In CourtneyB's post about EPGY, she mentioned about the accidents her son is still having in Kindergarten. I'm wondering if this is a typical problem with gifted kids. My DS6 has the same problem. He just does not want to be bothered with bodily functions when he is doing something of interest. He's had two accidents so far this school year (he's in 1st grade). When he was in Kindergarten, he often had accidents on the walk home because he hadn't bothered to go all morning at school. (We only live 3 blocks from school.)
Is this common with gifted kids? And has anyone had success dealing with it?
I can relate. DS5 potty trained himself with #2 at 2 years old. He wouldn't consider going in his pants...but he couldn't bother to go pee. He would go when we told him to or made him, but he would constantly insist he didn't have to go. Life is too fun for him and he doesn't want to stop. He was still getting spots on his pants this summer, just a big spot right in the middle and he would still insist he didn't have to go. It would drive us nuts. I was especially anxious because I was trying to potty train my 2yo DD and instead was trying to make sure that my new 5yo was ready for first grade as he skipped K. I didn't want him to have accidents at school. Anyhow, we still need to ask him if he needs to go and remind him at times, but we don't do it often and he hasn't had any spots on his pants in months. So I guess that is a good thing. And I think he goes in school a few times a day...probably because he gets bored and wants an excuse to go out for a bit. : ) It is quite frustrating though.
Ds5 was fully potty trained at 2 1/3, but he had accidents up until we started homeschooling because he would be so iterested in what he was doing he would not stop to potty until it was too late. I started reminding him to potty every 2 hours or so and that solved the problem (I no longer have to remind him except before long car rides).
DD10 potty trained late and only with a sticker chart and a prize at the end. She was reading fluently, doing math, and had memorized the statistics of the [then] nine planets well before she had any interest in independent pottying.
She needed nighttime pullups well into kindergarten and had accidents in preschool, kinder and first.
DD's asynchrony continues to favor academic pursuits over self-care. Hygiene is for kids that don't read every waking minute, I guess.
ETA: she potty trained late in her 3rd year.
I think it's a kid thing, not a gifted thing. Some kids have accidents and others don't. My ds had his last accident at 4, when he wet the computer chair. I cleaned it up and told him he couldn't use the computer again until the chair dried, and that would take a week or so. Once he had his computer privledges back, he never had another accident.
If your ds has accidents in school, make sure he has a change of clothes at school or in his backpack. Teachers don't like to deal with it, but I guarantee your child is not the only one in his class whose had an accident this year. I work at a school, and I know of at least 2 3rd graders who had accidents this year so far.
It's nice ( I think...) to know that my DS isn't the only one, lol. I always make sure to keep a full change of clothing in his backpack since I am well aware he may occasionally have an accident.
So far the 2 times (I guess that's not bad for 2 1/2 months) she's been very understanding and thanked me for having extra clothes in his backpack.
If I have to next year I'll come *make* him use the bathroom at lunch time every day, lol. We'll see.
My sons had accidents in K & one early in 1st. I've always had the sense it was more personality than giftedness, though.
They had one on the cloth piano bench they sat together in front of the computer once. I had the same consequence as PP mentioned. No computer time for a while. I told them if they weren't old enough to stop to use the bathroom, then maybe they weren't old enough to be allowed to use the computer by themselves.
They are now nearly 8, and I *still* have to remind one of them to go to the bathroom when he is doing the 'pee dance'. Drives me batty that everyone in the room knows he has to go before he clues in. I have NO idea why he is the last to pick up on it.
On the other hand, they both stopped wetting at night shortly after they turned 2, which was 16-18 months before they were toilet trained during the day. Wierd.
My sons had accidents in K & one early in 1st. I've always had the sense it was more personality than giftedness, though.
They had one on the cloth piano bench they sat together in front of the computer once. I had the same consequence as PP mentioned. No computer time for a while. I told them if they weren't old enough to stop to use the bathroom, then maybe they weren't old enough to be allowed to use the computer by themselves.
They are now nearly 8, and I *still* have to remind one of them to go to the bathroom when he is doing the 'pee dance'. Drives me batty that everyone in the room knows he has to go before he clues in. I have NO idea why he is the last to pick up on it.
On the other hand, they both stopped wetting at night shortly after they turned 2, which was 16-18 months before they were toilet trained during the day. Wierd.
Wow, you pretty much described my son there. The only nighttime accidents he has had since 2 1/2-ish were when he just wouldn't get up in the morning to go. But he had accidents daily until at least 4 I would say and then he went large chunks of no accidents followed by up to a week of daily accidents again. I'll have to see if there is something 'new' when that happens or just that he's done going on his own at that point.
My daughter toilet trained at 2 but every so often up until she was 6 or 7 she would wet the bed. She is one of those kids who are "On" or "Off" and she would be so deeply asleep that she wouldn't notice.
DS was trained at 2 and has had only a handful of accidents, with most being due to having a stomach virus. DD wasn't trained til almost 3, and to this day, she still has accidents here and there - some related to being "too busy" and others not.
My brother had problems. My child had problems with wetting up until the age given. Both people are profoundly gifted. Both can intensely focus. Maybe the toilet issue is a familial problem.
Gifted Mom, unfortunately, I don't have any good advice. My DS7 has done better since I started this thread. He hasn't had anymore accidents. But I'm not sure what, if anything, we did to help. We did talk with him about good times for him to use the bathroom during the day at school. There are still times when we are walking home (we live three blocks from school) that he has to go to wee in a bush because he can't make it home. So I'm not sure how many times during the day he uses the bathroom at school.
And at home, he still does the potty dance all of the time and waits until the very last minute. It drives us crazy! But we've decided to just make it a non-issue at this point and to stop reminding him. And if he does have an accident (usually just in his underpants) then he is responsible for cleaning everything up.
I too would love to hear from anyone else who has ideas on how to deal with this!
Gifted Mom - maybe you could reward him for using the bathroom at school. If he uses it, he gets a star (or a sticker or a point). If he uses it twice in one day, he gets 2 or 3. After x number of stars, he gets to stay up 15 minutes late, pick what you're having for dinner, etc. You can lengthen the time easier if you change the reward (for 10 points you get to pick dessert then for for 15 points you can stay up later). Eventually, using the bathroom at school should become a habit and your problem (at school at least) should be solved.
While I tend to guess this is a kid issue, I can see how intense kids who can get very focused could be more predisposed to this.
I do want to suggest for those of you who have issues with nighttime dryness the alarm system. My DS potty trained pretty much in one day at about 2.5 (and with no real "training") and has had maybe 3 daytime accidents ever, however he was not dry at night consistently until we used an alarm. He urinated so much that he would pee out of overnight pull-ups by midnight, I was changing his sheets 3-5 times per week. What we discovered using the alarm was that he slept very very heavily. However one month with the alarm at age 6 and he was finally dry at night (we had dramatic results within about 2 weeks, and kept using it another 2 weeks to reinforce). He got sick this year (right about age 7) and had a night time accident but we just used the alarm again for a week and voila, all better and no problems since (he turns 8 next week). It was an issue for him because he was starting to be invited to overnights.
I would not suggest the alarm for kids under age 6, because it requires pretty good dexterity to turn off, and is very loud and can be scary sounding. But, our Pediatrician kept saying he would grow out of it, but my research suggested that if a kid wasn't normally dry at night by age 6, then there was a good likelihood he would not be dry by age 12, and I didn't feel like that was a very good outcome.
He also admits quite readily that he dislikes going to the bathroom, but won't explain why.
Does he just dislike using the bathroom at school? If so, could it be the noise of the flush? Personally, I can't stand the sound of flushing toilets in public places - I think it's the 'industrial size' sound in the small confined stall with nothing to absorb some of the hollow, echo-y sound. I have to cover my ears when flushing public toilets and I've noticed that DS does it too.
One other thing that comes to mind, is that when DS was in a part-day pre-school, the toilet backed up once and overflowed. It scared him silly and he refused to use that bathroom for quite awhile - he was afraid it would happen again.
Just a thought...
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Unfortunately, DS doesn't like using the bathroom anywhere. I do believe he dislikes public bathrooms the most, but will avoid going to the bathroom at home too. The other day he blatantly lied about having gone already to avoid having to go when he got up in the morning. When I caught him in his lie, his only explanation was "I don't like to go to the bathroom".
Since he has no problem lying about using the bathroom, I don't think a reward system will work as we'd have no real way to monitor this at school. My mother actually tried to bribe him with money, first paying him for each time he used the bathroom and then changing it to pay him for each day he was accident free. She started this while we were on vacation together and didn't ask me about it beforehand. I let her do it knowing vacation would soon be over, but then she tried to rope me into continuing it at home. I can tell you that neither scheme worked. One of the weeks she paid him for accident-free days, he had accidents 5 out of 7 days, a record for him to this day.
He did have an issue with loud sounds when he was younger and probably as a result will rarely flush the toilet. We've tried to get him to change this habit, but have had little success, so have chosen not to make it a big deal at the moment. At home, or if we're out together, DH or I usually go in after him and flush. While we'd love for him to flush at a public restroom, we'd settle for him not having an accident and forgetting to flush...
We go back to the OT today for his first therapy session and will hopefully get some ideas for his sensory diet. It's hard to know whether he is lying about not knowing he has to go and not realizing he had an accident, or whether he really is that oblivious.
Wow, he sounds so much like my DS! Rewards don't work, he doesn't seem to even recognize when he has to go, and frequently doesn't seem to care/notice if he is wet. We have mostly accident free days but only because we enforce that he has to use the toilet before doing something or he gets timeout in his room. Even then he will just goof off in the bathroom - for a good while most of his accidents actually happened IN the bathroom while he was goofing off and not using the toilet.