discussion title:
HELP! DD won't tell anyone
DD is 4 years 4 months and has been completely out of diapers since late January. She was pee trained soon after she turned 2, but wouldn't poop on the toilet for a year and a half. Last September she started refusing to use the toilet completely. Once I even decided to not give her a diaper and she went 19 hours without peeing. I got worried she would hurt herself so I gave in and let her have a diaper and she peed immediately and had no problems. This refusal went on until I forced the issue in January and completely got rid of the diapers. The first couple of days she fought us like crazy but she started using the toilet and from then on she did great and hardly had any accidents until recently.
The problem is that she won't tell ANYONE but me (and occasionally DH if I'm not around) that she has to go to the bathroom. In the last week she's wet her pants 4 times at school, once at a friend's house and at least 3 times at home because she didn't tell me until the last second. Our bathroom door has one of those babyproof doorknob covers to keep DS out and she can't open it either. This is after having no more than 4 or 5 accidents since we quit diapers cold turkey in January. Today I even made sure she peed when we got to her school before she went upstairs to her classroom and she wet her pants anyway. She's in preschool so her day is only 2.5 hours and she can totally hold it that long.
I'm sure it's behavioral, but I don't know what to do about it. I told her she was going to have to stop going to school if she keeps wetting her pants. She also has a little friend at school and they've been inviting her over sometimes. Today she said something about going to Marissa's and I told her she might have been able to go if she hadn't wet her pants (I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm using any incentive I can think of).
I've removed myself from helping her in the bathroom as much as possible. When DH is home he helps her when she needs it and we make her do as much as possible by herself. She can do it by herself, except for turning on the water to wash her hands and she sometimes needs help with a snap or zipper.
She won't tell her teacher or anyone else who watches her when she needs to go and she won't even tell them if she wets her pants. Today I was strapping her in her carseat after school and noticed her pants were wet. I asked her when she wet her pants and she said in table toys (one area of the classroom where she spends part of the day). I don't know when that was, but it means that she did it in class and her teachers didn't know about it.
This isn't a huge deal now, except we can't leave her with anyone for long, but it will be in June when I have a baby and she has to stay with someone else and when she goes to kindergarten next year. I know when they're this young they can mature a lot in 8 months, but I haven't seen a huge amount of progress in that area in the last 8 months. She can absolutely do it herself and she knows when she has to go. She just won't do it for someone else. What can we do?
