exasperated!

[michiganmom]

Help! I potty trained my daughter at 2 1/2 years old, and she just turned 4. She took to the potty just fine, but for the past year and a half, she will have dry pants for weeks even months on end and then for 2-3 days do nothing but wet her pants. We've tried positive and negative reinforcement, making her clean it up, no attention to it at all, everything. The doctor said sometimes this happens, but if we think something's physically wrong it will require invasive testing to find out. I don't want to put her through that unnecessarily. Although delayed gratification is not her strong suit, she is able to work toward reward goals at least sometimes. Is this normal? Any thoughts as to what we could try? I am worried because she is scheduled to start preschool in september.

[eniese]

My son occasionally goes through the same thing. Usually he is just distracted by playing and doesn't pay attention to what he needs. It's pretty standard for kids to have accidents here and there until 5 or 6, so I probably wouldn't put her through any testing yet, especially since it's not all the time. THere will be other kids in her preschool who have accidents, and the teachers will know how to handle it just fine. You may also find that when she's around other potty trained kids more that she has more incentive to pay attention and stop having accidents.