When Your Toddler Has Decided They Are Not Going to Do It
You know your child is ready. They can stay dry. They understand what the potty is for. They have watched you use the toilet. You have done everything right. And they are absolutely, categorically, with great enthusiasm, refusing to use the potty.
Welcome to potty training a stubborn toddler. It is one of the most frustrating parenting experiences precisely because there is so little you can actually do to make a child use the toilet if they have decided they are not going to. You cannot force the bladder to cooperate. You cannot reason with a two-year-old in the grip of a power struggle.
But there are strategies that work. Not by overpowering your child's will — but by working with their psychology rather than against it. Here is what I have learned.
Stubborn toddlers need to feel in control of the process — the strategies that work give them that.
First: Is It Stubbornness or Not Yet Readiness?
Before anything else, be honest with yourself about whether what you are seeing is genuine stubbornness or whether your child is simply not developmentally ready yet.
True stubbornness in potty training looks like this: your child clearly has bladder and bowel control (they can hold it, they have dry periods, they know when they are going), they understand what the potty is for, and they are choosing not to use it.
Readiness issues look like this: your child has accidents without warning, cannot seem to hold urine for more than 20–30 minutes, does not notice or does not care when they are wet.
The strategies below are for genuine stubbornness — a child who is physiologically ready but resistant. If your child is not yet physiologically ready, the most effective strategy is simply to wait a few more weeks and try again.
Strategy 1: Remove the Power Struggle Entirely
The single most effective thing you can do with a genuinely stubborn toddler is to stop the power struggle. Not by giving up on training — but by removing yourself from the equation as much as possible.
Power struggles over the potty happen because the toilet is one of the few arenas where a toddler has genuine, inviolable control. You cannot make them go. They know this. And if they have sensed that you are anxious, frustrated, or invested in whether they use the potty, that power becomes very attractive.
What to do: Become as neutral and uninterested in the outcome as you can manage. Set the potty in the bathroom. Mention it once, matter-of-factly. Then drop it completely. "The potty is there if you need it." No prompting, no reminders, no reactions when they do not use it. You are removing the game.
This feels counterintuitive — surely less prompting means more accidents? In the short term, perhaps. But for a child who is using refusal as a control mechanism, withdrawing your interest in the outcome removes the pay-off for refusing.
Strategy 2: Give Them Ownership of the Process
Stubborn toddlers are almost always strong-willed children who need to feel in control of their environment. The solution is not to take control away from them — it is to give them control of the things you can genuinely let them control.
Let them:
- Choose their own training pants (take them to the shop and let them pick)
- Choose which potty to use and where it goes in the bathroom
- Choose the stickers for their reward chart
- Choose what the milestone reward will be
- Choose whether to use the potty or the toilet (give a genuine choice)
- Choose which book to read while sitting on the potty
The more a stubborn child feels that the potty training process belongs to them rather than being imposed on them, the less they need to resist it.
Strategy 3: Use Indirect Motivation
Direct pressure backfires with stubborn children. Indirect motivation often works where direct asking does not.
The doll technique: Use a potty training doll or stuffed animal. Sit the doll on the potty, celebrate the doll's success enthusiastically. Many resistant children are more willing to use the potty when they are "teaching" their toy than when they are being asked to do it themselves.
The older child technique: "Did you know your cousin uses the toilet now? Isn't that amazing?" Casual mentions of slightly older children doing something tends to trigger the developmental drive to match them — without creating the pressure of a direct request.
The book technique: Read potty training books together without any connection to real training. Let the books do the motivational work without any pressure from you.
The timer technique: "The timer is going to go off in 5 minutes and then it's potty time." Giving advance notice rather than a sudden request reduces resistance. The timer becomes the authority — not you.
When stubborn toddlers decide they want to do something, they commit completely — your job is to make it their idea.
Strategy 4: Make the Reward Irresistible
Sometimes the issue is not stubbornness but an insufficiently motivating reward. The sticker chart that worked for your first child may do nothing for your second. Different children are motivated by different things.
Ask your child what they would really, genuinely love to work towards. Let them name it. A specific toy they have been asking for, a special outing, a particular activity. Make a picture of it and attach it to the reward chart as the goal.
For some children, the reward needs to be more immediate — a sticker that goes on the chart is too abstract. Try a sticker that goes on their hand, a stamp on their wrist, or a small tangible reward (a raisin, a puzzle piece, a marble in a jar) that they can hold right now.
Important: Never remove rewards as punishment. Never express disappointment when the reward is not earned. The reward system only works as a positive motivator — the moment it becomes a source of shame or failure it stops working entirely.
Strategy 5: The Cold Turkey Break
If you have been trying for more than 3–4 weeks and making no progress — or if every interaction around the potty has become a conflict — the most effective thing is often to stop completely.
Return to nappies without comment or explanation. Do not say "we are stopping because you are not ready" or anything that frames it as failure. Just stop, and do not mention the potty at all for 2–4 weeks.
The break resets the emotional dynamic around toileting. When you restart, you do so from a place where the potty is not associated with conflict, pressure, or failure. Many parents find that after a break, a previously resistant child starts showing interest in the potty themselves — because the pressure is gone.
Strategy 6: For the Child Who Holds On
Some stubborn children express their resistance not by refusing to sit on the potty but by refusing to actually release. They will sit there for 10 minutes and produce nothing — then have an accident 5 minutes later.
This is often related to anxiety about letting go rather than pure stubbornness, and it needs a slightly different approach:
- Ensure there is no constipation — a child who has had a painful bowel movement will sometimes hold subsequent ones to avoid the pain. Increase fibre and fluid first.
- Make sitting pressure-free — read a book, sing a song, do not sit watching them
- Try running warm water — the sound of water often relaxes the bladder sphincter
- Try a slightly different position — feet flat on a step stool, leaning slightly forward
- Celebrate trying — for a child who is anxious, sitting on the potty is itself an achievement worth rewarding, separate from whether anything happens
What Not to Do
With stubborn children, some common potty training approaches actively backfire:
- Do not show frustration — your frustration is the most powerful fuel for a child who is engaged in a power struggle. A calm, uninterested response is far more effective than an emotional one.
- Do not shame or compare — "Your friend Mia uses the potty" as a shaming statement makes things worse. As an incidental, matter-of-fact observation, it can motivate; as a pointed comparison, it creates shame and digs resistance in deeper.
- Do not use threats — "If you don't use the potty you can't watch TV" creates a negative association with the whole process and escalates conflict.
- Do not keep asking — asking 15 times is not more effective than asking once. It is more annoying and teaches the child to tune you out.
A Word on Timing
Stubbornness in potty training is most common in two age windows: around 2 to 2.5 years, when toddlers are in the height of their autonomy phase and "no" is a complete sentence; and again around 3.5 to 4 years, when children who were previously trained sometimes regress as they test boundaries in new ways.
If your child is 2 to 2.5 and in a strong "no" phase about everything, the most effective strategy is often to wait a few months. The developmental phase passes. The physiological readiness does not go away. A child who was immovably resistant at 26 months is often completely cooperative at 30 months with no change in your approach at all.
Keeping the relationship positive matters more than keeping to a training timeline.
Quick Summary: Strategies for Stubborn Toddlers
- Remove the power struggle — become neutral and uninterested in the outcome
- Give them ownership — let them choose pants, potty, stickers, rewards
- Use indirect motivation — dolls, older children, books, timers
- Make the reward irresistible — ask what they really want and make it the goal
- Take a break if needed — 2–4 weeks off resets the dynamic
- Never shame, threaten or show frustration — it always makes things worse
Have you cracked potty training with a particularly stubborn child? I would love to hear what worked for you in the comments below.
More posts that might help:
- Potty Training Regression: Why It Happens and How to Handle It
- When to Start Potty Training: Signs Your Child Is Ready
- Potty Training Chart: How to Use One to Motivate Your Toddler
- Potty Training Boys: 7 Tips That Actually Work
Written by Baby Potty Training Mommy — sharing real-world potty training advice since 2010. Read more about me here.
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