Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Potty training "delay" help

One of the best things I read in Dr. Ruf's book is that some gifted children potty train "late". Before reading that, I thought DS propably wasnt gifted because at 3 (now 3 yrs, 3 months) showed no interest in and refused to potty train. I feel like it is becoming a battle of the wills, and I am very frustrated.

Anyway, did anyone else have this issue with a DC? If so, how did you handle it? I would really like DS potty trained by the end of summer. TIA.

My oldest was cruising on furniture at 6 months, walking independently at 9 months and decided she would not wear another diaper when she was 1 1/2.

On the other hand, my youngest talked late, walked late and at 3 years old showed no signs of wanting to potty train. It was very much a battle of wills. Things that were supposed to work but did not:

Bribing with M&M's - he preferred peeing in his pants to getting any treat of any sort
Letting him run around the house buck naked - the pediatrician said sometimes the feeling of underwear next to a child's skin would stimulate still wanting to pee up against something like in the diaper. This was how I knew it was a battle of wills - he would hold it for hours upon hours and then sneak outside to pee in the back yard rather than in the toilet.
Educating - if there was a book on potty training, we read it over and over.
Comparing - he really didn't care who could or could not go in the toilet.

What finally worked was finding currency that mattered to him. He loved playing Rebel Assault whenever his older brother would leave it running on the computer. So I finally told him that only boys who went in the toilet could play big boy games. He did not wet the bed or have an accident once after that. His pediatrician said he's the only kid he knew who was potty trained through playing video games.

So, if you've had a checkup and know that there is no physiological reason your kiddo is having difficulty with toilet training, it may just take finding the right currency that matters to him.

I am having this issue too. I have a DS 3 years 1 month who can read but is not potty trained. Ahh, Asynchrony!! No advice, just in the same boat.

You have described my DS perfectly except that when he wants an M&M (which is maybe once a week), he will go to the potty. Now, I just need to figure out what would be a good motivation. Thank you!

My DD's currency was preschool. We told her preschool wouldn't take her in diapers. She said she was ready to use the toilet a few days before school started. At that point, it was clear that she was physically capable of using the toilet, but disinterested. For instance, she'd go around in underwear all day with no accidents, asking for a diaper when she needed to go.

The preschool room she was in for the summer would, in fact, have taken her in diapers, so they were fine with dealing with the couple of accidents in the first week. She had a sleepover at school later in the summer, and the teacher, never having known her to be diapered, didn't put a diaper on her for overnight. She woke up night-trained.

That is great, AlexsMom. The preschool where I am hoping to send DS this fall takes kids at 2.5 years, but they must be potty trained. I am hoping to have him trained by August. Even when he (infrequently) goes to the potty, he takes off his shoes, underwear/pull up, and pants. I also need to teach him how to pull down and pull up without completely undressing his lower half. :-)

Jai, my ds was relatively late to pt, and jmo, but it's most likely going to happen when your child is ready for it to happen - if you try to force it on them earlier it can very easily turn into a battle of wills.

We were in the same type of situation with our ds where we had a preschool we wanted him to be able to go into at 3 and a requirement was that the kids had to be potty-trained. I was so panicked but, fwiw, I found out after we had ds actually in the school - a lot of the "potty-trained" 3 year olds weren't really potty trained. The preschool schedule was set up to include a *lot* of lining up for bathroom breaks for every kid during the course of the day as well as there were always quite a few bags of dirty clothes hanging from kids' cubbies at pickup at the end of the day - you got the bag of dirty clothes when your child peed/etc in their pants. I was taking those bags home for what seemed like eternity... and so were a lot of other parents. Soooo - if you get halfway there, you may very well be at (or ahead) of some of the other kiddos.

Best wishes,

polarbear

DS will be 4 in a few weeks, and he is only sort-of potty trained. We don't have very many pee accidents any more, but poop is another story. He holds it and only goes every 4-5 days, and when he goes, it's immense. We give him a good dose of Miralax every day and often a dose of Ex-Lax as well when it's been four or five days. He can read, but pooping in the potty is beyond us.

Our DS said he would start using the potty when he turned 4 -- but once his 4th birthday came, he kept delaying it -- he said he just wasn't ready...finally at about 4 and 2 months I told him he could get Jelly Car 3 (i am not a fan of jelly car) if he started using the potty -- he immediately dropped everything and ran to the toilet (but didn't have to pee) -- so he drank a bunch of apple juice until he had to go. That was it. Video game - like ABQMom. Then...he he was stuck on pull-ups (which he didn't need). We finally got rid of pull-ups at 4.5. Phew! But this is a kid who has a shoe issue too -- he is only on his 3rd pair of shoes ever (refusing to wear new shoes).

Ugh.

DS can manage all day at the Science Center without even being reminded. But once I loose the option of taking him home from there, I'm SOL. As it were. Especially S, but both, really.

People say to me that he just doesn't want to stop what he's doing, or that when he's distracted he doesn't think of it but... erm... yeah, he does best at the SCIENCE CENTER folks.

He's been "trained" since 11 mos. He just got over caring, and now he doesn't see why he should bother. Especially if he can get a rise out of us by strategic accidenting.

Ok, but, I do have a possibly-helpful comment. I ran across the tactic of asking him to "hold it" for me because he clearly needed to go desperately as we were going into an Imax show on fish (speaking of marine biology streaks). I asked if he could hold it for 45 minutes, and he said he could. And he did... and then flew out of the theater to the bathroom the second the lights came up.

After a few more shockingly good results, I've stopped asking if he needs to go, and have started asking him to "hold it untill ______" instead, doing my best impression of someone who thinks this holding it task is going to be well nigh impossible.

The biggest change is that he seems to want to generate as much pee as possible when he demonstrates that he has successfully held it -- I think to convince me of how hard he was working to accomplish this great holding-it coup. The side effect is that he needs to go less often, & I think he sees that as a genuine benefit.

I'm a little shy of him holding it too long on a regular basis, but for now it's working surprisingly well (he actually holds it less long, because of the show he has to put on about having a lot of pee in him), and I think it only has to hold so long before he'll just be used to it and not really worry about it any more.

Only about half of the kids in his 3.5-4.5 yr class are out of diapers for the class.

-Mich