Daipher

I found a video from a child psychologist talking about prolonged potty training resistance.
She said something that made me stop and think.
“When toddlers resist training for years, parents assume it’s behavioral. But it’s almost never behavioral. It’s sensory.”
She explained that most kids who can’t train after years of trying aren’t refusing to learn.
They literally can’t feel the signals.
When you wear diapers for years, your brain learns to tune out the sensation of peeing.
It becomes background noise.
Something your brain stops paying attention to.
So when you ask a 4-year-old to “tell me when you need to go,” they genuinely don’t know.
Because they’ve spent four years in something that instantly absorbs everything.
They’ve never felt wet. Never felt uncomfortable.
Their brain learned to ignore that sensation completely.
This is why switching to pull-ups doesn’t help.
Pull-ups absorb just as fast. They feel the same to the brain.
So the signal stays blocked.
And this is why older toddlers resist so hard.
They’re being asked to notice something they’ve been trained to ignore.
Think of it like this.
We learn through cause and effect.
Touch hot stove -> Ouch, don’t do again
Same thing applies here.
Their brain has no idea they have peed, they can’t feel it
For example the child might say “I don’t need to go” and then have an accident five minutes later.
The child wasn’t lying. They genuinely didn’t feel it.
How are so many able to train their child earlier? Even 1 and a half years old?
Because they have only been in diapers for 1 year. And training was already being developed early on. Taking them to the toilet routinely.
His brain hadn’t tuned it out yet.
But the older child? Four years of diapers. Four years of his growing brain learning to ignore that signal.
No wonder nothing is working.
You are not just asking them to learn something new.
You are asking them to unlearn four years of ignoring their body because you were not consistent to train them..
Start early and make sure both parents are on board! Dont ignore your responsibilities and say its too hard. Its not. Its much harder dealing with 4 to 5 years of diapers than 1.5 to 2yrs of potty training.
Just leaving children to use the bathroom on themselves for half a decade is not potty training its negligence and at best ignorance.
But its not to late, don’t beat yourself up, you didn’t know better and major corporations have spent millions and millions of dollars in marketing and advertising to make us think we had to keep buying their diapers for years and years… not to mention all the harmful dyes and chemicals in diapers that are allowing to soak on their skin and sensitive areas for daily for years, but thats another story..
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