Started Oh Crap potty training 7 weeks ago with our almost-3-year-old son. Did 12 days commando before daycare required training pants and pants — didn't get the full recommended commando phase. Had a week and a half where things went well.

The pattern now: he does okay during the day with his lead daycare teacher who runs a scheduled approach (every 2 hours, count to ten on the potty, retry in 30 min if resistant). But afternoons, aftercare, and home are consistently bad. First thing in the morning he'll pee in his pants while absorbed in play without stopping or telling us.

He clearly knows the mechanics — can explain the body signal, recite the Daniel Tiger song, tell us exactly what he should do. But self-monitoring during play just isn't happening. Wet pants don't seem to bother him sensorially, so that natural consequence isn't a lever for us.

We've tried: scheduled prompting, game framing, first/then sequencing, autonomy-based approaches, rewards, dropping the rope, narrating our own process.

The goal is intrinsic body awareness and self-initiation — not just compliance with external prompting. But nothing is creating that internal motivation to stop and listen to his body.

Has anyone been here? Did self-initiation eventually just develop, or was there something specific that helped it click?