I have been in the trenches of potty-training my 28 month old son for a few weeks now. It is not going very well. I am leaving him in just underwear all day long and putting disposable pull-ups on for naps, nights and when we leave the house.
At home he is JUST starting to tell us if he needs to go to the bathroom. He will hold himself and say "Mummy, Mummy, Mummy" some of the time. He is not speaking much yet so this is how he lets us know.
I rush him to the potty and most of the time he won't go. He sits there for awhile but eventually just gets up and plays. I put his underwear back on and awhile later he starts going on the floor without telling us.
We are lucky if he goes on the potty ONCE a day.
He is really good at holding it though. He goes hours at home or even out for a walk and doesn't have an accident. The problem is he doesn't go on the potty either.
He holds it and will poop and pee in his pull-ups when he is in bed.
I know that a lot of it is him still learning and I am keeping my patience and just keep putting him on the potty and reminding him about it often.
My issue now though is he DOES NOT SLEEP at night!
He used to sleep 12 hours straight every night without a peep. For the last week or so he wakes up crying multiple times and night. I go in his room and sometimes he is holding his crotch so I put him on the potty but he won't go. (He is not constipated, he poops like normal every day). I put him back in his pull-ups and he settles right down again. This repeats itself throughout the long, long night. Last night he was up ALL night long.
My theory is that he feels like he has to pee but doesn't want to pee in his bed so he cries for me to go in to put him on the potty. Which would make perfect sense if he would actually PEE!
When I started potty-training I tried leaving him in underwear for naps and nights too. But he wasn't sleeping well and was very crabby because of that. I often had to change the sheets on his bed 3 times a night. So I decided to use pull-ups for sleep instead.
That was working for awhile but now we are having the sleep issues again.
So my questions are:
Does potty-training cause sleep problems?
Did you experience this? What did you do to resolve it?
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Oh gosh, we haven't gotten to that stage yet, but in my experience potty training kids of all ages on the Autism Spectrum Disorder, nighttime training comes in very last (particularly in boys)! If it were my child, I'd wait to even start until he could hold his bladder through a nap, and then would leave him in a diaper for nights until he is potty trained during the day (if he isn't consistent during the day, when he is awake and cognizant and aware, I think it's almost unfair to try to get the same results at night when he's unconscious!) I wonder if removing some of the pressure (and maybe fear of failure?) for nights would end up helping him relax about it during the day! Maybe he just needs to be more successful to be more consistent :) Good luck!
ReplyDeleteMy nephew hated the idea of wearing diapers to bed once he was day time potty traine but he wasn't ready for night training at that point. Unfortunately I can't remember what my sister-in-law did. Supposedly babies/toddlers don't pee in their sleep (so some studies show anyway). So I guess the idea would be to just wake up and put him on the potty everytime he is up in the night? However sleep deprivation does not make a happy mom or child....
ReplyDeleteAs I said to my sil earlier this week, I used to be full of advice and opinions about potty training and then I had kids!
Good luck!!
I've had bedwetters and one thing I can tell you that I learned from the urologist is that holding it for long periods of time is not good. It overdevelops the sphincter at the bottom of the bladder. Encourage him to try every couple of hours by putting his potty in front of a favorite TV show. Don't praise him for staying dry. Praise him for sitting on the potty and going in the potty. With my most recent trainer I gave him 1 chocolate chip for trying, 2 for peeing in the potty and 3 for pooping in the potty. That worked pretty well. He was older (3 1/2) but we also had a newborn in the house. I left him in diapers at night for a while.
ReplyDeleteYes! We had major sleep issues when our son was potty training! At first he wouldn't pee in his diaper but yell for us that he had to go pee. So we started just putting him in underwear at night. Then he was up literally all night saying he had to pee. Half the time he didn't even pee. It was so frustrating for a while there. I also had a newborn who was up multiple times a night. I was exhausted. But eventually he started to sleep more and even better he would get up and go pee by himself without waking up and would go right back to bed! It takes time, but I'm sure your son will get it too! Good luck! :)
ReplyDeleteWe haven't started potty training yet, but it is on my mind.... It will be nice to kind of have an idea of what will happen after reading your post.
ReplyDeleteMy son had night terrors when we were potty training. I don't know if it was about those or not. We had to wake him up every night when it was happening. Luckily he always went back to sleep.
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