Our situation is that potty training is going well at home, but really badly at daycare. We have an appointment with the daycare staff next week to discuss strategies. My son, who is 2.5 years old, is showing signs of stress for the first time in his life, which also means he is being unusually obnoxious: doing everything he's not allowed to, uncluding dangerous stuff such as opening the oven. I'm finding it difficult to strike a balance between being supportive and putting my foot down, which in turn makes it difficult to come up with decisive requests from the daycare staff. For example, my son has begun peeing in defiance: when we put him in timeout, or when we don't want to play with him at that very moment, he'll look us in the eye and pee in his pants. To my mind, this is a situation where he should be told this is a bad thing to do, but every single source on potty training says to never be negative about accidents.
Here is a breakdown of our situation:
- My son is 2.5. We began potty training 5-6 weeks ago while on holiday. He had zero peeing accidents by the third day. Pooping is more difficult as he can't hold it in for very long, but he does know to tell us in advance when he needs to go. We know he can hold in urine for something like half a day, as well as all night. He was very proud of his underwear, and of every potty achievment. He's generally very motivated to follow rules and to stay clean, so I'm not surprised that it was easy.
- After holidays, in daycare, it worked well for a few days, but he gradually began resisting more and more. They try asking him frequently, asking him rarely, asking him at different points in the day, giving stickers, congratulating, talking, letting him choose if he wants to use the potty or the tiny toilets, but he's resisting more and more as time goes by.
- At first he was greatly distressed by his accidents, but he slowly stopped caring. By now he mostly messes his pants, 4-5 times a day, and only very ocassionally uses the potty.
- I have a vague notion that he might be peeing in defiance in daycare as well, rather that not being able to communicate his need. Maybe he's angry if they interrupt his playing or something of that sort. It's hard to know.
- He started having occasional accidents at home as well, and wetting his bed multiple times per night. He also mostly stopped caring about being wet when it happens. This is very unusual for him.
- The daycare staff are clearly uncomfortable about the situation because they feel they are stressing him out by insisting he uses the potty (I also bet they're not too crazy about the messes, but they don't say this). They even put a diaper on him twice so far. We told them not to after the first instance, but the second time he asked for it and they thought this was a good enough reason to do it. We think it's confusing for him to be able to pee freely sometimes and need to go potty at other times.
- We haven't been entirely consistent either, as we returned night-time diapers after a week, with the idea that we should tackle daycare first and nights later, and that's it's too much stress for him to be having accidents every night on top of every weekday.
I would appreciate any input or suggestions for what to tell the daycare staff, or what to do differently at home.
