Potty training for preschool

[Deleted]

Hope it's ok if I post this here!

My DD will be 3 in July. She is good at using the potty when she's naked, but freaks out if we try to put underwear on her. We have basically just been keeping her naked during the day and she'll go to her potty, never has accidents on the floor. She is in a diaper at night and in public.

I didn't want to push the underwear because she's super stubborn and I thought it would backfire. I figured the important thing was that she's getting used to the potty.

She is definitely aware of when she has to go but still goes in her diaper if she has one on at the store or something.

We want to sign her up for preschool but they need to be PT. It starts in September but I need to register her this week.

How would you handle this? Just force her to wear underwear and see what happens?

[billyhorrible]

My oldest wouldn't wear underwear to preschool, even after he was potty trained. I think it was a combination of being afraid of having an accident, and knowing that a pullup meant he didn't have to stop playing. We tried just about everything to get him to wear underwear, and what eventually worked was an incentive chart.

Wear underwear 1 day to school, get to pick out a toy from the store.
Wear underwear 3 days in a row to school, trip to the zoo.
Wear underwear a full week, trip to the amusement park.

Since your daughter isn't in preschool yet, you can try the same thing, without the "to school" part. But I definitely wouldn't force anything. It'll be more effective if she's doing it because she wants to, not because she has to.

Also, once she does agree to wear underwear, I would treat her as though she were very newly potty trained, asking her if she needs to use the bathroom every 30-45 minutes.

[Taitai]

@rosegold Will she wear clothes without underwear, or would that still freak her out? We potty trained DS last month, and we sent him to nursery school commando for the first 4 weeks after potty training. After being commando for 4 weeks and forgetting about the diaper, we introduced him to underwear. He's been good about wearing his new undies, although we have noticed he had more accidents when he first started wearing them. Fortunately, that seems to have evened out now.

[Deleted]

Jun 14, 2017 8:19:51 GMT -6 Taitai said:

@rosegold Will she wear clothes without underwear, or would that still freak her out? We potty trained DS last month, and we sent him to nursery school commando for the first 4 weeks after potty training. After being commando for 4 weeks and forgetting about the diaper, we introduced him to underwear. He's been good about wearing his new undies, although we have noticed he had more accidents when he first started wearing them. Fortunately, that seems to have evened out now.

This makes sense. I think trying clothes without undies is our next step.

Honestly it's just reassuring to hear that she is not the only kid who hates underwear!

[Deleted]

Jun 13, 2017 12:44:32 GMT -6 billyhorrible said:

My oldest wouldn't wear underwear to preschool, even after he was potty trained. I think it was a combination of being afraid of having an accident, and knowing that a pullup meant he didn't have to stop playing. We tried just about everything to get him to wear underwear, and what eventually worked was an incentive chart.

Wear underwear 1 day to school, get to pick out a toy from the store.
Wear underwear 3 days in a row to school, trip to the zoo.
Wear underwear a full week, trip to the amusement park.

Since your daughter isn't in preschool yet, you can try the same thing, without the "to school" part. But I definitely wouldn't force anything. It'll be more effective if she's doing it because she wants to, not because she has to.

Also, once she does agree to wear underwear, I would treat her as though she were very newly potty trained, asking her if she needs to use the bathroom every 30-45 minutes.

The incentive chart is a great idea - we considered that for the potty but for some reason I didn't even think of using it for underwear.

We have been doing a m&m anytime she goes on the potty just to reinforce it but I think once she's in undies we can definitely use a chart with toy or outing as a reward for underwear success.