Question
HI there,
My 4.5 year old has been fully potty-trained from around 2+ with occasional pee leaks. During christmas dinner at a friend's house, he had a full-on poo accident in his pants - he was having too much fun. He was very, very distressed. Nevertheless, we couldn't make him clean it up the mess as we were not home and not prepared! Daddy cleaned it all up for him. I was very, very surprised as I hadn't seen a poo accident from him in about 2 years. Yes he did know where the toilet was and had gone there by himself at least 2x, before the poo accident. He even fully nighttime-trained himself 6 months ago!
In the daytime however, he has recently been doing a full pee which soaks his pants and its happening more often. Usually he changes out of the pee clothes and puts the dirty clothes in the laundry sink and sometimes without prompting. But after the epic christmas dinner episode, we gave him a warning that its not to happen again. Today, two days after, he kind of makes it to the toilet, but the poo still dirties his underwear (a little) and I'm not sure how a tiny bit also ended up on the floor. He made it just a touch late. I make him clean it up, and (very regretfullly) I yell at him because I didn't know what else to do :)
Now I have some choices to make as per our warning of it happening again - in the light that this wasn't really a big accident, but accidents have increased in frequency lately:
1) Make him stay in the bathroom/bedroom till he's going to pee and poo reliably. Too harsh?
2) Just make him clean it up like I did today, and no other consequence.
3) Go without pants if it happens again, and so he's not allowed to play outside his room/bathroom/outdoors and send him to bed early.
What are your thoughts? Or any other options are more than welcome!
