3 Year Old Potty Training Naked & Wont Wear Underwear

I don't have any advice on the underwear issue, but we tell my daughter (2) that her bladder is too small to hold her "potty" all night long and that when she grows bigger so will her bladder and then she can wear panties to bed also. "This way you can sleep comfortably all night long!" She seems to have accepted this difference between daytime panty-wearing and nighttime pull up-wearing. But we remind her that she can treat her pull ups like panties if she wants to try it.

Our little man did not like tighty whiteys either. He would just go in the underwear, but did excellent when he was naked. I think that the underwear might feel too much like a diaper. We just started putting him in his pants without underwear, and that was still successful. Since we couldn't just keep him going commando once preschool started, we put him in little boxers, and it worked great! It was hard to find the boxers his size, but I finally found My First Boxers on Amazon, and they are perfect, woohoo! :) As for diapers at night, I would just say that he needs them because he is sleeping, and cannot tell when he needs to pee just yet. Maybe that will work, hehe. :) Start telling him that if he feels it when he is sleeping to try and get up and go to the potty. We are still working on nighttime potty training, so I don't have an answer as to what works for us. We'll see! It looks like I need to read some of your other responses for help with that too, haha! Good luck!

I don't know about the naked thing -- I never gave my son the option to train naked (and he was in a cast--broken leg-- toward the end of potty training). But, I do know what we did for the night: the first few times we got the nighttime pull-ups with stars and moons on the package and told him they were special ones for nighttime only. I "showed" him on the package where it said that. And then we ran out of daytime ones and told him we were done with diapers in the day and only had nighttime ones and that it said on the package you couldn't use them in the daytime.
I do know that potty training never really clicked for my son until he figured out that he was in charge of his body. That resulted in some rebellious backsliding at first, but then it all snapped back in place and we've had no problems since.

As far as a diaper at night...I tell my kids that we use diapers ONLY for sleeping. It's the same way with a pacifier at our house...only for night-night. I like the idea of having HIM pick out some underwear. He might be motivated to keep them dry if he chose them. Best of luck.

Each child is different, but eventually we are all trained! My only suggestion about the underwear is to take him to the store and let him pick them out - maybe he'll get more excited about it if they are his "favorites". You could also try another type of incitive (happy dance, song, m&m when he does pull his underwear down to go).

At night, we put my 3 yr old in pull ups (not diapers). We explain they are only for night time - and someday she'll wear her panties to bed too. The Dr. just told be at her 3 year check up that we shouldn't rush night time training. She said have them go last thing before bed and first thing in the am. Limit fluids close to bedtimej. Then once they wake at least 1/2 time dry, then try no pull ups. No rush she said.

Good luck!

>night time

no diapers.

Wake him up when you go to bed, and take him in to go potty. and then carry him back to bed. This will help him learn that he needs to get up in the middle of the night if he needs to pee.

If he does have a bedtime accident, he'll come wake you up. If he does it at a regular time, (sorry) set your alarm to 30 minutes earlier and take him to the potty.

you'll only have to do this for a couple weeks. They he'll start getting too tired to wake up and his body will learn to just hold it.

using night time diapers lets his body just relax and not train. You'll have more accidents day and night if you let him wear diapers sometimes.

Wow, you could have been describing my son 6 months ago! Actually, I posted the same question back then, I think.

What worked for us was to see this potty-training thing in steps. So great, he's mastered the naked step. Now it's time to do the underwear step, and after that, the pants step.

First, I made a chart on a big piece of paper and taped it to the side of our kitchen island. It's near the downstairs bathroom, so it made sense. HEre's the thing with the chart, though. After a few rows of orange boxes that my son would be filling in with stickers every time he used the potty, I drew a simple picture of his reward. In this case, it was new underwear. I already had a package that I'd bought really cheap, but he thought they were awesome and we talked them up. With my first son, he got to pick his own out at the store.

After the little drawing of underwear, there were more rows of boxes (this time brown) to fill in with stickers, and at the end was a picture of a tent and some trees and the moon. His reward (which was generously suggested and donated by Dad) was a camping trip. He did that with our first son and wow, they really responded! Of course, now it's cold, so that might not work, but I know that my boys would be just as excited to set up a tent and camp in the family room with mom and dad.

And after the underwear boxes were filled up, I told my son that the rules were different for filling up the brown boxes. He had to be wearing his underwear all day to get a sticker. If he was naked, he wouldn't get stickers. We never had to withhold stickers for being naked, because he SO wanted to go camping!

My doctor also suggested that we try not changing his wet underwear. If he pees in it instead of in the potty, that's his problem. It is cold and wet and uncomfortable, and eventually he'd realize that dry is better. He said to block him into the kitchen or somewhere with hard floors (easy clean-up) for a whole day (which requires a big commitment on mom's part) with the potty seat in there, and he'd get it. We never had to do that, and never really could since big brother just started school. But it's an idea! Maybe you could do it on a Saturday?

Good luck, it's hard to know what to do in these situations.

BTW, my now 3 1/2 year old has a few accidents still for reasons we can't really figure out. They all happen in clusters, so he'll go for 3 weeks with no accidents and then one day he'll pee his pants 4 times. I don't get it, but still, he only wears diapers at night, and I can take him places in underwear. Yay!

Make a big deal since he is not a 'baby' anymore, because only 'babies' wear diapers, let him pick out his favorite cartoon character "Big Boy" underwear from the store. Then just use "special" night-time pull-ups at night. Thats what I've done with my kids and it works great.