Continually Peeing His Pants-3.5 Yrs!

Each child is different and I hear (from the experts) that 4 is when it's time to take a child to his pediatrician to see if there's a problem causing him to still wet the bed (though i know there will be moms saying I'm wrong, that it's normal.) If he hits 4 and the doctor says he's fine then he may still be exerting a little control over his body.

You CAN go to underwear with plastic pants over them and make up the bed with waterproof pads to make changing it easier. Sometimes waking up wet acts as an incentive to try and stay dry throughout the night. Also try limiting his fluids after 6pm, having him go pee before and after his bath and right before bed.

My daughter was not ready till a week after her 4th birthday. She physically just was not ready to hold it and able to tell when to go till a week after her fourth birthday. We started when she was 3 but only mornings she was awake enough did using the potty happened (even then it was off and on), napped in afternoon with a pull up, and night time pull up. My daughter now at age 5 still wears a pull up to bed because it is off and on wet nights. THAT IS NORMAL!!! I just had an yearly check up for my daughter and the doc said that night time wetting can last till 7 or 8, while day time dryiness happens all the time around 4 and 5.

Gently remind him, if you start pushing he will regress backwards and fight you all the way.

My younger son peed his pants and peed his bed off and on till he was about 5. Boys can have a one track mind and get so wrapped up in playing they just dont want to stop to go to the toilet for some reason. Mine stopped wearing diapers at night at age 2, I had a plastic cover on his mattress. He didnt like waking up in a wet bed. He quit wetting the bed well before stopping the occasional peeing of the pants. I remember him finally getting a grip on it when some other kids made fun of the dark spot on his jeans one day when they were playing ball out in the yard. Peer pressure has it's perks ;)

He's only 3.
Some are potty trained at 2, my youngest son. Some still wet their pants at 12, my oldest son.
Be patient.
Put him on the potty when it has been 2 hours, or so.
Set a timer.
Say it's time to sit on the potty, dont; ask "Do you have to go?" because that elicits the response, "No."
Be pleasanty surprised if he is nighttime trained before 6.

Good luck, guaranteed in 16 years when he walks across that stage he'll be potty trained.

Kids still in the toddler stage are still half babies. Most of them need constant reminding, and often need a parent to take them to the toilet, not just ask if they need to go. If they are preoccupied with anything interesting, they will insist they don't, even if they've been doing the potty boogie for 20 minutes. Just because your son 'can' do it doesn't mean it will occur to him to take the time. (He's doing pretty well if he can go 3 hours at a time.)

My daughter used the kitchen timer for quite a while with her son, and he gradually learned that when the timer went off, it was his job to run into the bathroom and give it a try. But we had to make sure he did it until he was nearing 4.5. He was just too busy being a playful child.

Night training is a myth – most kids can't learn to deliberately wake themselves up when their bladder gets full. That will happen when the sphincter gets strong enough, when the body slows its nighttime urine production, and when some periods of sleep become light enough that the child can be awakened by bladder pressure.

These indicators of physical maturation come at different times for different children. Often kids do stop wetting at night during their toddler years, but many do not. This in inconvenient, but normal. The occasional child can't stay dry at night until they are nearly in their teens, and the tendency often runs in families.

So keep him in diapers/pullups at night until he's had at least 2 dry weeks. Even then, the occasional accident can happen, so absorbent pads on the bed can be helpful.

Obviously he can not do it every time. This is not unusual for boys.

You will need to just keep reminding him. It takes his body being mature enough and his brain being mature enough. Just remember this is still "normal" for this age.

With many boys it is a hormonal thing. When they enter puberty they can regulate their urine. This is especially true at night. You could check out whether he has a bladder infection just to rule it out.
Otherwise you must realize that boys take a longer time to control their sphincter muscles when urination is concerned.

Ugh! I am having the SAME exact issue with my daughter.I was on the verge of asking your exact question. She goes #2 just fine, but only makes it to the potty every so often to pee and doesn't care if she's wet. I look forward to more responses!

I think it sounds like he is distracted. If it is on the couch, what was he doing, watching tv? TV kind of zones kids out, and he is probably unaware until it is too late. You might want to try taking him more often than 3 hours, if he will go. My son will never go when we ask him (even if he needs to, he likes to wait until the last minute always), so we used to force him to go before certain events, "we can't go do this fun thing until you go on the toilet." If he does go when you ask him, just ask him more often, or not long after he drinks a lot.

Jacqui,
My son did the same thing. He was potty trained for a short time, but continued to wet during the night and then started wetting during the day all the time. We tried EVERYTHING from praise to bribes to punishments. I'm sad to say that it went on for years as we had no idea what to do. Even our pediatrician did not help. He prescribed Oxytocin and there were short term improvements but they never lasted. I felt like a slave to the washing machine. It cause much stress within the home. We even had a VCUG done to make sure his bladder was formed correctly. At age 6 we Finally went to a pediatric urologist. It was only an insurance co-pay, and I wish we would have done it sooner. It was so helpful to hear that so many children have this particular problem that they have several offices dedicated to it.

First, realize that night time and day time wetting are completed unrelated. Many children, particularly boys, wet the bed until they are quite old. My brother did until he was 14. It is something they must outgrow. Many children are such heavy sleepers that they cannot wake up to use the bathroom; they sleep right through it. Continue to use the pullups and get a waterproof pad for the bed. My son is 8 and wets at night still. It has been a great relief to stop worrying about the night time wetting and just buy the pullups. We only have to wash bedding maybe once a week. We also found the Night Pants brand at Kroger/Smiths work very well and are about $7 a package of 15. They come in a package that looks like blue denim.

Next, here is what the pediatric urologist told me: Children are often so BUSY and distracted that they hold their urine when they need to go. They do not want to leave their activity. They hold it and hold it. Finally when their bladder can no longer hold it, they have an accident. If they do this often, the muscles of the bladder become thicker and stronger. This is not good. As the muscles become stronger, they cause accidents because they are too strong. The Oxytocin he was on also is a drug that is made to solve "urgency"; lets say that you ALWAYS feel like you need to go to the bathroom, well then this medication makes it so you do not feel that way. So it was not a good medication for this situation because my son no longer FELT like he needed to use the bathroom but then these ultra strong bladder muscles are pushing the urine out at every turn. He was wetting 6 or more times a day.

Please go see a pediatric urologist. Pediatricians just may not be up to date on this issue. The first thing the urologist told us to do is to make a "voiding schedule". We taped it up in the bathroom. You must make your child use the bathroom every 2 hours. He will then be made to take time out of his busy play schedule to use the potty. You will avoid accidents. The bladder muscles will start to go back to normal. We saw results within a few weeks but you should keep this up for about a year. When we got lazy with the schedule, we would start having accidents again within a few weeks. Children that age need immediate rewards for doing well. The doctor suggested that every day that our child used the bathroom every 2 hours, they got a small prize (candy, etc.) even if they had an accident that day. They stated not to punish (and I am sorry to say that we had punished at times, because it seemed like he was just being lazy).

The schedule helped immensely. We still had occasional accidents until age 7. So strange, but the very day we moved to a new town, they stopped completely. I personally think that stress contributed largely to this problem. We had a very stressful 2 years trying to sell our home, with Dad working in a different town, and I was always trying to clean the house for showings and I also had insomnia that 2 years and was not a happy person. My insomnia and his wetting seriously immediately stopped once we moved. I would suggest evaluating whether there is stress in the home and seeing if there is anything that can be done to change that.

Good luck! It was a long road for us, but it could have been shorter had I known these things earlier. feel free to message me if you need more info.

Edited to Add: the doctor also stated that 80% of the time, once the daytime wetting is solved, the night time wetting wil go away on its own.

I would urge you to have him evaluated by a urologist. They can do bladder ultrasounds and other non-invasive tests to see if he is fully voiding when he goes, if there are retention issues, or if there is anything physiological going on.

I would rule this out first, so that you don't needlessly reprimand him over something that may not be in his control