To disagree with nursery potty training ds

[Soubriquet]

Ds was 3 at the beginning of march and has been attending this nursery since he was 2.

It's a fantastic nursery and I've never had any problems with it.

However yesterday, they sent home a note asking for pants and spare trousers as they were going to start potty training Ds.

I don't want them to potty train him. I was waiting until the summer holidays like I did dd as it was so much easier when she could walk around with no clothes on, she understood better and was trained in 3 days. She was 3.4 years when I did it with her

I suspect they want him to move up to the next group and they require them to be potty trained in that group. Something that was never mentioned when I joined him there.

Would you speak to the nursery and request they don't do it?

My biggest problem is that Ds seems to be immature for 3. He has only recently started to speak in full sentences and even the struggle to understand him is difficult. I honestly don't believe he will understand it just yet.

What you did was indicate that children not brushing their own teeth at school age was a negative issue. It isn't because the advice is that children should not be brushing their own teeth at age 5. Hence you are spouting drivel

They SHOULD be able to brush their teeth at age 5!... with supervision, not having it done for them! Dentists say different to the nhs. All experts differ ffs!

Here is a quote about what people did back in the 1930s when the average age for potty training was 18 months. "Often, to avoid extra work, parents would resort to dramatic measures to train their children: Enemas, suppositories, and physical force were enlisted in an effort to teach children to use the restroom at younger ages."Sounds fab doesn't it

It isn't about comparing one extreme to another. No one would suggest forcing or suppositories.
The point I was making, that seems to offend you, was that there are many parents who carry on doing things for their child that they could be doing for themselves!
Teachers have complained they are having to dress children, teach them how to use a knife and fork, and even toilet train at age five and older!
So, either children are less competent today than they were a decade or so ago, or they are not being taught or encouraged at home, or they are being treated like babies and having it done for them.

Schools absolutely cannot refuse to take children because they are not potty trained. How I wish the set up @elliejjtiny describes was the norm though, I have to kneel on the toilet floor and change them while they either stand up or use a normal changing mat on the floor.

OP, I would talk to nursery and ask why they want to potty train him now. If it is he has started showing signs of being ready then I would try at half term rather than waiting til summer, but otherwise tell them no, and tell them why.

Trying before the child is ready can be very damaging.

No it isn't Fosters, that is an old fashioned Freudian idea

Nah. The NHS NICE guidelines actually state that attempting to potty train before a child is ready can cause withholding, and in turn constipation, which long-term leads to encoprosis/bowel problems. The best treatment is six months on paediatric Movicol, because withholding poo (which makes it huge, and hard, so difficult to pass, and painful, so the child withholds yet more...) deforms the rectum and means the child loses the urge to go, so can't be effectively trained, and it takes six months to restore that via very soft poo.

It's surprisingly common, but people tend not to know about it because parents don't like talking about it.

Nothing to do with Freud. Just biological fact, medically supported.

I would have a chat to them about why they feel he is ready. My son started training somewhere between 2.5 and 3 and that was mostly led by nursery. Not because they pushed it in anyway but because through seeing other children doing it he was motivated to try and was showing lots of readiness signs with them. I am glad they encouraged us to take the step of doing it with him because they were right and he actually was dry incredibly quickly. Rather than going in with a view to having a dispute have a calm discussion with them. They may have good reasons for thinking he is ready.

I don't know why I keep reading some of these comments

So my DS is 2.9, very clever,no delays etc.

So am I lazy, considering how much I encourage,talk him through it and how it all works, watches me in the bathroom, reward charts,the lot or is my son " not normal "?

Good for you lot who had it all done very quickly and early

I've never jumped on the whole "I thought this site was supposed to be supportive" but I find this thread leaving a horrible taste in my mouth

There is a difference between having the right words and actually beinf able to use them to communicate. My daughter's favourite word is poo poo but doesn't mean she knows how to communicate when she needs to go.

Potty training is a nightmare when there are delays, my 3.5 year old girl is not trained and doesnt feel like she ever will be

The thing is, potty training a child can be hard work. Many children would far prefer to be in nappies, and not interrupt their play etc, than have to leave what they were doing to use a potty, so there is very little 'in it for them'.

In the past, there were counterbalances for that hard work, and more in it both for the child and for the parent - less washing, ability to access pre-schools (Ds and DD, now teens, had to be potty trained to attend pre-school from 2.5), so more people put that hard work in at earlier points.

Now, the points where there are counterbalances tend to kick in later. The 'well, i have to bite the bullet now' age has moved to school age, rather than pre-school age. Yes, some children are easier than they were, because it genuinely was a maturity issue that made earlier potty training hard for them - they really are ready 'later than used to be the norm 10-15 years ago'. However, the difficult cases probably are just about as difficult as they used to be, but the point where the parent / carer says 'right, we've really got to do it now' and puts in the hard graft is now later.

My DC's pre-school stopped asking children to be dry on admission c. 10 -11 years ago (after DD left). At that time, they admitted every child in the village at around 2.5, very occasionally a couple of months later (DS, I am looking at you), out of nappies, or in nappies if an SEN was involved. Within a year, the majority of the children were starting at 2.5 in nappies, and now I understand the average 'out of nappies' age is around 3.5 at that pre-school.

It isn't that children have changed. It is that different expectations - of potty training being 'easy when a child is ready', of 'waiting for readiness' [both, in some cases, a myth] have allowed the timing to gently slip over time.

I guess the question is, does it matter if kids are toilet trained later?

And I think with some kids it is harder to toilet train when they get older.

This is a very upsetting thread to read. My son is 3.5 now. He has excellent speech, no delays of any sort but is having a lot of difficulty training. We started last year when he was 2.9. He made great improvements in the first week. But still he regularly won't tell us when he needs to go. We take him to the bathroom at 2-3 hr intervals now or before we leave the house and he stays dry most of the time. But he definitely can't be trusted to leave to his own devices. And it's not due to lack of effort on our part or any delays on his part. He attends preschool 3 days a week. He has to wear pull ups for this. Some days he'll ask to use the toilet at school and some days he'll come home with a wet pull up.

This would really piss me off.

My DS was 3 and a half, and was potty trained in less than a day.

My DD took 3 attempts from the age of 2 and a half, and she also got it very quickly around age 3 and a half.

Neither of them have any special needs, they just weren't ready.

It's your decision as a parent to decide when to potty train and I would be telling the nursery this in no uncertain terms.

I have found that 'some' nursery workers to be quite judgemental about children who are potty trained later. They tend to be younger without their own children.

It's more work for them to keep changing nappies which is why they want to get it done earlier, but if they aren't ready, it does more harm than good, IMO.

It's hard as it's going against your plans for summer potty training, but surely it could only be a good thing, he may get the hang of it quickly.

For comparison, at our nursery, once LO had turned 3 and was in the pre-school room, they told us that there would be no nappy during the daytime (apart from nap) and they would be encouraged to use the little toilets.

I was a bit nervous as LO still wore daytime nappies and really didn't know how it would pan out, but he did great and got the hang of it so quickly and confidently. The staff were impressed, LO was asking to use the toilet each time etc.

I/We couldn't have done that ourselves easily at home at the weekends (we both work FT).

With hindsight, I was really grateful to the nursery for doing this!

I think they should discuss it with you but I'd welcome the help. My Nursery don't seem to be interested in helping to train my nearly 3 yo ds.

Find it quite upsetting the suggestion that I'm basically a lazy parent for not having trained him.
We tried, he just didn't get it. Made zero progress at all in five days and was just getting upset all the time. What am I meant to do?

Our nursery said they didn’t need to be potty trained to move into the preschool room at 3 but if they weren’t at that point they tended to decide to train themselves after watching all the other kids. I tried with DD at 2 yrs 9m, and after a disastrous morning of her shouting “I all wet!” regularly we gave up. But at 2 yrs 11 m she decided big girl pants were the way to go, and that was that, sent her to nursery with a load of clothes and she’d sorted it by lunchtime.

So I didn’t decide when in the end, she did.

Why wouldn't you want him to be potty trained when he's 3 already?

Along with the complicance issue is also the sensory. Some children more than others will care about feeling wet (or even embarrassed by peers). So those ones would be straight over to be cleaned and dried. Others are happy playing wet and others will jump in the puddles.
My dsis apparently trained very early and she was even as a toddler obsessed with having clean hands.

With dd1 i trained her by setting a timer and making her go every x minutes/hours. But the downside of this is it can be a battle and though they learn how to control the weeing/pooping they are not trained in the sense of feeing an urge and choosing to go. It does get into a routine though.
I think i will have to go this way with dd2.
I imagine frequently taking kids was probably how so many kids were trained young before.

Potty train when you want to, but, and this is the big but... Don't for the love of all you hold sacred, DON'T send your child into school untrained, if you can help it. It is such a selfish thing to do. There are schools out there with the people and the facilities to handle it, but as someone in a school that doesn't have people or facilities, it is so selfish to leave us to change your child's shitty nappies and prevent us from educating the other 29 kids in the class because you don't think your child is ready. Having to be changed makes your child so vulnerable, stops others from teacher time and prevents teachers from actually doing what they are employed for...teaching. Teachers are not parents, nurses, social workers or any other role- although many excellent teachers fill those roles also, but they should not have to! If a child has additional needs that is different, but not being trained because a school has to take children whether they are or not is short sighted and stupid.

Hope that you’re chat with nursery goes well OP. I would listen to your instincts - you know your boy the best.

Unless there is some sort of development delay, I would expect him to be toilet trained by around 3.

I have met many parents who use a lack of speech as an excuse not to toilet train but it's just that - an excuse.

I would, however, have issues with the way nursery have approached it.

Sending a note home saying the are planning that is out of order. It's up to you and your child when you start potty training. Best time is the holidays when you can spend the days at home. Just politely tell them you are not PT yet.

We just toilet trained my DS a few weeks ago. He will be 3 in June. He seems about average age for his peers to be honest. He was ready though. He got it very quickly and has had no accidents after the first couple of days. Hopefully it stays that way! He didn’t need to run around naked for weeks on end. We did just top half and pants for the first few days only.

He goes to nursery 2 mornings a week and I think that has definitely helped. They’ve been unofficially training him since January (they did ask me though) by sitting him on the toilet when the other kids go, presumably before they changed his nappy. I assume they never made a big deal about it though as he never actually went on the toilet until I trained him, just exposed him to it. However he knew what to do and wasn’t scared or anything. They did tell me a few months ago they thought he was ready and that I should start, but it wasn’t a good time for us with a holiday and a non sleeping baby etc so I told them I wanted to wait a bit.

Ds1 (now 20) wasn't potty trained until well over 3 (despite being in washable nappies).
Nursery did the same thing of trying all the still untrained children in his class with pants and changes of clothes.
One week later they admitted defeat and we left it a few months.
When he was ready he was out of nappies day and night when his similar aged friend next door was still in night nappies for ages even though she'd been potty trained since 2.

If you're late 20's- early 30's and older... you would not have been 3 and in nappies when you were a kid!! Most of us were potty trained BEFORE we turned 2yrs or just after.

Gosh, I must be several years younger than I thought. I was trained just after my 3rd birthday, as indeed were both of mine (it's almost like there might be some genetic components at play here...). Here was me thinking I'd been born in 1985. So wonderful to wake up to the news that I'm actually in my mid 20s not 30s! Although I'm looking a bit rough for 26...

That said OP, I know the wisdom is that it's easier in summer, but I must say I've done one in summer one winter and they were both fine.

I honestly can't see the issue Speak to them and say you are willing to give it a try but if he not improving after two weeks you're going to delay until the summer hols. Just let him wear loose fitting jogging bottoms not particularly easier in the summer than now.

They probably don't give it much thought, may be just next in line as can't train them all at same time so may stagger it accross room/do it according to age. Do they provide nappies as part of care, sometimes they want to train to avoid cost of them? I was happy to get dc out of nappies and would have welcomed help as needed to do before preschool. Could try and see how they get one, they might realise quickly that he's not ready and then easy to say you will wait until hols when you have time to help.