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

DC1 was out of nappies at the age of 2. DC 2 could do all his wees in a potty at the same age. Getting him to consistently poo in a potty/toilet took another two and a half years. I felt a pressure from people like the OP to use harsher methods, but as soon as I did, he started witholding. I went with my gut (and advice from ERIC) and used a very gradual method. I've seen too many children with long term physical problems from refusing to poo, so I'm very glad I let him get there in his own time.

My point was that at four some disabillities are not disgnosed so a chikd may well be delayed due to an undisgnosed disabillity/ need

This.

I see the issue the other way around. Four is still early years. Very few countries in the world start children at school this young ( and the ones that do are all former British colonies). If schools are not prepared to deal with personal care issues, they should not be taking children from age four. I am in Wales where most kids start school age three. I have seen teachers snd TAs refuse to wipe the bottom of THREE year olds as it’s ’not their job’ , but leave children smeared in faeces instead. Disgraceful. If you don’t want to do personal care, don’t work in early years.

There are also a lot of things teachers say more young children can’t do now, put their own shoes on, zip or button up clothes. It’s because most families now have two full time working parents. This means they have less time to teach their kids independence skills. But instead of questioning the society we have created where parents have far less time with their children, we blame the parents, or let’s face it, the Mothers.

The evidence is in Reception classes across the country where the numbers of children untrained has absolutely sky rocketed and parents on the playground quite openly say, ‘Oh I can’t face it yet so I thought I’d let school give it a go’

I think a lot of people who call themselves gentle parents make the same mistake. They think it means ‘no parenting’ and so they don’t parent but think it’s fine.

If a parent has a child with undiagnosed SEN by four, they have probably tried to toilet train and will know in themselves something is going on with their child. No-one should feel bad about that.

I think OP is referring to parents who can't be bothered even trying, which I don't think there would be many of really.

The majority of children can be trained between 2.5 and 3yr assuming no SN or physical issues. The trouble is parents have to work now so it’s tricky for them to have the week where the child can crack it ruining around the house wearing just pants. However, it should be a parenting priority and think how much money gets saved no longer needing nappies. Accidents are inconvenient but part of it. Most toddler rooms work along side parents but often pick up cues they are ready before the parent and then have to convince the parent to work with them.

Yes, the paediatrician has referred DS for ADHD assessment and thinks the toileting issue may be linked to that due to his lack of focus. Just wish we knew what was going on.

Definitely this, I still have the urge to go to the toilet before I leave home or anywhere because of being taught u go try before u go out and I was brought up in the seventies. They would sit babies on a potty and make them stay until they used it. It was not a good way to teach control and the kids who did have issues would be mocked. The 70’s should not be held up as a great time for child care tbh

I messed up my DD toilet training. She is my youngest and her older brothers were slow to show signs of readiness and trained at around age 3. So I assumed DD would be similar. In retrospect I should have trained her around 18 mo-2 years but I waited til almost 3 and then it was extremely difficult and she was withholding wee for up to 24 hours for a couple of months, as she hated being wet but was too scared to go on the potty or toilet. If she had not been my youngest I am sure I would have put her back in pullups and we would have gone round in a spiral again.

My younger son had minor wetting accidents until he was at least 6, and was in absorbent pants. He has poor interception.

MN is awful about children who struggle with toilet training.

Some will have SEN, diagnosed or otherwise, and will need support with that.

Some will come from backgrounds where the parents might struggle to put in place successful strategies to potty train, and they will also need support with that.

And there will be some crossover between the two.

But either way, is it helpful to sneer and condemn? All it does it make people feel bad. That’s literally the only purpose behind it.

@Queenfreak same here. My 9yo is having wet accidents at school. He has been toilet trained since 4yo. It took him ages to understand.

Comments like this from OP don't help.

DS needs showered when he gets home from school. He has to take a change of clothing to school. We have spoke with the paediatrician about it. No one has any answers.

I would add “attempting to” to the title. I certainly wouldn’t judge someone if I saw a four year old in nappies without knowing more.

Most 3 year old children would manage.without nappies but parents leave it too long, the children are fully functioning excluding nappy.

If we were still using towel nappies, children would be trained much earlier than 3.

It is a bit of a project to toilet trained a child. We took a week off work to get started and it was not easy. DD didn’t go to nursery in the UK and the nursery was very much of the opinion that NT children should be toilet training at 3. I heard one teacher giving another parents a dressing down for not having started toilet training. Her school which had KG and KG2 (american system) wouldn’t accept children who were not toilet trained or in nappies. This would be 4yr olds at the start of the semester. There are primary schools saying NT children are turning up in nappies and we should take that seriously.

This! Some parents use SEN as an excuse not to parent. ADD etc does not mean a child can't be potty trained.

Oh look another short inflammatory post by a three word username designed to get people frothing with no further participation 🙄

Eldest still had issues had to wear pull ups until just before he turned 5. And still poohing throughout the day in them. He regressed again at the end of reception and I had to pick him up from school regularly. It was not for lack of trying on my part. My daughter got it in a week. I barely had to try.
He has at the age of 11 been diagnosed with adhd but not all kids have a diagnosis of something at that age.
Save your judgment.

YANBU. I am finding that parents are starting their dc in reception with the expectation that we will potty train them at school. Twenty years ago I would have one dc in a nappy on average. Now it’s about fifty percent when they start. This year I have 36 in the morning and 36 in the afternoon, some dc stay some come for half a day. One teacher and two TAs and one of us is doing something to do with toileting at all times. We used to do things like story, literary and maths in three groups in three areas. Now we have two because of the nappies. This has had an enormous impact on the quality of the provision throughout the whole nursery classroom.

I did the same with my daughter when she’d jusf turned 2 yo and she was dry within days, but surely you appreciate it’s not the same for every child? I know a good friend who started at the same time as me, using the same ‘method’ and her daughter just couldn’t grasp it.

Have you been seen by the Continence Service in your area?

They weren’t amazing for us but a couple of useful things I did learn was that weirdly, if your child isn’t drinking enough during the day it can cause night-time bedwetting. I think it’s because if there’s not enough fluid to flush through the system during the day, more urine is retained which then causes bedwetting. Also blackcurrant squash/juice can irritate the bladder and aggravate bedwetting.

Apologies if you’ve heard all of that, just thought I’d pass it on in case it helped. It didn’t help us but you never know 😂🤷‍♀️

I have a 15yr old still in nappies with no continence at all who soils day and night, so I completely understand the difficulties 💐

Also, our consultant urologist said if your child is still wetting at night while they’re sleeping, they may not yet have physiologically developed sufficiently - some children really are just slower than others, and that’s ok ❤️

You’re not shit and useless at all - plenty of us know the struggles are real and not due to a lack of effort x

That’s why I avoided pull ups and went straight to knickers. They get the message a lot faster when they’re uncomfortable. I think some people don’t understand that’s it’s genuinely harder nowadays though because there isn’t a parent at home for long stretches - everyone is out working- so fitting it in is very difficult!

What's 'gentle parenting' got to do with potty training? Parents following this style are more likely to potty training earlier because they follow cues from the child. Also a lot of 'gentle parents' use cloth nappies which leads to early potty training.

I think you're getting it confused with 'permissive parenting'.

@spicemaiden just posted the same I agree with you 100%

I'd like to know how many people that say it's neglect had a hard to potty train child? Dd2 was terrified and was withholding poo. She was on laxatives and it was awful, she wouldn't poo for up to 2 weeks at a time, it broke my heart. . She managed to figure it out at 3 and a half but not through us trying. Some kids are just easy to toilet train, our dd1 mastered it in 2 days and some damn right refuse to do it. I'm not going to force a screaming and crying child to take a nappy off as that's just an awful thing to do. No sen btw