LACK OF POTTY TRAINING BEFORE STARTING SCHOOL.

I would love to know the background of kids not potty trained by school age. I suspect it is often those from parents who expect the state to do everything for them... but would be interested to see the facts.

I agree. Lots of lazy dads about who don't bother to make sure their kids are toilet-trained before they start school.

It was much better back in the day when fathers had to wash nappies by hand and therefore had an incentive to make sure their kids were out of nappies as quickly as possible.

Fathers should be called at work and have to come in and change their kids if they need changing at school.

I don't recall anyone when i started school not being potty trained and my Mum always commented on the 'pull-ups' adverts, that i was potty trained well before the age of the children in the adverts. I knew a reception teacher who was surprised to find that several children turned up in to school in nappies but relieved she wasn't expected to change them, any child who did turn up in a nappy was sent home which almost halved her class size.

No, not them. The ones working two jobs, or parents working opposite shifts, the ones who can't afford childcare.

The irony of you saying people need to step out of their own experiences...

This. My DD has just started reception and none of the DC are in nappies including one with a significant disability.

I've done a bit of googling to find the 2024 research - it's a survey of 1000 teachers and 1000 parents with a report. Data has been picked out for quotes and graphics in the report and then further cherry picked by the media for headlines. I'm not saying that we as parents shouldn't be trying to make every child school ready and I think more education and information for parents would be good, I'm just not sure it's as stark as they're making out.

I also can't find the exact question asked of teachers regarding the "24% not toilet trained" statistic - does this mean occasionally having accidents? Need reminding to go to the loo? Can't wash their hands? The wording of the question makes a difference as the media make it sound like 24% of reception children are in nappies all the time and I'm not convinced that is how "toilet trained" is being used here.

My DD had a "school readiness check" 6 months before school by a HV (a test programme in some areas which I think would be great if they do roll it out everywhere) and was found ready, no issues. If there had been issues, I believe the HV would have given advice or worked with us to resolve with enough time to do so before school started. However, I'm very aware she's in the older half (if not third) of the class, has attended nursery from 1 and has no SEN/health etc issues. There are some DC that have only just turned 4.

Some seem to think the goal of parenting now is to be your child’s best friend, never to push them to do things they find difficult, prevent them from ever being upset.. no, the point of being a parent is to teach them the life skills they need to navigate school, and then the wider world. They won’t always like it. They won’t always like you. But parents shouldn’t allow their children to fail. They think they’re being kind to their children, but in fact they’re doing them a great disservice.

I think the issue is the official advice changed from what it was for previous generations, but is also contradictory. The NHS and much of the parental guides (provided by health visitors etc) recommend waiting for signs of readiness, and are annoyingly vague on methods; ERIC contradicts the waiting approach, so I think the NHS webpage guidance etc may need updating. I also think parents now work more (both full time & longer hours) with less family & other forms of support. We are just coming out of the other side of potty training for DS at the end of 2 years of age, working on potty training in tandem with DS’s nursery (following our lead), with DD being born (3mo) & a nursery change along the way, so it took a few months to get through. We had to wait for a bank holiday to jump start it (did the naked method).

I mean private nursery, they should be trained before pre-school at 3.
When my DC started preschool, last one 7 years ago, they had to be fully trained.

The Nightinghales, the parents with Wfh jobs and kids in childcare all day are a lot likelier to be pushy competititve parents "advancing" and enriching their kids from birth than keeping them in nappies till five. Their kids are likely to have travelled half the world, and have the skills aged 5 you and me got aged 25. They are extremely unlikely to send a kid to school in nappies.

In contrast they are the ones more likely to do damage and slighyly delay potty training by being pushy and starting early rathet than thr other way rou d

What is people's experience of people, omg. It's like people on mumsnet never leave the house or step outside the carefully curated circle of people they see.

Both parents working isn't a new scenario, and neither is potty training, yet children going to school in nappies is a relatively new phenomenon. Special needs aside there is no excuse for leaving potty training until school age, it is definitely lazy parenting. And waiting until a child is ready, what does that even mean? It seems to mean waiting until the child themselves wants to do it.

I’m glad someone clarified this. As I was wondering whether this was just about children who have the odd accident, and we have become much less tolerant about that now.

my child was potty trained at 2. She went to school at just turned 4 (august born) and had 3-4 poo accidents that year. She never once had an accident at home. She was fully toilet trained.

but we seem to have forgotten that school is a difficult experience, can be incredibly overwhelming and some children just become distracted or don’t feel comfortable for whatever reason. She had never once had an accident before she started school and could independently use the toilet. She just became overwhelmed and frightened of it at school. I had no idea until she actually had the accident.

@autienotnaughty the part about nappies is exactly what my mother used to say about potty training being later and later in recent years. She said when people had to soak cloth nappies, boil them, dry them etc etc they potty trained much, much earlier. Also in other countries where disposable nappies are not in common use, children are also trained earlier. Disposable nappies just make it so much easier for parents not to have all the faff and bother of cloth ones.
Also, each disposable nappy takes around 500 years to decompose in landfill.

When my (now young adult) started school there were 2 children among their peer group who were still in nappies. These 2 were siblings. The parents are very well known to not do an awful lot - if no - parenting. They were just lazy and did their children a massive disservice in so many ways.

The mother is now telling her eldest son she will quit work (she is perfectly able to work) so that he can support her financially.

Children should be out of nappies and know how to behave in school before they start Reception. It is a parents duty for the child's sake.

As its just the last few years... I'm actually wondering if its not that children are in childcare all day while parents at working, more that parents are cutting short childcare and working from home with the children present for financial reasons. In that scenario I can definitely see nappies being easier.

That's a disgrace. The parents 'dont have time' but you do?

I think you need to put your name into action.

That is some crap advice, but a large part of parenting is common sense and forward thinking.
What happens if they never show signs of being ready? Nappies are such a big expense, you'd want to get rid of them ASAP.

We worked with the nursery to have a potty training routine whilst they were at nursery which we continued at home. Both were trained before they were 2.

You presumably are not a person that talks shite, but I have no idea what any of this means?

Where do we have all these illiterate stay at home moms who believe it's okaybto pee and pooh everywhere?

Is there a new UK population? I'm a Londoner, so precious little surprises me, but bar the homeless, I don't know anyone who pees everywhere and even they find somewhere private to poo, as I'm not seeing it.

Who are these nasty fuckers with these dreadful values?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again as this theme comes up time and time again.

I started school in the 80s (and went to nursery the year before starting).

I have very good memory from that time and can remember a lot
of things in surprising detail (like
the sorts of games we used to play, peoples names, what the carpets and curtains were like etc).

One of the many things that I remember were that there were a number of children in both nursery and reception who had CONSTANT accidents (like at least one per day).

No doubt nowadays these would be the children sent to school in pull-ups but you just couldn’t do that then (they didn’t exist in the 80s as far as I remember).

I also remember some kids who had language problems and couldn’t speak/ behave properly.

This has always been an issue. It’s nothing new…

i quite agree with it is so easy with disposable nappies to let things slide. when we had terry nappies which had to be sluiced rinsed and washed not to mention line drying or clothes horse no driers then, it did make you want to get them potty trained asap.
i think that teachers should be concerned with education not a childs toilet training

Agree - children should be largely potty trained by the age of 3, and certainly able to use the bathroom unassisted by the age of 4.5. It’s is one thing if you have a single anxious or SEN child who isn’t quite there in reception who can be managed with the help of a TA make it over the line - but half the class?

I feel we are at the stage where, like many preschool/nurseries do, children who are not able to toilet themselves should not be allowed to start school and - unless there is medical evidence - and we should think whether parents should be fined for the consequent non attendance at school.

Nursery can definitely help by supporting parents but it is absolutely not nursery/preschool’s responsibility to be potty training people’s kids. Accidents are to be expected still at that age but working full time is no excuse for not teaching important skills to your children. Two days off a week = two days of potty training. It may take a bit longer doing it with gaps in between but if started around two a child with no extra needs will probably be ready by school. (All bodies are different and parents may well discover that there child has a condition effecting continence but it’s possible to get most children dry during the day from quite young)

There is a difference between a private nursery that takes children from babies and a school nursery that makes them from 3.