telling her she needs to go change her pants. She will argue with us that her pants are not wet. FWIW - she still wears a pullup to bed, she is not ready for night training yet, we've tried a couple times (in a non-pressuring way) but she just doesn't wake up when she goes, she'll sleep right through it. If she is awake, she uses the bathroom like she should.

Now, I have not made a big deal about this at all, in that I will make her change her pants if she's wet them, and I will sometimes say something slightly lectury at that point like 'You need to go to the bathroom right away so this doesn't happen' and reminding her that its wet pants that cause her vagina to hurt (she often complains that her vagina hurts - she means the labia really, though she hasn't said it hurts in a couple months now - its from sitting around in wet panties). She's been checked out by our doctor, she doesn't have anything physically wrong, aside from the slight rash sometimes.

So, I've been taking the 'this is a physiological thing' approach and just staying laid back, not really *doing* anything about it, but I'm unsure of whether I should be this laid back. She's getting closer to the age where she is going to start getting teased for it and she is already a very sensitive child especially when it comes to relationships (she has a hard time with the social aspect of school - how to respond to classmates, etc).

I will admit that embarrassingly enough I can distinctly remember having small accidents where I just slightly wet my pants at a fairly old age (like through elementary school), so I'm not sure it might not just be something I've passed down to her? I've been exploring this issue in my thoughts and I've asked myself 'why does it matter?' and really it does come down to the hurt feelings and embarrassment she will feel. I don't really care about me that much, I mean its not embarrassing me, I'm just concerned about her. I don't know how to explain to her the concept that she will be embarrassed without feeling like I'm ridiculing her myself, kwim? (e.g. 'The kids will say you are smelly and laugh at you' doesn't seem like the best statement to make)

Does/Did anyone else have this issue - how do you deal with it?


----------

