Having Accidents

wareagle2334

Hello… I am the proud parent of an amazing 5 year old little girl. With another little girl due in a couple months.

My daughter started school this year and today she had an accident where she peed on herself in music class, and didn’t tell the teacher until they returned to the room. We send spare clothes in case she happens to do this or get dirty and needs to change. The teacher has this policy which is great so she knows they have the spares.

After the teacher helped her get changed she had another accident. This isn’t the first time that it’s happened. Last Sunday I took her to the park and she kept acting like she needed to go to the bathroom. I asked her several times, and she said no that her butt was itchy. She then looked really upset and I thought she was about to have an accident. This is when she was trying to scratch like crazy. So I told her to let me check her and she had pooped a little, and that’s why she was itching.

This Tuesday she was at her first dance class. Her mom and I were watching her and I saw her messing with herself and I told my wife to grab her and take her to the bathroom. She had already pooped on herself some.

All this being said…. She’s 5… she’s only had this happen a few times at home and it’s usually when she’s doing something that she doesn’t want to stop. Sometimes maybe she’s so engrossed in what she’s doing she ignores the fact she needs to go. I know when I was a child this happened with me occasionally and my cousins did it a lot. They just didn’t want to take the time to stop and go because they were playing.

We’ve told her she has to listen to her body… and my funny little girl tells me sometimes her body doesn’t know and doesn’t tell her!

I am here because I’d like some expertise from fellow parents on how to handle this. I don’t want her to be embarrassed or ashamed or scared of getting in trouble. I want her to know it’s ok it happened, but she has to work to stop what she’s doing and potty. It’s become more and more frequent because it even happened last night before bed, and I happened to smell her right before bed and I got the aroma of pee. It makes me feel like a bad parent because I don’t know how to help her. I don’t gripe at her or get on to her. I try to teach and reason with her, but my first thoughts are to give her an ultimatum in a sense. Like if you don’t stop and go to the potty you lose screen time or something like that.

Again- I haven’t done that and don’t really want to. I like to avoid the step of punishment because I didn’t have that growing up. I’m always trying to think of ways to help her understand and think logically. As logically and critically as a five year old can lol!

Any advice from parents who have dealt with this is welcome and wanted! Thank you in advance.