is a real challenge at times.Melissa's decided that toilets are strictly optional, again. She's been having 1 or 2 "accidents" a day almost everyday. Why, I don't know. She did this one other time about 6 months ago. We tried rewards, punishments, unpleasant consequences such as cleaning up the mess or wearing diapers, and extra attention in the event she was feeling middle child syndrome or some such thing. There was nothing medically wrong with her, and she didn't have any big changes; it was totally out of the blue. It lasted for about 2 weeks and then she was fine. No accidents whatsoever after that. Recently she started up after Jonathan left for his trip earlier this month, but she didn't seem otherwise distressed about his absence, so that may just be coincidence.
This I do know, Melissa is extremely strong-willed. When she was first toilet trained at 2, it lasted 2 weeks and then she decided she didn't want to go through the effort. Nothing could persuade her otherwise so we backed off until 2 1/2 when she was once again amendable to the idea.
So now at 4 years old we are running into this. Lately I've just had her wear a diaper if she goofs up for the day. She hates that, but I do enough laundry as it is. Still, it hasn't completely deterred her, so I might go for the bare buns approach. Other than the "accidents" she's her regular cheerful, busy, happy self. I can't get any explanation out of her either. She just says, "I'm sorry." It seems to occur when she's distracted by games, or TV, or longer activities. We're trying to eliminate distractions. I love my moppet headed, happy girl, but this is tough!
I'm out of ideas, and running out of patience.
3 comments:
What kills me is all the great blog entries Rachel wouldn't let me write.
What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good poop story.
I know how tough that is. Megan did the exact same thing. It took about three tries to get her potty trained, but then she would just pee where she was standing for no reason.
All I can say is she eventually grew out of it. Nothing worked for us, and she eventually stopped. She still though, at 6 1/2, will have an accident if she gets too busy. I still remind her to go to the bathroom. Thankfully, these accidents are always right in front of the toilet, so it was just a case of, "I waited too long." Will she be going to preschool soon? Maybe if you tell her that she can't go to preschool, the store, etc, if she's going to have accidents that will help.
I say it means she has incredible powers of concentration and will do something great someday because of them!
Post a Comment