Help! 4 Year Old Not Remotely Interested in the Potty!

Try throwing out the Pull-Ups. They are really just diapers. Their novelty wears off very quickly with kids. An hour after you put one on and they are off and playing, they are not going to care that they "pulled" them up. They feel like a diaper and that's what kids use them for. Pee and poop running down their leg and messing up their clothes works much better. Of course this is a mess for you to deal with, but you would be surprised how fast they learn. Just tell him that the pull-ups are all gone and he is growing so much that they don't fit him anymore. Now he gets to wear big boy underwear. I would even put him to bed in regular underwear and only after he is sleeping put a pull-up over his underwear. In the morning take the diaper off before he wakes, or before he is really "with it" and he won't even realize he ever had one on. This saves on the confusion of why it's okay to wear them at night and not during the day. I'm telling you, ditch the pull-ups and you will have him trained before you know it!

Bribery works well. I hate to say it, but when I trained my son, he got a M&M when he used the potty. He was 2 at the time.

By the point he was 2.5, he was going pretty well, but he'd still have BM in his training pants every so often. He'd say that he didn't want to stop what he was doing to go to the bathroom.

So, the next time he didn't want to bother to stop to use the toilet for a BM, I allowed him the privalege of cleaning up himself & his dirty underwear. He never had a BM in his pants again.

May seem harsh, but it worked for me.

Good Luck!

Hi J.,
I'm with Judi; get rid of the pullups. Once he starts going in his underwear he'll feel more uncomfortable and be more motivated to use the toilet. It will take more discipline on your part as well. Get ready to do a lot of laundry. But it's best for your son!!!

One thing you can do is when he goes in his clothes, to clean him up put him in the tub every time and clean him that way. My sister did that with her daughter and it worked very well. Kids don't like bathing during the day too much, it interrupts their playtime. She'd say, "If you don't like having to take the bath like this, then use the potty."

Important for you is be prepared to follow through every time, whether you are at a park, at someone's house...wherever you are and whatever you are doing, your son has to see that you mean business about his using the toilet. He's old enough now, he knows when he has to use the bathroom. This is a control issue on his part. Convey to him that HE is deciding this is the way it has to be, and HE can decide to stop it by using the toilet when he has to go to the bathroom.

Good luck!!!

How are you addressing the irritable bowel issue? It's not clear from your post whether that is completely resolved. I have friends who addressed this with nutritional supplements ( a particular one, patented and therefore totally unique) - once that was under control, it was easier for their children to predict their bowel movements and to control them. THEN you can go for the training/incentive ideas. I have a friend whose child was born without the nerve endings in his colon, so he actually didn't have feeling and didn't know when he had to go. He just kind of held things in until his body forced everything out, but he was certainly constipated and his stools were not of normal consistency. He's 10 now and is finally okay since he changed his nutritional supplementation. He's become very regular and although he still doesn't like to "go" at school, he's getting there. I don't think you can necessarily solve the "training" issue until you've solved the IB issue.

Hi J.,

Have you tried bribery?! My first son was easy to potty train (and I was confused why others had trouble!!), but for my second son, I resorted to bribery, as he was not interested at all (he was probably close to 3 and a half years old at the time).

If I remember correctly, I had small prizes and he got to pick one each time he went in the potty, and then I had two bigger prizes for when he met the goals we had for him.

I would not have normally considered this, however, since he was not interested at all, it was all I could think of (and it did work, and he still loves one of the stuffed animals that I used for a prize). Good luck!