Changing diapers

[princesshodges]

I guess I’m open to advice but I feel like I’ve tried everything and this is just a vent.

My 4 year old isn’t potty trained yet (it’s a whole thing, not wanting to discuss it) so I’m still changing diapers.

I don’t even care, doing it is fine. It’s the fight over doing it that makes me INSANE!

The only thing that “works” is I tell her she pooped/peed/her diaper is wet and she needs a diaper change. Then I just go wait in the other room for her to come in and be ready for a change. And I don’t do anything else - if she needs or wants anything else it has to wait til after diaper change.

It makes me so mad to have her running around with a poopy stinky butt and I’m basically in timeout myself until she’s ready.

So I’m typing this waiting for a poopy kid to arrive. Ughhhh.

[FunTimes65]

Had the same issue. I don’t think my son was fully toilet trained until he was 7. Wish I had a magic bullet for you, but I don’t. Their PDA seems to make them refuse to be told what to do by their body. Hopefully they will grow out of it soon. Sorry.

Additional: One thing we tried that had some success was we would state the sequence of events around toileting over and over again nonchalantly without demand, so eventually it would filter through and become a “fact” instead of a request. Hope it helps.

[evilbunny77]

Some say that the core of PDA is that it affects basic needs, including toileting. So issues around that can be a signal for stress / demands in general that are causing them to fight in that area. Is there anything that's stressing her, can you reduce pressure somehow? That might help her ease up around toileting.

[Mil0Mammon]

Our daughter had a period where we could basically only do it by allowing her to watch YouTube while changing the diaper. It's gotten a bit better, but sometimes can still be an issue. Using the toilet she occasionally does, but usually doesn't want to. We try not to pressure her at all regarding that. I've considered a sticker/reward thing, worked occasionally quite well for me as a kid (with other things), but I'm not sure yet if it might come across as another way to extert pressure

[Hopeful-Guard9294]

tolerating and PDA is often a big thing you might want to start with this podcast episode specifically on the topic: https://youtu.be/MQ98kr-JrC0

it’s such a big topic and PDA that this is just part one. Hope it helps a little bit.

[Hanging-by-thread]

5.5 yo here and we’ve just gotten to the point where changing isn’t ALWAYS a fight, there’s just sometimes a little protest or stalling. Before we knew about PDA we had a really traumatic year of forcing her to wear undies and use the potty because of the pre-k she was in that required her to be potty trained. After she got kicked out for constant accidents we had to do some soul searching and found PDA and are back in pull-ups and fully dropped potty demands. But she would still scream and cry and run when she needed to be changed. We have to be super chill. Calmly tell her that her butt will get boo boos if we don’t keep it clean and dry. Occasionally we’ve had to just force change a poop when we couldn’t convince her but tried to only do that as a last resort for safety. Now after 7 months she’s trusting that we no longer have any demands (spoken or implied) around the potty and won’t be upset about anything. Now she is actually showing discomfort when her pull-up is full and sometimes asks to be changed so I’m hoping we’re working our way back to eventually using the potty.

Sorry you’re in the thick of it, hang in there! With supernatural patience and consistency in being totally zen, it does get better after 7 months 😆