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 had my first child in the age of terry nappies, and she was clean and dry at 18 months. It took just over a week to do it, with constant attention to what she was doing. After 18 months of having buckets full of soaking nappies all over the place, together with an airer full of nappies, that you were desperate to get dry and put away, you simply couldn't wait to get your kids into proper pants.

The other difference is, that we didn't have a mobile phone glued to our sides, distracting us all the time.

Of course I do realise that things change with different generations, but believe me, it's not always for the better.

So I challenge you young Mums and Dads to get cracking on this, as it is YOUR responsibility and I kid you not, it really can be done in a week BUT YOU have to put in the effort.