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?

Is she constipated?

poor parenting. Bad advice.
As a general rule, disabilities notwithstanding, when a child can reliably walk, they can control their pelvic muscles and they can use the toilet. People are just bloody lazy.

They don't expect a child to be in nappies you can use training pants and they will take children regularly but what they can't do is take a child that needs sitting every half an hour and has accidents in between ....would you want your toddler sloshing around in other child's wee because the three staff members are already toileting and cleaning floors from other children? A ratio of 1 staff to 5 in a two year old room means one staff maybe outside one I'm toilet leaving one in main room who could already in your let nursery do it plan be sorting out a wee/poop puddle....doesn't leave quality interaction time does it?

@jannier training pants simply make toilet training harder.

In what way? I thought pull-ups were brilliant.

My dd toilet trained herself at 18 months refused to wear nappies and while older people thought this was totally normal a lot of mums my age thought she was too young and I had somehow forced her.
My autistic ds is 5 and toilet training has been hard I stopped nappies at 2.5 when he started pulling them off but it was a failure. Then again at 3 but took more than a year of lots of accidents for him to get it. But then I also see parents of kids who have no additional needs at 3 who I think just buy into the they're too young narrative. It's crazy.
If you go to countries where they don't have access to disposable nappies its very different.

@Withinthesewalls If parents are trying to toilet train by not using nappies, and nurseries are insisting on pull ups because they do not want to deal with accidents, it sends mixed messages to the child.
Pull-ups can encourage some children to sit in wetness rather than use the potty and delay potty training. They are also expensive.

@Zooeyzo I agree 18 months is normal for a child without SEN. But even on this thread there are people saying that is impossible.

So are nappies though

I found pull ups quite helpful

I potty trained my daughter at 19 months and son at 22 months and when other mums found out they were potty trained the attitude was definitely that I must have forced them somehow and they were too young and I must be a pushy parent. We used reusable nappies though so they always knew when they were wet and to be honest the work involved with that did give me the incentive to get them out of nappies quickly. I did find that they were still quite biddable at that age though and interestingly many of the children we know who weren’t potty trained until 3+ seemed to have issues with withholding poo and being scared to go on the toilet and because they were older they were more stubborn and less open to persuasion.
I also see an article on parenting pages all the time saying that there is one easy way to potty train, “don’t”. They advocate that a child should have control over the process and will do it when they want to so I guess if you are just waiting for your child to decide one day they want to use the toilet then potty training is going to be much later than when parent led.

If you had conversations with the teachers about it they are very unlikely to have thought that. I had a child in my class in a similar situation and I just felt sorry for them all having such a tough time with it!

4 of my kids were out of nappies by 13 months (1 of them around 11 months). 1 was nearly 5 - and was still wet sometimes until she was 10. Turns out she is autistic. I don’t get people keeping their kids in nappies for so long unless it’s necessary.

Pull-ups are basically nappies and feel the same as nappies to the child.

They aren't like the 'training pants' of old which were like Terry pants and held a tiny drip off wee and felt wet to the child.

I used pull ups as a training pant some of the time and it worked

It was the odd time I think (at least 25 years ago) and at nighttime

Why would a terry lined pant make things harder?
If I used a pull up it would be over pants while going on a journey.

I agree.
When I start toilet training my toddler, health visitor told me to get the cheapest nappies I could find. Even they were too good and kept child dry.

I had my DD reliably potty trained at 15 months and both DS's by about 20 months. The older 2 wore cloth nappies so felt if they were wet. The third was in disposable nappies for about 17 months then switched to cloth nappies so he could feel wet. Disposable nappies suck wee away from baby so they don't feel wet.

Not going to lie I had to make a nuisance of myself, just waiting for the referral letter which I’m told will be a couple of weeks

You can still buy training pants like that, I used them for my eldest, didn't work for my youngest though he didn't care if he was soaked down to his socks.

Training pants are good if you have a dribbler (usually a boy issue). That was the signal DS needed to go in the beginning and it saved us a lot of washing trousers!

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have previous experience of fighting to get help for an unrelated medical issue for DD so if that's what I have to do I will. Thank you for replying.

I used cloth nappies. I waited til my DC asked to use the toilet - one was 2, one was 2.5. They were dry and clean quickly and easily - they didn't have accidents for a year. I believe that happens when you are 'parent-led'. I remember researching it and people started 'potty training' earlier in the past but the DC took much longer to be reliably clean and dry day and night.

Mine didn't need to be taught that.

I suspect this is the real reason.

This is the research I read too.