Toilet training before school

[jackass232]

I saw a piece on the news last night about how there's been a big rise in the number of children starting school not fully toilet trained. I think the figures were something like 13% of kids in any reception class are not fully trained and that teachers are on average spending 2.5 hours per day dealing with toileting accidents and issues.

Obviously this is quite shocking (I expected to see a MN post about it actually, sorry if I missed one) but I can sympathise as my ds started reception with issues surrounding pooing - mostly holding onto it, becoming constipated and having leaks. I remember always packing spare pants for him and I know the TA had to help him change a lot. This wasn't anything to do with laziness on my part. He was just hard to toilet train and continued with these issues for quite some years. The school was always lovey about it but I felt very embarrassed and upset on behalf of my son.

I feel the general narrative behind this story is that parents just can't be arsed to toilet train their kids and are happily sending them in and letting teachers deal with them. But that's not always the case. I know it's a big drain on schools but what's the answer? And why has there been such a rise?

I don't really know what the answer is but FWIW OP I can really relate to your post.

I've had similar issues with my DS (but bladder, not bowel). He is NT, has no SEN and no other physical disabilities. He is under medical advice and his issue was initially physical but also seems to have a psychological component. The hospital see kids like him all the time so it's more common than people realise.

I think a lot of the points on here are completely justified, but am just posting to stress how hard it can be to have a child with an issue like this. And people who haven't had to be in this situation (understandably) just don't get it.

We did try and keep trying with older two - read books spoke to nursery - I did my absolutely best to get them ready but they still had accidents -not weekly or daily but many more than I was expecting or staff were happy with.

It depends what you consider potty trained? They can have the odd accident but still be considered trained I think?

My DS had only just turned 4 when he started school and still had the odd (rare) accident, I don't think that's unusual for a just turned 4 year old? My dd is the same age now and also occasionally has an accident, but as a winter born baby is still at pre school which seems to be acceptable

Edit - they were both trained at just turned 2, I can't see how that's much different to 18 months

having read the posts, I'll add

• disposables far far too cheap
• in UK discriminating is against the Law

Toilet training is really hard work. It means your kid running about bare bummed for weeks and accidents all over the place. It means patience and monitoring. Lets face it a lot of people cannot be bothered with this and/or work full time and are not at home to give them the one to one attention.
I was potty trained by 3 and so was DS. But my cousin who did absolutely everything I did and worked really hard at it, his DD wasn't potty trained in time for school - she just didn't get it. They didn't allow her to wear nappies.
She isn't neuro-diverse. Nobody knows why she couldn't get it. She's 8 now and it was around 7 years old that she was dry at night.

It used to be they couldn’t go to nursery without being trained so that spurred parents and children on.
Cloth nappies were hard work for parents and unpleasant for child so incentive to potty train.
Children with special needs used to go to special schools. A relative worked in a special school nursery in 70s and 80s, a big part of her job was getting child toilet trained if at all possible as it made like easier for carers and more dignified for child.
I know someone who now works as a TA in reception with several children in class developmentally under 12 months. Years ago they wouldn’t have been in a primary school class.

It's hard for working parents to train a child with any consistency when they're going to nursery, might have a long journey there, and of course they don't get constant one-to-one attention when they're there.

I didn't work until my kids were at school. To potty train, I cleared my diary for a week or two and gave my all to it - not venturing out too far until I was confident they were likely to be able to stay dry.

I think it's confusing for a child to be in pants one minute and told to hold it - but then back in nappies the next when it's ok to wee. Consistency is everything.

Gross & lazy & don't care about the environment. Also prone to going on about the cost of them 🤷‍♀️🥱🙄

I also agree with this. I used Terry nappies and my child potty trained early and really easily. Much earlier than the other kids in the NCT group. Coincidence maybe, but I think it's been shown that using disposable nappies results in later potty training.

My child could speak by the time we potty trained and actively said they wanted to stop wearing them because they were uncomfortable. I don't think disposables a) give an incentive to the child or the parent to potty train early, or b) allow children to associate weeing with feeling wet and uncomfortable in the same way.

I really really hate disposable nappies. Terrible for the environment too. I also don't agree with "waiting for them to be ready" if it's in the context of the parent just waiting for it to magically happen.

Obviously some children are not average, and some have medical issues, but I don't think there's any reason why children in general can't be potty trained earlier like they were in the past.

I also read something that said there was an ideal age range for potty training and outside of this made potty training harder and caused issues.

Lastly, I think what people mean by potty trained has changed. I consider my child was potty trained when they could hold it for a few hours and reliably go when I sat them on the potty, which I'd do every few hours. I know people who seemed to think their child wasn't ready for training unless they could wander off to the toilet and go completely independently or tell them they needed to go.

Lastly, I think what people mean by potty trained has changed. I consider my child was potty trained when they could hold it for a few hours and reliably go when I sat them on the potty, which I'd do every few hours. I know people who seemed to think their child wasn't ready for training unless they could wander off to the toilet and go completely independently or tell them they needed to go.
I agree, part of potty training is that there is a role for an adult and the adult supports the child (eg. We're going to the supermarket. Try for the potty before we get in the car. / Being out the house and making the deliberate decision to say "let's try for the toilet now we've had snack").

I do think that sometimes there's a shift to place developmentally inappropriate levels of responsibility on children, usually by lazier parents who are very selective in how they interpret the term "child centred".

My children are in their 30s now.
Nursery wouldn't except children in nappies. My kids were trained by 2 and a half.
My autistic son was the quickest.
I do think it's a lot harder now for parents working full time and I do think attitudes and expectations have changed.
My grandson is 2 and half and uses the big boy toilet, but if he has a day of a couple of accidents my daughter asks should she put him back in a nappy.
I tell her there will be the odd bad day or accidents it's part of learning.

I went and looked up that study.

The question is worded:

Who do you think is most responsible for a child's development of each of the following skills?

Toilet training (that is, toileting "mishaps" occur frequently rather than occasionally)

Completely parents - 50%
Mostly parents - 36%
An even split - 11%
Mostly school - 2% (rounded from 1.6%)
Completely school - 1% (rounded from 0.7%)

It is a strangely worded question, as the other skills refer to a state where you'd think you'd be aiming for (e.g. the next one is "Independent eating and drinking (i.e. using cutlery, drinking out of an open cup)") whereas this one is almost reversed with the given example seeming to be an unfinished TT state. I wonder if some people were reading it like whose responsibility is it to deal with accidents that happen in school?

Either way, 86% of parents think it's the parent's responsibility rather than the school's.

Of course it's wrong and frustrating but all the examples you quote are typical lazy parenting and the reason why so many are not trained.....the settings still ask parents to do it by taking some time off the fact parents no longer all think parenting is their responsibility is irrelevant you should see the way 10 year olds eat they can't hold a knife and fork.

That's interesting - frequently is also vague and think DC primary had different idea of it than I expected.

I wonder if some people were reading it like whose responsibility is it to deal with accidents that happen in school?

Another good point - I certainly didn't expect school to toilet train just be bit more understanding when younger kids struggled.

The EYFS range is between 24 and 40 months with most being between 30 and 36 months when they display the signs of being ready which includes having a dry nappy for over an hour.

But it called parenting you take time time off for this once in their lifetime and can plan something like the Easter weekend so only a few days needed.

I do remember children having accidents in reception class when I was at school in the early 90s, though? I can even remember which children it was that seemed to have them every so often. So I don't think it's an entirely new phenomenon.

You really think you have a better sense of what my child understands than I do? Even though I'm with him every day?

He does have a little friend who is already very engaged with potty training, but his friend has older siblings so he just copies them. I think maybe if DS had a sibling he might be more engaged with it. From what I've observed, children with older siblings generally seem to walk/talk/grow up a little bit faster.

Thanks for looking this up! What an oddly worded question.

I think I’d read it I think as ‘whose responsibility is it to deal with a child that’s still at the stage of not quite fully trained and is having regular accidents’. And my response would probably be ‘an even split’ of school and parents, in reference to my 2YO because he’s in a school nursery and he goes every day so they’re far more likely to get an accident than I am.

Even weirder still that the next question is about a cup and cutlery. Aren’t those things you’d expect to get on a 1YO milestone checklists?

I'm another one that read the report and opened the data tables as it didnt really chime with my experience in school but it does match more when i read it.

The media made it sound like nearly a quater of the class was in nappies and loads of parents thought its up to the school to sort it.

That question is a bit crap, isn’t it-it’s not really clear what it means!

I think especially with a new unfamiliar setting toileting accidents are normal. My first was trained during a lockdown via Oh Crap which meant it was a long while before we could do Block 4 which is public toilets and more unusual settings.

You're having a laugh that can't be true, surely?

Yeah, the last couple of years have seen an increase at my school. Always been odd accidents obviously but now we get regular soiling.

DD was reliable at just over 2, having started at 18 months. DS started much later and is not quite reliable now at 3 years 8 months. Things that made it easier with DD: I started earlier so the long process was over earlier; I was home with her all the time (on maternity leave); we used cloth nappies exclusively (which feels wet so they are more aware); she's a girl.

That's a pretty good representative list of why people are doing it later, I think. Lots of societal factors. I think there's a really pervasive idea that you can toilet train in a week, and actually that's really unusual and unlikely.