4year old doesn’t want to do wee in the toilet or potty as he thinks that someone would have to clean the wee from floor.

[Tiredmum_]

Hi, I posted 4 months ago that my son used to withhold his wee as long as 20 hours. I stopped and ignored to toilet train him and he stopped holding in. Recently he started to wee in the potty all by himself and was using it atleast twice a day. He still wears nappy. But just after 3 weeks he suddenly stopped doing it as if he just doesn’t like to use that anymore and seems like he thinks that mum would have to clean the mess. It happened when once or twice he didn’t manage to do it all inside the potty and little bit of wee was outside around the potty on the floor. I didn’t say anything negative, didn’t became angry nor created any big issue, not even showed from my expressions that he has done something wrong. He just thinks all by himself that he didn’t do anything right. What can I do to in this situation? How can I make him do wee in the toilet or potty again? He doesn’t want to sit on the toilet. I thought initially that once he gets into a habit, I gradually and slowly will try him to do it in the toilet.

[ERIC-Charity Partner]

Hi tiredmum,

Commenting partly to bump this post up and see if any of our lovely members who maybe missed your first post have some suggestions?

From ERIC's side, this definitely sounds like he is wee withholding which is a distressing problem for both kids and adults. With wee withholders, it is useful to check out if they are constipated (sometimes they hold onto so much wee that they end up holding in their poos too and become constipated). And you want to get the drinking RIGHT as this is crucial to actually passing a wee. You want him drinking the recommended 6-8 cups of drinks per day, spread evenly through the day. There is more about all this in our factsheet: eric.org.uk/children-who-wi....

If you are back in emergency mode where he is not weeing for hours and hours at a time then the priority is just to get those wees out. Sometimes wee withholders will have a wee in a nice warm bath, sometimes they will do it if we pad the potty with lots of tissue paper. Do what you need to do!

To help him actually sit on the potty for a wee, try a predictable potty routine. You want a regular potty routine that shifts focus away from wees and onto 'potty time' in order to help him relax and let all his wee out on the potty. A good wee routine includes prompting him for a 'potty time' every 90mins - 2 hours every single day. Encourage him to sit on the potty as this is the best way to wee, and build a bag of potty time toys that help him to sit down and relax. Other ways to relax might include breathing and counting to ten before he goes for a potty time. We have more tips here: eric.org.uk/toilet-anxiety.

lt can be useful to think of any other causes of anxiety that may be contributing too, and other ways to tackle it. This could include talking about anxiety with him, building confidence in other skills/learning new skills , having wind down time with relaxing activities, giving him a small role to play in the clean-up of the 'sneaky wees', and learning about how wee works. See our kids pages for info on this. At ERIC we are more experts on toilet anxiety rather than general anxiety so you might find it useful to chat to your son's nursery too for more ideas

@ERIC

[Le15]

I haven’t experienced this exact problem but I think if it were me, I would do a reset - go back to Nappies for a few weeks, then do a morning bath and just don’t put a nappy back on. Don’t mention the potty, be outside if you can to prevent loads of cleaning and if he does a wee on the floor - give small praise just to encourage him to get the wee out first - but I just sort of ignore it to take any sort of pressure off (I know that sounds messy so ideally don’t be on carpet!).

But I think I would try to normalise that wee comes out first (wherever that happens) just to normalise the feeling and slowly after a few days of being totally naked from the bottom down just sort of point at the potty when you see the signs that the wee is coming. I would take the pressure off the situation completely and see what happens.

Best of luck!

[Iffets]

Not sure if this will help but when our 7y was around 3y we let him pee into the bushes in the garden before we introduced the toilet. Then there is no issue that they peed 'in the wrong place' or made a mistake. Or get a large sized plastic bowl he can pee into which is much harder to miss?