Hello!

My daughter just turned 4 (4th Feb) and over the past few weeks she has been refusing to go to the bathroom and just wees in her pants. I am changing her clothes ever few hours. She is fully toilet trained so I don’t understand why she is refusing to use the bathroom. When I ask her why she won’t go to the toilet she just giggles and says “Because I don’t want to” it’s really starting to frustrate me. I’ve heard before that children sometimes do this if they’ve had a major life change, the only change she’s had in her life lately is her brother started prep so no longer goes to kindy with her (they are really close). If anyone has any advice please let me know as I am beyond lost as to what to do! How do you stop a 4 year old wetting her pants even though she is toilet trained?

Posted by anon 21.2.2013


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  • Personally I wouldn’t give it a lot of attention of respond with strong reactions. I always involved my kids in the clean up process and in the case of poo accidents, too late to the toilet or not properly wiping I taught them to scrub their undies themselves. Bring it light and thank them for their help


  • As with most things kids do, it’s highly likely she’ll grow out of it. I know this isn’t very helpful as it must be very frustrating


  • I just realised this was posted some time ago, so I hope all is well now.


  • Great answers given! There really interesting comments on this!


  • I hope it was just a phase and she’s stopped doing it now.


  • I hope your 4yr old has stopped by now


  • so sorry i dont know the answer to this :(


  • Did she end up stopping?


  • I think it is just a phase, just keep making her go to the toilet at regular intervals


  • How is she going now?


  • I like Rach’s suggestion. I’ve always encouraged my kids to help me clean up their accidents too


  • If she is close to the brother…. Would he take her to the toilet?


  • It could be just a stage shes going through. If you’re really worried I’d get her checked by the doc as there could be a more serious medical problem behind it.


  • I found it was an attention seeking thing


  • Hope it all works out :-)


  • make her clean up her own mess. when she pees herself, make her take her clothes off, have a stool in the restroom and turn on the sink and let her rinse her own undies out and hang them on a rack to dry, then take her to the sport on the floor spray it for her and let her wipe it up. do this EVERYTIME…eventually she wont want to do all that EVERY time she pees and will start using the potty. this is how i trained both my children before they were 2. my 22 month old even strips herself down and goes to the papertowels before ive realized shes had an accident. of course im not mean when i do this..always positive like “uhoh looks like youve had an accident (or made a mess) guess we better get this cleaned up”…called natural consequences vs the punishment of taking her toys away your trying to do. good luck


  • We ask our 4 year old every hour and make her go even if she does nothing. I ask her why and she says cause it’s cold in there. So we make a game. I race her and she goes to her toiletan I go to ours and the winner gets to goose the next game/activity. Seems to have worked.


  • Might be attention seeking .


  • Have you gone there and just snuck into the room and watched or watched from the door??


  • Have you talked to the ppl at the kinder to see how she is going there?


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