To think my mum has probably got this wrong...

[storminabuttercup]

talking today about potty training...don't ask how we got onto that.
Mum says, 'you should really have started baby storm by now you know?'
Me, 'I think he is a bit young you know'
Her, 'well boys take longer than girls and I started you at his age'
Me, 'you do know he's only 11 months ma?'
Her, 'yeah, health visitor will tell you that you've started late you know'

She does have lots on her mind bless her, but really? 11 months?

I dont really need to yet surely??

Mothers eh? I do love her dearly but she's crazy? :-D

I was chatting to a Filipina lady recently who told me how she had potty trained her dcs from 6 months. She said it's normal there to start at that age - she had 3 babies in 3 years, and like most people there she didn't have access to disposable nappies or a washing machine...

I thought baby storm was a new fangled word for potty training

My dd1 4.7 is still in night time pants cos she still wets herself at night. MIL says she's not allowed to stay the night at hers until she's dry. My poor dd keeps asking and that's the answer she gets. She can't control it and it's a bit unfair.

Slight hijack, sorry, but MIL's really need to get with the times.

I don't know the details of my own, or DH's history wrt potty training, but I do believe that for my grandmother's generation and possibly older, there was a tendency to begin much earlier than we do now. At least part of the reason would have been because they used washable nappies and so, as another poster said, every 'successful' use of the potty, was a nappy less to wash. Particularly for my DGM since there were no washing machines, it all had to be done by hand on a scrubbing board and wrung out on a mangle.

If anyone remembers this and this, you may remember that she advocated using a nappy or towel to tie babies from around six months, to a table or chair leg with the child sitting on the potty! So maybe many of her ideas were just reflections of practice when she was young. She was born around the same time as my Nan, so I imagine her views were not uncommon at the time.

shes confused between potty training and potty timing. Personally i think the later they train the quicker they do it.

my friend did potty timing (not potty training) at a very early age and i could see it was a nightmare. she was stuck in the house all day and living life around catching her childs poos/wees. seemed pointless when mum/baby could just get out and have fun and do potty training quickly with minimal fuss at a later age

It would have been easier maybe in those days because the child would dislike being in the cloth nappies and would notice they were wet.

Personally, though I think the mums were Olympic level catchers. Who could be bothered though, running round trying to catch it, when you could stick a nappy on, wait a few months and it's easily done?

Dm is adamant that my sisters came out of nappies on their first birthday and were clean and dry within a month or so. I asked her how and she said "well they did spend a lot of time sitting on the potty and I didn't bother with knickers until they were nearly two". Late 1940s, hand washed nappies. Urgh.

DD wore terries and was out of nappies by 18m, the 'saving a nappy' idea is def part of it, as is the fact that a baby in terries can feel the wetness when they wee so are much more aware of it than one in modern, super efficient sposies.

we started pt because she said poo when she needed to poo, it seemed silly to ignore that and dirty a nappy instead of have her do it in the loo. we just went from there, started at 16m, done by 18m.

I was put under so much pressure on this, from nursery, my parents, HCPs - anyone you can think of gave me a hard time about how long it took me to toilet train. I left it till DS was ready - 3.6 months - and did it in a day. Given we now know DS has SN I am delighted we waited so long - its the only milestone that I actually look back on fondly. The only one.

My three children were all potty trained by the age of 18 months.

The youngest one was done by 15 months.

They were all dry at night by two and a half.

My youngest one finished at the childminders on the Thursday evening, we had Easter weekend when I potty trained her and she went back on the Tuesday all dry. I told the childminder that she would ask for the toilet with a look of utter disbelief on the child minder's face. She apologised for not believing me when I picked dd up that evening.

None of them took huge amounts of time to potty train and they were all done within two weeks with no 'accidents'.

You should have more faith in your children

Wow CleverClod. You really are amazeballs.

Depends on the child, of course!

But yes, there is a difference between knowing you're wet in a sopping cloth diaper and wearing a comfy, absorbing pull-up, I'm sure.

DS trained when he was 2 and a bit I think...I stocked up on cheap mixing bowls from the dollar store and scattered them all around the house and then let him run around starkers. Every time he did anything in one of the bowls he got an M&M. Took hardly any time at all! :)

My theory is potty training happened younger in earlier generations due to Terry nappies being no where near as comfy as today's disposables. And the mums were eager to be free of the washing too

My dcs are 28 and 30. When ds1 was 8 weeks old, former MIL and her Evil Sister starting banging on about "holding him out" and my refusal to have anything to do with this barmy practice attracted constant criticism.

Despite their campaign (and the fact that between them, ds1 and 2 got through 70 terry nappies a week) my dangerously existential approach to potty training continued until I considered the dcs ready. Which was at 2.2 and 2.6 months respectively and only after they'd shown any interest whatsoever in the idea.

This "holding out" nonsense seems to be a speciality of the generation bringing up children just after the war and before the widespread availability of automatic washing machines. By the time I had my children it was already an extremely outdated concept.

I remember Nanny knows Best sayhowitis! She was/is fab.

I love that she carries a sugar lump in her handbag "in case she meets a horse"

Sadly Nanny Smith has died a few years ago. I have her books though, and remember the series well!