Potty Training All Over Again

Potty training has gone out the window. I knew this move was going to be difficult. I knew that it was going to knock my kids off their schedule. I knew, and yet I a dumbfounded and at a loss.

My four-year-old Jane, who has been potty trained mostly for almost a year, is now pooping and peeing her pants constantly. Why? I have asked her why and she gives me a lot of mumbles. I think the murmur is due to not wanting to get in trouble. She won’t be in trouble. I want to know why.

I have figured out that it is not isolated to one thing. It is many things. The first one is the new bathroom. Not being familiar with her settings has caused her to be afraid of the new bathroom. Second, the toilet. It is higher than the other one, so her step stool potty doesn’t fit, and I can’t find the tool to adjust it. Third, just the whole adjustment to the new house. These are only a few reasons I have come up with; I am sure there are more.

It is very frustrating. We were at the park. It is the first time we have gone to a park since we moved to Corning. We were with some friends, and I could see a dark spot-on Jane’s pants. I asked her if she pee’d her pants. I asked her in private, and I asked, away from others, not wanting to embarrass her. She told me no. I know that she lied because she thought she would be in trouble. I said it looked like she did and wanted to feel but thought that might embarrass her. I let it go for a minute

She moved to another piece of the park equipment and had a straining look, and I knew she was pooping. She strained and struggled, and I just watched in disbelief. I finally came out of it and loudly asked if she just pooped, and she shook her head no violently. I knew better. I told my grown son that we were going home, and he got Jimmy, who started screaming because he didn’t want to go home, obviously. I took Jane quietly by the hand and told her we had to leave, and she proceeded to throw a fit. She was screaming and yelling that she didn’t want to go home. I tried to quietly tell her that because she pooped her pants, we needed to go home and clean her up. She couldn’t play on the playground because she pooped, and it was unclean and unfair to the other children. It took my son and me to get her in the car and her seat. She screamed the whole way home.

It was a nasty disaster. I put a pullup on her, and we talked about going potty on the toilet. This was just the start. It has been a week, and there is not a day that goes by that she doesn’t poop her pants or her pullup. I am lovingly back to potty training her.

I ordered a new step stool potty chair to restart the potty training. We put new pictures in the bathroom together to make the bathroom homier and more familiar to her. It is so hard for me not to react. I also don’t want her to believe that it is alright. I am concerned that she is going to have this problem when she goes back to school

Potty training is not the only thing that is a regression. It has been a gradual regression in all areas as we are waiting to get Regional Center here in our new location. We have gone a whole month with no ABA therapies or school, so she has lost a lot of her structure. I know that all this is related to her lost potty training.

I knew there would be adjustments, and I tried to do everything I could to keep things in place, so there was as little disruption as possible in their lives, but I can’t control everything, and we are waiting for the rest to catch up.