To think that not toilet training your child is borderline neglect?

my sons started nursery at 3 but could only go if they were toilet trained. DS 1 was ready only just in time but DS2 was ready a little while earlier. I can’t remember anyone I knew having problems with this so it is puzzling to me that things have changed. I think that sometimes if you expect things to work it is easier than if you have doubts. One thing we did was to ditch nappies in the daytime for pants, and to let them just be bare if you could do they could use the potty quickly.

But because schools discriminated, people trained their kids! My DD's pre-school said they had to be toilet-trained, even the two year olds, so we trained them - even though some were later diagnosed with SEN.

And autism is a huge spectrum as you should well know just becsuse your autiistic son was trained by 2.5 doesnt mean all childdrn with autism will be my son didnt get the concept of bribary and still doesnt at nearly 15 hes also completley non verbal
We eventually got him out of nappies at 9/10

"Readiness" as a concept came from... Pampers.

It's a warm, comforting concept for people who are struggling - the idea that a child might not be ready.

Since "readiness" was introduced as a concept, the average age of potty training has increased by a year.

And no, I'm not being a dick about children who CAN'T learn earlier. I have worked cross-nations on early years projects. The non-trained kids are also the ones with mouths full of cavities, "unique" names, who've never used cutlery and who've sat in front of screens all day.

Their parents need serious support and intervention.

Maybe becsuse schools were allowed to discriminate agsinst kids in nappies in the 90,s

Lots of kids had undiagnosed SEN in the 90s. Very few if any started school in nappies. I blame the cultural idea of "wait until they're ready". Some are never going to appear ready unless you force the issue.

I have three children, one with diagnosed ASD and another going through the diagnostic process. Eldest (NT) trained easily at 24 months. Middle (diagnosed with ASD aged 13) was a much more challenging prospect. He was trained by 2.5 with a great deal of bribery. DS2 was born a decade after his siblings and I drank from the "wait until they're ready" fountain. By the time he was 3.5 I realised that he preferred just going in his nappy, and trained him, which was fairly quick but not fun for either of us.

I really think there has been a shift from parents deciding to do it (eh thinking they'd do it the summer after their kid turned two, when they're outside a lot), to people waiting for the child to take initiative, which is fine if the kid does, but not so great if they don't. I have seen this in real time thanks to effectively having kids in different decades.

It doesn't help that the nappies and pull ups are so good now that the child doesn't feel uncomfortable after wetting.
Did the children who arrived in reception in nappies not go to day care nurseries where the staff are good at encouraging the little ones to use the toilet in conjunction with parents.
A friend who is an experienced reception teacher has recently had parents say they thought it was a teachers job to do all that. There are 30 children in a reception class with one or possibly two TA's where is the time for two of the adults to go off and change a nappy for several children two or three times a day.
An SEND child is different - and they may be assigned an extra person for support

I think this is it and that's absolutely fine to be lead by your child within the confines of your own life. I think a lot of parents are getting a shock though when schools are staring to ask them to leave work to come and sort their child out as they've had an accident!

I do think the trend to wait for signs of readiness is the culprit, and agree it would be neglect to reach reception age without having seriously attempted training multiple times (of course, excepting children who are clearly not capable due to additional needs already obvious at that age).

I had a battle with my dc2, tried multiple times and failed then went cold turkey with nappies around 3.5. She refused to use the nursery toilets for ages and just held it all day (school nursery so 8.30-3.30)/had the occasional accident so I’m well aware how stubborn some children can be - I suspect many would have given in and put back in nappies worried about ‘trauma’ but we didn’t and it did no lasting damage…

Lots of toilet training advice recommends an "all-or-nothing" approach, taking a couple of weeks to go full toilet training. For families with two working parents, it's difficult to find the time to do this, so often start a little later than when the child is immediately ready to wait for the "right condition" (eg. summer to spend lots of time in the garden, no holidays planned...)

That's my understanding in the case of no SEN.

We were lucky.

I was a SAHM and the pre school only took kids from 2y9m if they were out of nappies in the daytime, they can't say that any more as thankfully, inclusion is legislated for.

It gave an - admittedly pretty tight - target, and I had all the time in the world to try different tactics.

If you have no time and no strict target it gets harder. People have precious little time, less support from family, and less pressure to "have to".

Rates of chronic constipation are also rising which can (in addition to a variety of medical reasons) be triggered by poor diets lacking in fibre. This can interfere with bladder and bowel control as well as causing impaction leakage and stress around toileting because of the pain and discomfort.

Having had a child whose autism wasn't diagnosed until 9, I'd say that in the absence of clear medical or developmemtal needs, it is lazy to not have tried toilet training before starting school, but success is a different matter.

In our case DS1 had no interest at all when we tried at 2½ in the summer. We used washable nappies so it wasn't the dry disposable feel being a factor. His communication skills were also just above the threshold for intervention which didn't help at that point in time.
The advice of the time (10+ years ago) was to look for the signs that the child was ready and make the most of summer for nappy-free time. He was a winter baby and just wasn't ready in that summer window. Nursery supported when he moved to the pre-school room at 3 (during the winter) and trying together those few months later did help. His autistic traits didn't present together strongly enough to begin the diagnostic pathway until he was 7-9.

It was great having DS2 who was self motivated to train by 2½ (although he wasn't dry at night until 6) however he had more urgency for toileting for many years.

In the 80s I had a "potty chair" so presumably I was expected to sit on that for a longer period until something happened. "Accidents" in young children were common into the infant school years so I'm not convinced that perceptions of what classed as "toilet trained and successful outcomes were exactly the same, but disposable nappies were new, expensive and much bulkier so weren't attractive options for prolonged use as a strategy to avoid "accidents"

"Hydration" culture didn't kick in until the late 90s-early 2000s so access to drink will have been a drink at breakfast time, access to a fountain for a couple of gulps of water (in the toilets at my school), a small (200ml?) cup of water at lunchtime. No constant swigging from large bottles through the day. It's another layer of change that will affect frequency of toileting demand.

Depends if the parents have attempted and child is struggling which is fair enough or parents haven’t bothered trying (nappies are so pricey now surely that’s a good incentive to at least give it a whirl). I have a three year old with brain damage and dev delay (though if you met him in the street you wouldn’t clock immediately) so I’ll enjoy all the judgement as the next year goes by that he’s oblivious to toileting

This is one of those threads where the voting and the replies go in opposite directions...

I assume (hope) op is talking about kids where there is no medical / sen need for them to be in nappies at age four. It's been well reported in the news that there has been a marked increase in children starting school in nappies. Personally I think the three day method that is very popular often doesn't work and not all kids will "do it when they're ready". Obviously it all works out fine for lots of cases but for my two it was definitely not that straightforward. If we'd waited until they did it themselves they probably also would have started school in nappies.

The economy requires 2x working parents to afford living costs. Then we are told parents are 'lazy' when children's milestones aren't met because parents literally don't have the time. If a parent does work less to be home more, and god forbid claims UC, then they are also lazy. Some on mumsnet are so out of touch with reality

Bit of a sweeping statement. Context is needed.

Good grief. This is extraordinary and really worrying.

I was listening to the Born in Bradford programmes on Radio 4 recently and a teacher there was talking about how far behind many children are when they arrive at school - not toilet trained, struggling with basic social skills, very poor speech and language. She was speaking factually, not judgementally, and didn't go into detail about why this might be happening, but clearly something's gone very wrong in the support and guidance given to parents, and children are being let down as a result. It can't all be down to undiagnosed disability.

My children are in their early 30s now. Obviously there may have been children in their classes wearing nappies or pullups and I wouldn't have known, but I was in school a lot helping with reading and the PTA and I was a school governor. If the school staff had been noticing a trend of more children arriving in Reception who weren't toilet trained I would have heard about it one way or another. I know it was rare for children to turn up at our nursery school who weren't toilet trained from their reaction to my son's occasional accidents (bowel).

Thinking about what might have changed between the 1990s and now, far more families have both parents working. There are probably more single parent families too. However, I'd be surprised if it's working parents whose children have never even started toilet training. No reputable child carer (childminder, nursery or nanny) is going to just ignore the need for toilet training, surely, even if the parents have?

It's not disposable nappies and pullups, as those were available and affordable in the 90s, and the vast majority of parents I knew used them. Those probably did lead to a delay in starting toilet training - more like 3 than 2. My mother definitely thought I was leaving it a bit late, but she would have been desperate to get us out of cloth nappies because of the horror of washing them without an automatic washing machine.

My health visitor was fairly useless, but at least we had one. I have the impression there's far less support for parents now than there was, probably because of the massive cuts from 2010 on. False economy, as it's led to these serious problems which are now going to cost far more than health visitors, subsidised baby and toddler groups and Sure Start would have done.

My hunch would be that the parents whose children are arriving untrained are either not on Mumsnet at all or are studiously avoiding threads like this.

My son took far longer than a week to toilet train!

Luckily, we were in Scotland ( start school age 5, P1) rather than Wales ( most kids start school age 3) and the wonderful early years provision he was in supported the toilet training there.

But the trouble is everyone is tarred with the same brush unless your child looks very disabled then people perhaps give you some leeway but if they don’t look disabled people assume you are just lazy or haven’t put enough time in.

I recall when I was a small child in the 70s we had the health visitor do home visits quite often to check on us, I’d imagine my mum could ask questions about development during these visits. Ds was born in the 2010s and we just took him to be weighed a couple of times when he was tiny, he had a 2 year check and that was the involvement of health visiting team in his life. He was diagnosed autistic age 6 but it wasn’t picked up till he went to school

Yes it is which is why DH and I booked a week off work to do it. It won’t happen magically. We skipped a holiday but it was worth it.

So was mine, but I take the OP to mean not putting any effort into getting a child out of nappies, rather than spending many years trying to and not being successful.

Back in 1995 schools were allowed to refuse entry to children not meeting milestones, now they can't.

And I don't know for sure but I'm pretty sure compulsory school was 5 then, not 4 like they make it out to be now. That year makes a big difference.

It is so easy to use modern nappies that the incentive to toilet train, for both parents and child, is much lower than in the past. Hence it can easily be overlooked. I don't think I toilet trained my DC as early as I could or perhaps should have but they have grown up just fine. Obviously there are cost and also pollution considerations that really ought to outweigh other concerns. In general, as a mother of children in their 20s, I think that that the consumer goods industry is responsible for an awful lot of "poor parenting" - parents are bombarded with endless goods and services that make their lives easier in the moment but store up problems for the future. Small children are far more capable than the current goods and services industry and safetyism culture allow them to be and the sooner they are allowed to use their muscles and brains for their own autonomy, the better.

Partly. But there is also the practical fact that house prices/ rents are vastly more expensive in 2025 than they were in 1995, necessitating two full time working parents to pay for a roof over their family’s head. This means it’s far harder to find a stretch of time to toilet train. It is time intensive.