To be surprised at "at 2 he should be potty trained"

[Anxiousally]

Read an article in my local news paper a few days ago about a little boy who had been expelled from nursery untill his behaviour improves due to him being violent.
In the story his gran had given the paper a statement saying they felt it was unfair on him as he's only 2, he's still practically a baby he's not even toilet trained.
The paper posted the link to the story on their Facebook page and there were a lot of comments slating the family for complaining about the way the nursery had dealt with this child and then someone copied the part of the story where it mentioned about the toilet training and said "at 2 he bloody should be toilet trained and I was shocked. DS will be 2 next month and I'm not even contemplating potty training as I know he's just not ready yet.
Aibu to be surprised at this opinion, now I'm thinking DS should be trying now and worried he's behind?!

@FraterculaArctica don't worry, you're not the only one! DS is 3.10, "toilet trained" the week after his 3rd birthday, in inverted commas because he still has loads of pee accidents. He goes through good and bad spells but it's not unusual for him to have 5 instances of wet pants per day. Recently he's been much improved since we started using a star chart. He gets a star every time he goes to the toilet with dry pants. Each star gets him 5 minutes on the tablet in the evening while I'm cooking dinner. I'm sure parenting experts would frown on the combination of bribery and screen time but it has definitely reduced my washing pile so I'm happy! They all have different strengths and weaknesses but I don't know any adults (barring medical conditions, obviously) who aren't toilet trained so I don't really mind that DS isn't so great at this - there are much better areas to have your talents lie, in my opinion!

At two a child should be potty trained or at least on the way to be. There are kids in my sons preschool aged four who are still in nappies and have accidents it’s ridiculous.

YouAndMe, the point about washable nappies in the past, is that so many parents didn't have automatic washing machines, let alone dryers.

Trying to dry a load of nappies in winter - on a clothes horse in front of the fire - no central heating either - was no joke.
I remember all this from younger siblings in the 50s.

There was much more of an incentive to potty train earlier then.

It took 3 days to potty train my daughter, she was 20 months old. Before her 2nd birthday she was out of nappies during bed time. It was the best thing to do, she was ready. Not all children are the same though. I worked in nurseries before and I've seen 4 years old in nappies...

eighteen months is the youngest recommended. Before that and it can be physically and emotionally damaging

Any actual evidence for that? Because up to abut 30 years ago pretty much every child that ever lived was toilet trained by about that age. Have all human children been physically and emotionally damaged by it? And how, exactly? In what way?

DailyMail that may be ds 6 who cracked it at 4.5, wow hoick up the judgy pants, despite me trying and cleaning up wee and poo for a whole year (reward charts, taking to toilet timing, toilet training alarms, treats, nice pants, taring me hair out). It did not click for him until over 4. That was when he was ready. You can lead a horse to water, but cannot make it drink. Though he has SN, so that probably was the case. But dd now 11, cracked it at 3.2 years, earlier than ds, and she has ASD, learning difficulties, developmental delay. I think she disliked the feel or wee and poo on her, but ds would not care less.

DailyMail how do you know that those children that you have seen at your child's pre school does not have SN, have you asked the teacher? Not all kids with SN have a look, some look like NT kids.

Gettinglike - yes I understand that washable nappies in the past were a lot more work than they are now, and that would have been an incentive to try and train and earlier.

But I have seen plenty of people (on this thread and elsewhere) talking about the intrinsic properties of washable versus disposable nappies as if they make any significant difference, e.g that kids train later now because they don't feel wet in disposables, and I don't think that's really the case.

We used washable nappies, made no difference in speed of nappy changes. It was just passed 3rd birthday and he had accidents for a while after.

At the 2 year check the HV asked when we were going to potty train my very prem baby. He was only just walking, not talking and definitely nowhere near ready. I'm certainly not going to push until he's ready.

Argh! Speed of POTTY TRAINING

DS1 couldn't do it at that age - he was still having accidents at 5 (and he's only just dry through the night at 7.5, after using an alarm).

DS2 trained himself at 2.5, and was dry through the night within 6 months of being dry through the day - accident free, and with no effort from me.

Different kids are different, and sometimes you've just got to wait a while, they can't all be trained into it (and, honestly, my MIL spoke about how she trained DP, and it basically wasn't training - it was lots of wet pants for months, it was telling him off, and it was leaving him sat on a potty for large amounts of time each day... doesn't sound like a good way to do it if you have the choice to me)

My son was nearly three and he declared from that moment on he would only wear big boy pants and so he did. Only a few accidents and he got the hang of it super quick because he was ready. No point until they are - just more stress all round for everyone.

I remember when mums started leaving toilet training until kids were at least three, and the message then was it much easier and quicker to toilet train than at an earlier age. I think this is true for some kids. But some kids do need actual toilet training that takes time. And I wonder sometimes if leaving until 3 can make it harder to toilet train those kids?

Maybe. The people best qualified to make that call are generally going to be the parents. If a parent tells me their child wasn't ready until 3, most of the time they'll be better qualified to assess that than I would be. If a parent tells me they left it til 3 but in retrospect it would probably have been easier earlier, same.

I tried to toilet train DS at 2.5. We spent 3 days on it, with absolutely zero success. As in, he was totally happy sitting on the potty or even the toilet, but had no recognition of when he was about to go. Even Gina Ford says if you've not had an improvement after 3 days, give up and try later!

Agree with Doug - where is the evidence of that? That's a bit random! Imagine telling that to women in rural India and Africa, I'm sure they'd be very confused!

Whilst I have no problem with parents potty training ard 3yrs old I don't agree that it is just developmental and parental involvement has no bearing. We can choose to spend time listening to our kids' needs from early on, recognising the signs, introducing the toilet early on etc I read a bit on elimination communication and It was very interesting. Now I accept I didn't have the time to follow it all through but I have done as much as I could, introducing the toilet early on, nice and easy, and all my kids have been on the toilet for 'number 2' as soon as they could sit (and pretty consistently) and that made my life much easier (with washable nappies) overall.

I used to find it fascinating that my MIL could tell via Skype if my baby daughter was having a wee (in her nappy)! I didn't have a clue but she obviously knew how to read the signs much better than me!

Are the commenters my DM. She is still going on about the fact that DS and DD we're in nappies till 3.1 & 3.3 respectively. According to her I should have been putting them on the potty every 30 minutes for weeks till they got it (but nappies at bed time were ok until 5).

All easy for her to say as she was a SAHM.

As it was I put the potty out at 2 and told them how to use it. They did off and on. But mostly stayed in nappies. With both of them they one day said "no more nappies! Potty!" And that was that. Maybe 2 accidents each at night. None in the day ever.

My DM still says I spoiled them.

I don't think anyone can say when a child should be trained by, its such an individual thing and nobody's business outside of the family. However i found it much easier to train mine from about age 2. i just waited until i had at least a week off work, it was done in a few days and we had very few accidents. They were obviously physically ready and there was very little drama. My dc were just more biddable and loved praise and rewards at 2, by 3 they were more stubborn and less open to persuasion. i worked in a pre school and as a childminder and by 3 a lot of children seemed to have developed issues around toileting. Possibly parents who train at two have lower expectations too whereas by 3 there is some pressure to have it done.

I started letting both my kids get faniliar with the potty from about 9 months. My ds was trained before his second birthday and my dd who is 20 months is on her way to being the same.

I do realise kids are all different but partly feel it is a bit of lazy parenting. I have a friend who just couldnt fit it into her schedule to train her child. Thats just crazy. Obviously children with ASN is a different story entirely.

Can i ask when you know to start? Mine is 21 months, we know when she’s doing a poo (face/sounds/goes off to a corner to do it) and when we ask her she’ll say yes or no and is always right, so that side of it she’s aware of, what about wee’s?

@ineedwine99 for me it was when they were aware they needed to go rather than when they were actually doing it and understood it. So when they could say/indicate that they knew they needed to go.

My boys were both about 2 and 3 quarters before they were potty trained, my granddaughter soon after 2, my grandson took longer, 3 and a half! They all get there in the end, although it seems that some children are now staring school in nappies

Thanks Smeddum

@ineedwine99 other than that (after potty training all 3 of mine) I have zero advice 😂 other than when they’re ready they’ll tell you!

Wouldn’t dream of starting before 2 and a half and then always in the summer.

dailyMail your posts made me laugh