My son is 3 and is in the process of potty training. Some days are really good, he will both poop and potty on the potty and sometimes will even go by himself and come get me to see what he has accomplished. Then, there are days like today where he will go in his his pants. He has done this about 3 times. I have put him in time out, taken away special treats. Think we get back on track and then another oops occurs. This is my first child so I am just wanting advice from other moms out there on how to handle the situation. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. He does wear underware during the day.....pull ups at night only. Just as some additional info....I am not using pull ups during the day at all and do not intend to! It's not that I can't handle the cleaning up but it is frustrating since I feel that he knows he is supposed to go on the potty.........
What has worked for me is once they start showing that they can do it on their own I put them in underwear and take away the pullups. Then when they do a great job lots of praising and dancing. For the bad days we spent the day in the bathroom with toys and snacks until he had no more accidents.
There are times when my daughter will go potty in her pants too. I just ask her where she's supposed to go potty (she always answers in the toilet) and I remind her not to go in her pants. I gently remind her what she's supposed to do. I think sometimes they get caught up with what they're doing that they don't really think about it. I'm not sure time out is the right answer. You don't want to punish him and have a negative connection to going potty.
I would stop the punishment. The more stress you add to the situation the more resistance and eventually fear of the elimination process you will get.
All we did (and occasionally still do) is clean up the soiled clothes without comment and move on. We had a lot of accidents the first two weeks, less the third and only occasional ones after the forth week. Some kids take a little more time.
If you can't handle the clean up of wet and poopy undies, then it might be that YOU are not ready for potty training. Consider going back to pull ups on very stressful days instead of opening yourself up to a whole host of issues with the potty by punishing your child for a natural bodily function he cannot yet fully control.
It is absolutely normal for the potty training process to go in two steps forward and one step back (like every other developmental step your child makes). You didn't punish your child for falling down, when he was learning how to walk either, so why would you now?
Good luck!
We had a similar issue with our son. He would 'go' in a pull-up without hesitation and with underware on he would still 'go', maybe just not quite as much. However, if he was naked on the bottom he would ALWAYS make it to the potty. His normal bm times were usually in the evenings so after we got home, I would let him run around the house with just a shirt and nothing on from the waist down. One of the other posts mentions that too. It basically forces them to be more aware of their body and innately they run for the bathroom. I personally could not stand to wash really soiled underware so I would buy the absolutely cheapest ones possible and would throw them in the trash if it was too bad. Once he realized that they would get thrown away, when he picked out some 'cool' ones himself, he did a better job at keeping them clean. We were big on rewards for that too. LOVE the rocks idea!
I have been very lucky with my daughter. Only 1 accident and then she was potty trained. What worked for my friend and sister who have 3 year old boys is that they used a timer. Every 35 mins they would ask if their son needed to go and if he said no they would look for signs then take him in to make sure. With my daughter I took 3 days with her with a few hours a day with nothing on from the waist down ( I was at home of course ) and put the "training potty" out and made sure she had access to the "big" potty. No accidents and she was in panties all day and after a week was out of pull ups at night. She sleeps 11-12 hours no accidents. I have heard girls are faster than boys. I never reprimanded her during the process I just made a big deal of it when she went in the potty.
I wrote in with the same situation with my daughter a while back. I was doing as you are - giving time outs and taking away privelidges when she had "accidents" (I think they were intentional). Anyway, once I stopped the power struggle and just cleaned up the mess - with her help, and didnt make a big out of it, she stopped doing it. It was a power struggle. Once I took the pressure off of it, it stopped. Might work for you. Ive also used a reward system.
Why on earth not use Pullups during the day - they are for exactly this problem. Also you might consider NOT punishing him around/about bathroom issues. This seems very controlling, and it will likely cause more problems than it solves.
My son is three and has recently been potted trained as well. What worked for us, once he had switched to underwear, was to reward him. He had a chart with the days of the week and his favorite cartoon/Sesame street characters. He loved putting the sticker on the chart and enjoyed seeing how many stickers he could get in one day. We also have a reward system in our home in which he collects rocks in a jar. Rocks are earned for good behavior, eating well, being respectful, etc. We decided that on days he had no accidents he earned three rocks. When the jar is filled, he receives a reward of his choice (typically a small toy, or an ice cream from the ice cream parlor, or a trip to the park).
In the first week, he had two accidents. In the following three weeks, he has had no accidents. He has already earned one reward which he loves.
Good luck.
