Question

Is it a good idea to put my almost 3 year old son back in diapers?

We initially started potty training our now 2y9m old boy A FULL YEAR AGO!  

Why so early?

He would be starting preschool when he turned 2 and they expected him to have at least started potty training, we were expecting our second kid in November and wanted to get training behind us, and I legit thought he was ready to start.

We followed the Oh Crap! method and saw a lot of success in the first month.

Then he sort of plateaued for several months with lots of pee pee accidents daily and resistance to our potty prompting.

After baby brother arrived, everything really fell apart and the frequent pee pee accidents started feeling more like a power struggle than true accidents.

We threw in the towel at the new year and put him back in diapers, and we were all less stressed for it.

Fast forward to mid-May and he tells me "no more diapers" and "I don't wear diapers anymore."

Great! He's finally ready, I thought.

Well...he continues to have multiple accidents daily - we went through 5 sets of undies and shorts or pants today.

And we live in a condo with shared, pay by the load laundry so it's particularly painful to have to do laundry 3 times a week just to ensure we have enough clean clothes on hand.

We've tried so many approaches - playing it cool/"lazy" training, frequently and enthusiastically celebrating keeping his pants dry, having him help clean up his accidents, prompting at regular intervals, and so on.

And nothing seems to click.

Wet pants don't bother him, either physically or socially.

I'm just really feeling at a loss for how to help him progress here.

The one big thing I can think of that we haven't tried is rewards, simply because that isn't really our style.

We've tried talking to him about going back to diapers so he doesn't have to worry right now about where his pee pee goes and he gets upset and says he doesn't want them and big kids don't wear diapers. (He's fine with wearing diapers for overnight sleep though.)

Our one silver lining is he's been 100% poop trained since the day we started a year ago.

(So so grateful for that!).

He will do that whole process himself from self-initiating all the way up to the wiping step, when we come in to help.

He occasionally will self-initiate the pee pee process too, and that seems to be getting more frequent, but it's not so often to instill much confidence in the face of all the accidents.

What would you do?

Should we put him back in diapers until he's able to consistently keep them dry?

Or is there some other approach we should try?

Answer 1

I would say it's not a good idea to put your almost 3 year old son back in diapers especially if he's mostly potty trained and is insisting that he doesn't want to wear diapers anymore.

However maybe try a pull up instead for just in case.

Even then it's normal for even 3 year olds to have pee and poop accidents even when they are successfully potty trained.

(We've tried talking to him about going back to diapers so he doesn't have to worry right now about where his pee pee goes and he gets upset and says he doesn't want them and big kids don't wear diapers. (He's fine with wearing diapers for overnight sleep though.))

As long as he's fine wearing diapers overnight that is okay but if he doesn't want the diapers in the day then I would not put him in them as it can make the issue worse.

Have him help clean up the pee when he does it in other places other than the toilet.

Eventually your almost 3 year old will start peeing on the potty.