4 year old still peeing in his pants

[JamJam24]

How do I break my 4 year old from peeing in his pants and peeing in his bed at night? He is potty trained and knows to go to the toilet when he has to use the bathroom and goes sometimes. He will go a week or so without peeing on his self then do a complete 360 and pee on his self every night and a few times during the day! I have tried several different things such as taking away favorite toys or awarding him if he does good> But nothing seems to work!! Please if any solutions HELP!!!!

[Umnoor83]

as if you are exactly describing my daughter.. we really want to understand her personality so we can figure out how to help her and deal with her!!
she also ***** her thumb and its the same suffering dealing with that, too.
praising did not work, ignoring did not work, and punishment did not work.... what would we do next??!!
When I first started potty training her, I downloaded an app that reminds her to go potty and give her a sticker each time she goes.. and after she collects a number of stickers she gets a game.. I'm thinking of downloading it again, and will go from there.

[bitz857]

Like many others have said, I cant' believe how many people are going through this.  It really does give me a small sense of relief because sometimes you start to lose hope or you lose faith in your ability to parent.  It's extra hard in a split family situation, mom has 4 yr boy 30-50% of the time (some time at granny's) and he's with myself and dad the other 50% of the time with alternating weekends.  He was using the potty with no problems at 3 and up until recently after turning 4 he's having accidents during the day sometimes and now it's daily dribbles.  Dad and I have tried most of the approaches suggested but the mom doesn't do the same things if anything, she actually puts him in pull-ups at night.  Recently the son has been having strong anxiety about always checking for dribbles and worrying about getting in trouble at dads.  Trouble as in he doesn't get to wear his super hero costume to play in or wear it to bed.  He's still there enjoying other things and he never expresses fear or long term unhappiness while with us.  Yet while with mom he has lots of anxiety attacks and is always checking and worrying about the dribbles and now he's expressing he doesn't want to go to dads because he gets in trouble there.  So the mom has actually asked...well told us that we need to tell him that accidents are OK so that he will stop worrying about it.  We just don't feel that this is the best solution.  And isn't the 4yr old telling her what to do now?  I agree with ignoreing it to an extent but in our scenario the child is constantly wanting to talk about it and make sure dad is happy and of course that makes dad feel like he's being too hard on him for calmly telling him that these types of accidents aren't OK, he'a big boy now and wants to be recognized as that so we remind him part of being a big boy is using the toilet.  They've been split since the son was born and dad has always given his son 100% of his attention, play together, watch cartoons together, colour, play on the leap pad...its very frustrating to me because when we do have him at our place I'm the only adult doing the adult things around the house, the child actually refuses to play by himself, and usually wins that battle as well.  I sometimes wonder if this has anything to do with it??  I'm finding now though, after reading so many posts it seems to be just a thing that happens to most kids.  Now we just need to try the next thing, see if it works and if it doesn't you move onto another thing to try.  One question though, how do you ignore something like that without making the child feel or see that, "oh well it's OK, nothing happens, I just change my clothes"  won't that make the bad bevahviour continue??

[coonic]

Thank you so much for the advice...so far this seems the most beneficial. I started potty training my lil girl right after she turned 2. Se is almost 3 now and though I feel like she understands about going to the potty, she will wet her underwear just enough to have to change them. And I, like every other parent, has tried all the other "tricks" and nothing has worked. I definitely think I started trying to train her too early. How long did you set the timer for?

[specialmom]

Night time wetting is actually pretty common for children until age 8 or 9!  Some kids simply do not get the signal to go strong enough to wake them them out of a deep sleep.  They shouldn't be shamed of punished for this.  

I do think the method of waking older kids to go at say around 1 am is a good idea (kids that are 8,9, or older) so that their internal clock may begin to wake them and they will perhaps catch the pee and hold it until morning.  Limiting drinks is also a timeless strategy.  Keep them well hydrated all day and they do not need to drink as much at night.  

It's hard.  No kid really Wants to pee their bed.  Handling it with empathy and caring really helps.  good luck

[waterbaby44]

i am sorry, but i do not agree with your methods!

[bjohnson68]

i say your post before we went to the canaries for a holiday regarding the wearing of speedos. thought it was a load of rubbish. but my 8 year old son had started having a few wetting the bed and homself accidents he would com in from play hours after wetting and get changed. we did not want this on the holiday and worst of  all not on the flight 5 hours!!. so i gave him a new pair of speedos for the holiday and he put them on to travel in. i told him he could go to the pool when we got there without waiting to unpack. instant result. he arrived at the hotel dry and eh went off to the pool. i said to the wife so far so good. we joined him in the pool an hour later and we spent a couple of hours there. we returned to the room and he was dry from the pool so i told him he could leave the speedos on under his jeans to to to tea. later we returned to our room and i had discussed bedwetting with the wife. we had agreed to try letting him sleep in the speedos. the first night he was dry. so we did the same the following day making sure he showered at the pool before returning to the room each night. we had 14 days of no accidents and NO bedwetting. once we returned he wore briefs for a day and came home he had peed in them whilst playing and let them dry and he wet the ed most nights that week. so it must be in the mind but we let him go back to the speedos and he has been dry since day and night it has been 2 months since our holiday. so we will be staying with the speedos for now he is happy and we are too. he even said it is better at school swim time he does not cange after swim just dried his speedos with his towel and gets dressed. he says some of his friends now do the same and they used to wet the bed too.