Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Toilet training?!?

Firstly, I have no idea how gifted this kid is, she's not yet 18 months old... But given the months long toilet saga we have going on here maybe she's PG, in thinking about toileting at least :-).

I apologise now that this is long, but I think the background may be necessary and I am really stressed about this.

DD1 toilet trained about 2.5yrs, when she refused to wear cloth nappies anymore and I refused to buy disposables. It went badly and took about 18 months to be 100% reliable. In hindsight I wished I had allowed her to go to disposables. We could have months that were great then a bad patch. When she wet herself she would empty her whole bladder and keep playing completely unconcerned. My most successful approach was to implement a rule that she could return to any activity she left for timely toilet visits but any activity she wet herself for was then instantly over. Problems did seem to be quite related to teething. We now know she's 2E, all sorts of sensory issues, retained reflexes, waiting for an ADHD diagnosis, possibly even ASD. The other Es may have had something to do with her problems.

DD2 toilet trained at 18-24 months because her friend was setting an example and she wanted to. She had some serious toilet phobia issues and would only go at home, on pristine fancy toilets when out or on the "car potty", she would absolutely prefer to have an accident than use a toilet that did not meet her standards (and was not beyond requesting the home toilet be freshly cleaned before she would use it). None the less she learned quickly and well - but like #1 she would have good months and then bad patches, and like #1 she didn't seem to care at all about her lapses, she continued to have bad patches right up to her 5th birthday. Though unlike #1 she would generally have a small accident and hold the rest for the toilet, or she would have her accident trying to get undressed or half way on the toilet, etc. So she was just waiting too long. As far as we know she has no other exceptionalities, well ADHD-i is a possibility, but she seems to be just too much in her head and not enough in her body to care... She doesn't care about wiping her bottom properly, food all over her face or hands either, even at 5 and we are having to have some pretty frank conversations with her about the fact that people won't want to be around her if she smells or if she leaves greasy hand prints all over everything she touches because she won't wash her hands...

I have no idea if I just really suck at toilet training or if my kids are unusually hard to teach.

So along comes #3. At about 12 months she developed a bath phobia after poo-ing in the bath two nights one week and getting too dramatic a reaction from her sisters (in the bath with her) and I. We slowly and carefully reversed that and she learned to strictly control her bowels while in the water or get out in a panic.

Soon after she started completely freaking out when I went to the toilet. Complete meltdown stuff... And I was thinking to myself "How the heck did I manage to get two kids with toilet phobias?" I mean I like to keep things clean but I am a once or twice a week type cleaner, not daily or twice daily. We are nobody's idea of perfect house keepers!

And then I realised - they got interested in the toilet, I made great fuss about how they must never touch, it's dirty, will make them sick, blah blah blah. And then I go and sit on it! Poor kid must have been so scared for me (and clearly was).

So then I changed my toilet talk to "You do wees and poos in your nappy but Mummy and Daddy and your sisters do wees and poos on the toilet. When you are bigger you can use the toilet too. We don't touch the toilet, but we do sit on it to do wees and poos, and then we wash our hands, etc" And then we would go wash our hands together. She got over her meltdowns. Yay! She took great delight in accompanying me for these chats, but was still anxious obviously, as she would panic if left behind when someone mentioned needing to go to the toilet.

Simultaneously she's been demanding to get out of the bath early of late and invariably wee-ing on the floor. I was starting to realise she was curtailing her baths because of the urge to wee and not wanting to soil the bath. I have been considering getting the potty out but after the long hard journey with both her older sisters I have been procrastinating.

Today she was out on the trampoline with my MIL and asked for the toilet, so after consulting with me MIL took her and although nothing happened she seemed very pleased. Tonight when she got out of the bath after only a few minutes I decided she might need to wee so put her on the toilet but she got scared and upset so I let her go. She then tried to wee in the hall so I took her back to the toilet. She was scared again, so I put her down and stuck my head into the bathroom to check on #2. She shut the door and I just left her in there for a minute (I figured at least she wasn't weeing in the hall!).

When I had opened the door she'd poo-ed on the floor. And stepped in it as she tried to back away from the door. So into the bath she went, where she had hysterics (she didn't say it but was clearly communicating NO POO IN THE BATH MAMA!!).

It seems pretty clear that she understands what happens where and has some control of her bodily functions. She was very interested in "On Your Potty" at story time tonight, which is amazing because she will generally only entertain books with stars. But I am just so scared of entering into another 3 year toilet training debacle.

So - if you made it that far, thank you! And does anyone have any insight or advice to share?

I really hope that I am not the only one that sees this as a gifted toddler issue. Yikes!

No advice, but I certainly do feel for you! Of all the things that my dd's had to learn...toilet training was the most off-putting.

The average age for a child being able to stay clean and dry without accidents is 5. Yes, 5. American expectations for this are pretty unreasonable, probably because preschools won't take diapered children. Some kids really can't do it young, and it's a shame that parents and kids feel pressure about it. 2Es and kids with disabilities in general sometimes take longer, but nearly everybody gets there eventually.

If your child is anxious about it, I would suggest backing off the topic and using whatever works (disposables, whatever) for the short term until everyone is ready for another try. (Your matter of fact approach about "here's what it's for, we wash our hands afterward" was very good IMO. Matter of fact is always good for ramping down stress.)

DeeDee

It all depends on the child.

I was totally potty trained (day and night) by 2.

DS2.5 has absolutely no interest in potty training and scared of poos.

My son had abcolutely no interest in using the toilet - when he was around 2 1/2 he started to wear pull-ups - but if I even suggested he wore underwear or sat on the toilet, he would have a meltdown. And this is a kid who never had tantrums. Around 2 3/4, one Friday, I announced that as of the following Monday he would wear underwear and would have to use the toilet. We talked about it all weekend - Monday morning, he got up, happily put on his underwear, and had 3 accidents that day. The following day he had 2 accidents. After that, he was dry day and night He was another bath pooper when he was a baby - got to the point where I kept a potty chair next to the bath, and when he showed signs of pooping, just picked him up, plopped him the on the potty chair (holding him, as he was too small to sit there by himself LOL), and then when he had pooped, back into the bath.

Oh, boy... do I feel your potty-training pain!!

DD was a nightmare to train. She went to preschool at 3 in pull-ups. She was 3.5 before we could even think about underwear. Poos... almost 4. We resorted to bribing that would be too embarassing to disclose. It was a desperate situation, LOL!

DS will be 3 in three weeks. He starts preschool in 2 weeks. He had such a huge potty-phobia, initially, that we had to hide all the potties and toilet rings from Feb-June of this year. He had full-blown panic attacks. I brought them back out in July and offered to buy him new trains if he would use them. He peed once, got a train.... pooed once, got a train... has not done a single thing since. We can get him to sit on the potty a few times a day, but only if we bribe him with treats. This is not how I intended to parent when I set out on this journey, but I am learning that everything I ever thought about parenting needs to be thrown out the window when it comes to my kids.

With DD, what ultimately worked was a dumb motivation pack I bought online called The Potty Lady. It looked like a bunch of hooey, but it worked in 6 days. I'm thinking we need to revisit Potty Lady again.

Sorry that I cannot offer any helpful advice. I often think that my kids overanalyzed the whole potty thing. It became such an event that it took on a life of its own. I would love to just back away from the potty for now, but DS has to at least be able to sit on it for preschool... and he really, really needs to go to preschool!!

Best of luck. I'll think of you every time DS throws his arms around my neck and begs me to save him from the scary potty.

DS is only 2.5 now and won't be going to preschool until next summer.

But I agree, if it wasn't for preschool, I won't force potty-training on them.

This is not helping me feel more confident about TTing with an 18 month old.

Oh and she has raging food intolerances, when we make a diet mistake she poos green mucus many times a day for a week or so. I really don't want to do this, but I also feel like it could be equally bad to not do it. Why are the supposedly simple parts of parenting so hard to make choices about?

Go for it!

(Sorry I didn't see this before.)

I don't see anything unusual in what you wrote! All children are different. It does sound like DD3 is ready to toilet train. A great read if you think your younger child is ready to TT is "Diaper Free Before Three"

I found it really really useful.

Sorry gotta go or I'd say more.