I am at my wit's end about what to do with DD1 (just turned 5) and her aparent inability to go to the toilet.

I just lost it at her, I am beyond frustrated and nothing I do or say seems to encourage her to do what she needs to be doing.

For a while now, she has been wetting her pants. Not a big deal in itself, and certainly when it started - really probably a year ago, she was just turned 4 and was to be expected. She did it mostly at home, not sure why, usually kinder was not an issue. Maybe they were sending her more often or something?

Anyway, it has progressed from having an accident, to not changing her wet pants - sitting in them for HOURS on end and not telling anyone, even at kinder. She has had the most horrendous chaffing nappy rash 3 times in the last 2 weeks because she is sitting in them! She has spare knickers and pants in her bag every day, she knows this, she knows how to use them, but still this problem is getting worse.

She will not go to the toilet until she is so busting she is sitting on the ground on her heel rocking backwards and forwards, she often leaves it so late that by the time she gets to the toilet and is trying to get on it that she can't actually stand up because she will wet herself.
She is telling me she doesn't know when she needs to go until it is coming out. But surely then that would be a CONSTANT problem - and it isn't. Some days she will go all day with no accidents, others she has 10!

This escalation has coincided with a huge increase in her night wetting. Which, has mostly, been a thing of the past for several months. She has asked me to buy nappy pants for nighttime, which I begrudgingly did, but they have only made it worse - now she gets up in the morning ans SITS in them, doesn't go to the toilet, but wees in them. She put them on after her shower the other night, sat down and watched the end of her cartoon and 20 mins later by bedtime had already weed in them - despite me sending her to the toilet before bedtime!
I'm not buying them again. They aren't working, and are making this worse.

But I am really at a loss. The last rash was sooo bad, my sister had to hold her down so I could put the Bepanthen on her, she was screaming it was so painful. I had a big talk with her then about not sitting in wet knickers, changing her pants straight away, I thought that having now experienced such an extreme consequence she might understand, it might get through. I have always assured her - and stuck to it - that she won't get in trouble or anything for accidents if she comes and asks for help, but she MUST change her pants or let her teacher know or me know so we can change them.
Still it gets worse.

I spoke to her kinder teacher about it the other day, she assured me she would remind her to go more often throughout the day, and when I got back to pick her up in the afternoon, I had a bag of wet pants handed to me. Apparently she asked her if she needed to go a few times, and all times DD said no, she didn't, but now we have still had an accident!

I am going mental. She is starting school next year, and I need to resolve this issue. I don't understand what is going on, why she is putting off going so badly it always ends in wet knickers and now why she is hiding that. I mean, I don't mind if she goes and changes her knickers on the sly - which she *could* theoretically do (she knows where they are, can put them on etc) - but she is just ... sitting... in urine.

Any advice, help, experience welcomed! I don't want to make her really upset again like I just have, and I really don't know what to do.