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 work in a mainstream primary school. We have seen an increase, year on year, of kids coming to us who, had they been starting school 10 years ago would have been placed in a Special School due to their complex SEND. Not just social communication and learning needs, physical disabilities as well. But now there are so few Special School places available that a lot of parents don't have the option. Of the few children that are offered a place at Special School, some parents turn it down as they want their child in mainstream.

There absolutely are parents out there who simply cannot be bothered to toilet train their child. I have had parents say to me outright that they assumed school staff would do it, or that they "haven't had time". But these parents are definitely in the minority. IME the lack of specialist provision for children with complex needs is the main reason why school staff are having to deal with way more toileting issues.

Well exactly.

My daughter started pre-school when she was 2 and a half. This was 25 years ago and back then they wouldn't accept children if they were still in nappies.

I'd agree with the disposable nappies and "waiting until ready" comments.

My DD was potty trained at 18 months 5 years ago. I worked, but had a childminder with an older child who was training, so I sent in a potty with her so she could "practice" with him as they were really great friends and she took to it well and liked it in her setting (not no accidents or no nappies, but clearly did a wee on the potty or a poo from time to time when he was going) so I scrapped the nappies at home and went for it. Very easy. My childminder was happy with it, because she was taking him all the time, so they could just do potty for fun together and it just built into the schedule. I didn't expect her to train her at all, just to give her a chance to be "grown up". Yes, she had the occasional accident out and about, but she was fully trained and capable of going within a week.

I knew my son was ready at 2, but my childminder was ill, so one opportunity passed and then another one passed because my son got chickenpox. But when I tried at 2yrs 5 months he was ready enough. Not in the sense that he was actually interested in the potty (he'd still be in nappies now if I asked him), but in the sense that he knew when he was doing a poo (could see he would take himself somewhere quiet), he understood quite a lot of instructions and was interacting well. He was bemused but happy to sit on the potty for a chocolate button initially, then really proud of himself when we rewarded him for doing it, then we scrapped the buttons and just praised him. He loved it and I really didn't want to hold him back, which would have been the case if I had waited until he was actually properly interested.

(And when I did train him, I did it over a holiday from work - I was off with him for a few days before and then I was on a holiday abroad with the extended family for a week - it meant my older child still had lots of attention from others and I could focus on him and it was in the summer so he could be nappy free and outside (and in a villa, no carpets). A lot of people would have not bothered because they were going on holiday - I hear that a lot and people ask all the time on here, but it was good week and worth doing.)

Where children have a medical reason, delays in access to healthcare won't be helping.

DS1 trained at 3. I tried with a potty in the summer at 2.5, but he had zero interest. He also had speech delays. At 3, he was bigger, able to use a toilet and more communicative and within a few weeks we'd mostly cracked it with few accidents.
We used washable nappies so the ecological impact was an extra wash per week (sibling in washables too)

DS2 was self motivated to use toilets by 2.5 and very easy. Was nearly 6 before he was dry in the night though.

DS1's ASD diagnosis was at 9.

I remember random accidents happening in primary school up until y4 (80s/90s). Although the last person who had an accident may well have had further ND conditions than the "mild" one that had been identified. It happened because the teacher refused permission to the toilet.

That’s a thousand or so extra nappies to landfill..

Thank you @MrBanana for your post about intimate care in schools taking time AWAY from ND children. I’m a TA in a Reception class. This year I have one child who needs 1:1 care (whom incidentally is toilet trained). At the start of the year I had 4 children who needed support with toileting - only one in pull ups but the others didn’t know how to wipe etc. Not a major hardship for me but any time I needed to provide intimate care, my 1:1 was left unattended which is potentially dangerous for him.

The law could be changed. I'm sure there would be broad support for doing so.

I believe it's lazy parenting in most cases, you hear it all the time that people are waiting till they are ready.

Both mine were training by 2 yo, they are now 18 and 15 so wasn't in the 90s. Most of their friends were 3-3.5. DS2 is ND and took fractionally longer (in particular when his environment changed but that makes sense with his autism). They showed no signs of being ready other than being physically able to get their pants up/down but we just trained them. It took less than 2 weeks. People seem to give up if they have accidents for more than a day.

When my DC were little ( early 2000s) they couldn’t go to nursery at 3 until dry but now they can go to school in nappies!!!

I took a potty along everywhere- under the buggy, in the boot, had one downstairs in the living room in case of last minute urges. Both were dry at 2 yr 6-9m

It would be extremely difficult to change the wording of the law like that. Currently a delay in toilet training (for whatever reason) can be considered a disability, which schools can’t discriminate against.

As always, compassionate sense.

I think the school should have the right to push for a child to be toilet trained before they start school .I am sure that would help speed up the process!
With the exception of special needs children.
i think it is because more people are working full time these days .When I worked at nurseries we used to take the lead from the parents and as soon as they had pull up or pants on we made a lot of effort to help with the process. It might be different now with staffing issues that they don’t have the time? I don’t work in the sector now.

You think there would be broad support for schools discriminating against disabled and developmmentally,delayed children ??
Says a lot about you I guess ,never mind inclusion.

It’s not the ND chn, of course allowances need to be made. All of the chn that had not been dry for reception at my school had parents that did not think it was a priority.

Not at all. The school will know who has real special needs, and exceptions can be made Does not apply to the vast majority of children.

I used EC with both my children and they were both dry by their 2nd birthdays. I do believe that because we encouraged familiarity with the potty from birth they never learnt to be fully reliant on a nappy and were aware from a young age of the feeling of needing to go and releasing urine/poo. A lot of the research around EC and early training suggests that children who are always in nappies are essentially taught to go whenever and not to recognise the sensation of needing to go. Therefore they've been taught to wee and poo in a nappy and toilet training then requires unlearning that initial aspect which is harder than not learning to go in the nappy from the start.
There are always going to be children with additional needs and I'm not commenting on the parents being lazy etc, just wanted to share another idea on the issue.

It can be very difficult to establish SEN in reception. You have clearly NT and toilet trained children on one hand and then eg non-verbal children with an ASD diagnosis/global delay/physical disability in nappies on the other, but there are a hundred shades of grey in between.

Some children seem delayed in picking up toilet training but ‘get it’ after a while, others are delayed and as you get to know them, you uncover other issues that nobody has picked up on, or the parents were reluctant to accept and some time later a diagnosis comes. Others, you find out that the parents have said all the right things, but haven’t toilet trained them-either due to their own mental health difficulties, abuse, neglect, having just arrived from another country and experiencing lots of trauma, not having the time and also those who just aren’t bothering.

It can be very difficult to say before you let them start, ‘ok-child A has clear SEN, we will have you in our school wearing nappies, but child B-we’re not sure of the reason, so you just can’t come.

What needs to happen is more support for families in establishing the reasons and how they can be helped. Health visitors and children’s centres would be a start! Plus funding for schools so society isn’t expecting one poor reception teacher to change nappies, toilet train children, plus ensure that all 30 children are making expected progress and everything is tip top when Ofsted rear their arbitrary and inconsistent heads.

Completely agree Jannier.

I was a single parent who worked full time and chose a bank holiday weekend to potty train. Booked the Friday off and pretty much cracked it in 4 days. It was hard work and he had quite a few accidents and there was lots of washing of pants and scrubbing the carpet.

You decide whether to make it a priority or not.

The initial 'wait until ready' was pushed by a Doctor sponsored by Pampers. It kind of suits them to sell more nappies.

Wouldn't surprise me if some of the online posts and information given to nurseries and health care staff comes from similar sponsors.

More children are spending time in nurseries, are nurseries helping with toilet training or are they finding nappies more convenient?

My limited experience with two kids is basically you need 3 or 4 days at home with them. And lots patience and buckets of encouragement.
Trying to get those 3/4 days when kids are in nurseries and time off is precious isn't easy.

I don't think you can really go on historic anecdotes ("I was fully trained by 18 months"). We all know that competitive mums lie, even back then.

My own experience - I started encouraging DS1 around 15 months. It was a failure - constant accidents, cleaning up and disappointment. When left to his own devices, he was clean and dry by 2.5 years, well ahead of nursery.

DS2 did go to nursery in pull-ups. Despite encouraging him earlier, he was always too busy on concentrating on something else. Being in pants was not his priority. However, when he did go to nursery, he quickly fell into the class routine and was trained in no time.

DDs 1 - 3 were all clean and dry before nursery, but we didn't particularly pressure them. I think 2.5 years would have been typical.

Fortunately, we got free Pampers from work :)

my mum in the 60s and 70s had no washing machine, and used the square terry nappies, and a Napisan bucket. I was the youngest of 5. She had to wash nappies in bath and then put through spinner and dry outside or in. There was no wondering is child had special needs or not re potty training, end of.

More parents are working full time so may not want the bother of toilet training over weekends and wait until they have a block of time off. We see some children we know are ready but it doesn't fit into the parents schedule very easily so they wait and then their child becomes resistant to it as they are no longer interested right now. Many parents are just starting later.

However some children do have physical issues outside their control such as constipation so they find it harder to recognise signals.

We have had more NT children still in nappies in our preschool room over the last few years and some are still struggling at the start of the summer holidays prior to starting school.