How to help with potty training accidents at daycare

Why Potty Accidents Happen at Daycare (Even When Your Toddler Is Potty Trained at Home)

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If your toddler is potty trained at home but having pee accidents at daycare, you're not alone — and it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.

Daycare is a totally different world for toddlers: new bathroom, flushing toilets, new adults, lots of stimulation… it’s a lot to process. Even kids who confidently pee in the potty at home can suddenly freeze up or wait too long at daycare. It's a common problem I hear as a potty training consulant.

And here’s something funny to know about me: in a game of opposites, I fall on the low-tech, give-me-a-pour-over-and-paper-books end of the spectrum. If something needs a USB cord, I am suspicious. (Those disappear around here as fast as socks.)

BUT — sometimes low-tech parents need a tiny tech assist.

And this is one of those situations. There’s one small tool that can really help a toddler who's having pee accidents at daycare or preschool. It’s simple, doesn’t replace real potty learning, and I only recommend it because I’ve watched it actually work — many times — with toddlers in daycare settings.

Before we get to that, let's talk about why these daycare accidents are happening in the first place.

Sometimes a gadget can be helpful in potty training — here's what to look for and why.

Why Potty Accidents Spiral at Daycare

Sometimes a toddler won’t pee in the potty at daycare (or preschool), even if they’re fully potty trained at home. And once that starts, it can snowball fast:

• The child begins having pee accidents.

• Daycare staff start prompting more and more, trying to avoid the accidents.

• The toddler feels pulled away from play and resists the potty even harder.

• Then sometimes the child holds their pee.

• The child eventually can’t hold anymore → more accidents

• The toddler starts thinking, “I’m the kid who pees my pants.”

• Accidents become the norm instead of the exception.

And it spirals in the wrong direction from there.

This isn’t stubbornness or “not being ready.”

This is overprompting + overwhelm + new environment = resistance + holding.

And you may remember from Oh Crap Potty Training: one powerful tool for resistance is a neutral cue — like a timer.

Timers help because they shift the prompting away from adults (“time to go pee now!”) and toward something neutral and predictable (“the timer says it’s time”). This reduces power struggles, brings down the resistance, and helps toddlers tune back into their body signals.

But when your toddler heads back to daycare…that system often disappears — and the cycle starts again.

My favorite picture book for prepping for the routines at preschool.

Why a Timer Works at Home But Not at Daycare

A ringing kitchen timer is great at home when you're helping your toddler self-initiate and reduce resistance to sitting on the potty.

But in daycare or preschool?

A loud timer going off every hour would disrupt the classroom — and it's not realistic to ask a teacher to manage a potty timer for one child on top of everything else.

So the home timer trick stays at home.

So What Does Help at Daycare?

This is where Jamie (author of Oh Crap Potty Training) first saw a potty watch make a big difference for toddlers who were:

• resisting the potty at daycare

• getting pulled away from play

• holding pee too long

• having accidents during the day

  
  

A potty watch acts like a neutral cue, just like a kitchen timer does at home — but it's wearable and quiet enough for a school environment.

Quick note: I'm not affiliated with any potty watch brand, and there's not one brand I swear by. If you try one and love it, email me — I'd genuinely love to know what worked for your kid!

Why a Potty Watch Can Work at Daycare

Let's talk about WHY we see the potty watch as an effective tool (and that's sometimes, not all the time!) when the toddler is resisting peeing in the potty at daycare.

A watch shifts the prompting away from adults (“let’s try the potty”) and towards a neutral reminder (“the watch says it’s potty time”). For some toddlers, that tiny shift can:

• lower resistance

• reduce power struggles

• make potty time predictable

• help them remember to pee before it's urgent

  
  

It's not a cure-all for pee accidents at daycare — but in the right situation, it can be a gentle support that bridges home → daycare skills.

A potty watch takes the pressure off teachers, so they don't have to be watching the clock.

How to Use a Potty Watch at Daycare (So It Actually Helps)

The beauty of a potty watch is that you can set it in intervals — just like a timer — but you don’t have to keep re-setting anything or rely on a teacher remembering. Once it's programmed, it's automatic.

Most watches allow reminders every 30 minutes, every hour, or even longer. One family I worked with got this potty watch and set it to every two hours, and it worked beautifully for their toddler at school — zero pressure, just gentle reminders.

Why a potty watch works better than a kitchen timer at daycare

A big reason the potty watch helps is control.

With a kitchen timer, grown-ups hold the power: the adult sets the timer, the adult calls the child to the potty.

With a potty watch:

• The reminder comes from their wrist

• They get to respond

• They feel like the one in charge

For toddlers who don’t like being told what to do (“I’ll pee when I want to!”), this tiny shift matters. A watch becomes their tool, not your instruction.

And we know toddler behavior: big resistance usually comes when kids feel like they don’t have enough control. A simple watch, worn on their wrist, can reduce power struggles and help them build confidence and rhythm at daycare — without battles or constant prompting.

👉 Want help explaining this to your daycare? 🍎 Get the scripts and what you should ask your daycare with the complete Daycare Blueprint.

Here's where we've found a potty watch can help with pee accidents at daycare:

• When there's no issue with poop. If the child is holding back on their poop till they're home from daycare, that's a different problem. Jamie and I share solutions for the child is holding back on poop or pee at school in our potty training course, Oh Crap! How to Potty Train With Daycare + Preschool.

• When the child already learned how to pee in the potty at home (the skilled is learned.) We can't expect a child to be solidly potty trained at preschool if they're not solidly potty trained at home.

• When the pee accidents haven't been going on for months (that's when the accidents have become the norm, and you often need a different solution.)

A potty watch serves as a good reminder (that feels different from a grownup telling you to go pee in the potty.) There's also the issue with daycare where you don't know HOW they're prompting your child to go pee in the potty.

Because there are ways to prompt and ineffective ways to prompt a child to go pee.

• Are the teachers asking your child to go pee? That's the most ineffective way to get a toddler to do anything. For more on that, I'd check out the go-to parenting guide for parenting toddlers, Oh Crap I Have a Toddler or Jamie's podcast episode, They Just Won't Listen.

Oh Crap I Have a Toddler is a go-to parenting book.

• Are the teachers prompting and prompting and prompting? I've heard of daycares bringing the child to the potty every 20 minutes. That will bug your toddler! Then it's common to see a child who refuses to use the toilet at daycare.

• Are they not prompting enough at daycare? Expecting toddlers to take themselves to pee in the potty throughout the day with zero reminders isn't helpful for potty training, either. A toddler does need some reminders to use the toilet, but it's finding that magic of prompting without sparking resistance to the potty.

That's where something mechanical, like a potty watch, can be a great solution as it serves as a good reminder through the day at daycare. The teacher doesn't have to keep track of when they prompted your toddler to go pee (which is great since your daycare teacher has to keep track of many kids!)

We've also seen that the potty watch can help some toddlers feel like a big kid. And that pride and self-mastery goes far in potty training. You're always looking to build that autonomy in your toddler.

Related: Here are more tips on helping your toddler be more independent with the potty. And if you're feeling stuck with seeing accidents or your child holding and resisting using the potty at daycare or preschool, we now have a course, Oh Crap! How to Potty Train With Daycare + Preschool that covers it all.

The blueprint for how to transition to daycare or preK.

I remember the first time Jamie told me about the potty watch and how it'd been helping some of her clients with pee accidents at daycare.

At first I thought, really? Could this work?

And then I started to suggest it to parents in personal potty consultations, and for some situations it worked well.

With potty training, you won't find us Oh Crap Potty Training consultants recommending a talking toilet. That's not our jam. We don't even think the ever-popular behavior charts work well for toddlers under the age of four (they don't have the proper executive functioning, more on that in this IG video by Jamie)

But we do see instances where the potty watch can help with preschool potty accidents or when some toddlers won't go to the potty at daycare.

And with a potty training win like that, that may be cause for a dance party in your kitchen.

Alexa, play Can't Stop this Feeling!