Help with my 4 year old daughters toilet training please

[Mariemcdonald11]

Hi. I am new to this. My friend sent me details of this website. I hope I am in the right place as I am struggling with my 4 year old daughter. I work 4 days a week and childcare is shared with two sets of grandparents at my house. I have an older son who is 8. My daughter remains dry all the time with both grans, asks to go to the toilet only pees but she is on laxido for poos so one thing at a time. However she won't wear pants only pullups. Tried putting over top but total meltdown. Now my main problem is she wont pee for me at all and totally shuts off when I talk abot it. She will sit on the toilet and when I know she is not far away we go to toilet every 10 mins but she always ends up peeing in pullups. Spoke to health visitor and she suggested cold turkey and tho she would cry to leave her and she would come round. Trouble is she is soooo stubborn that she stayed bottom half naked all day and cried all day refused to do anything, held in pee pee so it just didn't work. Neither do reward charts or promise of her favourite toys as again she just switches off. Why will she pee for grans but not me? Its like she is totally embarrassed and I am getting more stressed and have no idea what to do next. Any advice would be great. Thanks. Marie

[Helen36]

Oh poor you - I can’t imagine how stressful this is. I don’t have any experience of this to offer any advice but I wonder whether it might be best just to let her go with the pull ups and do as she wishes when she’s with you. I can only think it’s a power struggle/control thing as she can see it gets your attention. (Please don’t think I am saying you’re not giving her lots of attention, I am sure you are, they just can get so confused at that age about what they want and can’t see the difference between positive and negative attention). If you take that power away and tell her she can choose when she wants to wear them or not and take all the reaction out of it might help. But get her to do all the leg work of getting the pull up and putting it on/ changing it so it’s boring and she has to do it all. Maybe you could also try and find something totally different to focus on like table manners or please and thank you to shift the battles away from the loo? I wonder also whether you could get some dolls out and role play what’s happening to help her communicate why she feels this way? Just ideas really. Hope they might be helpful. X

[Mariemcdonald11 in reply to Helen36]

Hi Helen. Thanks for you kind reply and ideas. Will have a go. M x

[SallyandPaul in reply to Mariemcdonald11]

Great ideas from Helen hope it works . Good luck

[Mariemcdonald11]

Hi. Phoned the support line today for some more ideas. They suggested a toilet toy box but any ideas how I can get my very stubborn daughter to look at the box and not just demand she sits on the toilet for 10 seconds? Geez oh🤔