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?

The news article stating teachers spend 2.5 hours per day dealing with toilet is absolute bullshit.

I feel for you with the withholding. My DS had constipation from birth and withheld from 18 months till past 3. It took a lot of work but we managed to potty train him at 3.3 so we were lucky.

It's awful to feel judged as being lazy when there are other very challenging issues at play.

No wonder teachers are leaving in their droves. The remit of their role is ridiculous now.

We are both working full time. We have no family nearby for support. We both coordinated our leave and took it to potty train our DD. We’ve potty trained at just over 2. Two parents working full time would have a minimum of 40 days not including bank holidays available to them to use to potty train. If they have older children and need to manage that leave around school holidays, then they happen every 6-7 weeks.

Also the rise has happened since the 90s, when there were significantly more households with two working parents or lone parents than in the sixties. I was born in the 90s and was potty trained at 18m by a single mum working full time because she couldn’t afford nappies anymore.

I‘ve had 2 different experiences so far. DD1 is NT was toilet trained fully at 26 months, I took a week off work when she turned 2 and she cracked it mostly but still had some accidents for the next 2 months and it’s been nothing since then, both in the day and night.

DD2 on the other hand has ASD and didn’t walk until 18 months and has speech delays. She was potty trained fully when she turned 3. We started when she was 2.5 when she could understand a bit of what potty meant but she was wearing pull ups and we were just taking her to the toilet when we go, the childminder also took her to the toilet every 2 hours and this lasted for 5 months till she got the concept. That’s when I took a week off work and fully trained her and she got it and was fully trained by 3. Then, she didn’t have the speech to ask to go to the toilet but she takes herself there and if we’re going out, we remind her to go.

Her speech was limited till she turned 4 and when she was 2.5 (speech was almost non existent) I asked the childminder to take her to the toilet every 2 hours because I was trying to create a pattern, she said there’s no way she can potty train if she can’t talk and say she needs the toilet but I didn’t listen and insisted she does it anyway and I’m glad I did because we won’t have started until she was 4 if I had listened to her and this would have made matters worse. so I can see how some parents with children with SEN may be misinformed as well. Sometimes child care providers also want an easier life and are not willing to work with parents.

I guess if you were washing reusable nappies you’d be far less fussed by accidents, because if you got 3 in the potty and 3 accidents you’ve got half the amount of laundry so it’s a win for you. If you’re using disposables like most people do now, that’s a load of pretty gross laundry that you didn’t have before. So it’s very tempting to say they’re not ready and give up. Resuables mean there’s no real downside in persevering because you’re default is washing shit 🤣

Also if you’re both working nursery have to be supportive and they aren’t always, and more mums work now. Ours didn’t even have toilets attached to the young toddler room. And modern life is busy. I definitely delayed with DD1 because she had signs of readiness around her 2nd birthday but I knew I couldn’t handle it whilst flying long haul. It’s hard, I don’t think many parents set out to be purposefully lazy.

We are still dealing with double incontinence issues at secondary age and I could highlight the degree of effort/persistence it needed to try and get services over the past 10 yrs. We were discharged automatically during Covid due to long term staff sickness of the 1 (1!) person running the continence clinic so I have every sympathy with parents who haven’t managed to do it. But equally for those without problems it does require an investment of time and energy and seeing as the majority of both parents are working these days ,often full time, perhaps that is impacting on many aspects of care.

@x2boys - if you read my post I said 'medical issues aside' although there clearly is not enough provision for children who need that support. That said I don't think it's right that teachers have to change a child's nappy, perhaps schools need to employ a person to do all this stuff. Teachers not childminders, they are there to teach and parents expect their children to go to school to learn.

When I taught FS2 there was a year when the toilets were rebuilt with hand dryers. The amount of toilet accidents skyrocketed , from children who were previously toilet trained reliably. This was mid year as well, soI knew it wasn't the group. Also many children admitted they put off going to the toilet because they were scared of the dryers.

One of my son's has MLD. He was out of nappies in the day aged nearly 5. Not that long ago he would have been in special needs school but these days a lot of children with MLD will be in mainstream and so mainstream schools will now have more children starting reception in nappies.

When i first started working in playgroup ( ancient times) the rule was children had to be clean and dry by the time they started on or close to their 3rd birthday. I don't remember ant children not starting because they were not toilet trained. Then along came Mr Blair and his government he signed us up to the EHRA and insisted this was not inclusive. Combined with the rise of children in full day care this meant parents didn't have the time or the inclination to try. Now we have parents that say it isn't their job to toilet train their children !
If children could be clean and dry by age three 25 years ago what has biologically changed in our children in quarter of a century to stop them being toilet trained by 3 these days? Nothing is the answer only the parents have changed.

It’s not just that disposable nappies make parents less keen to start, they also make it harder for the kids to recognise when they’re wet. Also if you can feel the wet, you’re likely to want to stop having to sit in your own piss.

I used reusable nappies for 3 of my 4 children. With the other one (DC2 as it happens) I used disposables because I wasn’t in a place to do otherwise. He was well over 3 before he reliably potty trained. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my other three were all potty trained between 24-27 months. And I have two ND kids, but they’re both in my earlier potty training batch.

The average age of children in the 90s was 24 to 30 months. Not 12 to 18....that was much earlier with Terry nappies and shams

I did read your post and a child who is not toilet trained by 4/5 IS Developmentally delayed regardless of the reason for that
And also it does matter what YOU Think should happen schools are not allowed to discriminate against children in nappies

When my son started reception last year the only child in his class still in nappies had special needs. It's not a massive rise in lazy parents like the newspapers make out it's just a rise in special needs kids.
Just my opinion
I mean I'm self admittedly lazy and got my children out of nappies asap so I wouldn't have to keep changing them 😂

Good for you but Neuro Diversity covers a huge spectrum.

I do find myself rather surprised by the posts and replies on here surrounding toilet training - kids starting well beyond 3, ‘they’re not ready, wait a while’. For the majority of those cases, parents have left it too late and/or a training incorrectly. Toileting is a basic human function and they can definitely grasp it younger than a lot of people thing. If they can learn nursery rhyme lyrics, build blocks and learn simple game rules, they can absolutely learn to toilet train.

I can appreciate it’s stressful. But you’ve just got to get on with it.

It may be the case then that schools need to have additional support to cope with the changing remit rather than pulling further on the resources of the teacher.

Most settings will tell you that you as the parent have to start and they will continue after you've taken that first week at home....that's not them refusing to support you but expected Ng you as the parent to make that first step....so many parents expect a setting to do it for them not considering that training 10 children would mean a lot of mess your child likely to be around and a lot staff not working with the children but mopping up.

Mine were both born in the early 90s. I don't remember the pull up toddler nappies existing at that point so children were either in the baby size nappies with sticky tabs or completely out of them forever.Youngest was trained earlier than oldest because he caught chicken pox and had a sore right on the end of his penis.The time it took the wee to soak into the nappy caused pain so that it , he was done with nappies. He never went back. My friend is a deputy head ( non teaching) and admitted that she couldn't be bothered to train her children. She used the pull ups and didn't have a downstairs loo so her child wasn't trained until she was 4

I heard on the news last night, the newsreader was saying ‘parents feel it’s not just their responsibility’ to toilet train children. I didn’t hear the rest of it but I would be interested to know who else’s responsibility it would be? Hopefully not the reception teacher who is on her own with 29 other children!

How do you mean? That more people are neurodivergent now or that parents who have kids who are diagnosed as neurodivergent won’t try to force them to potty train before they’re ready and therefore, as diagnoses are more common due to increased awareness, more kids are not potty training til later?

The transition year from children entering full time school at 5 rather than 4 was September 1999. So for most of the 90s children only started school nursery for 2.5 hours a day then term after turning 4 when the age changed the expectations did not alter so suddenly 3 year olds were expected to do what a 4 year old was learning 6 weeks before and a 4 year old what a 5 year old etc. Children still trained typically between 30 and 36 months.

@x2boys I know that, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that people with DC who trained later were deficient as parents in some way. It was just part of my experience that the biggest factor of training age in my kids was the type of nappies I used.

I‘m guessing there are a few reasons

fewer family units able to afford for one person to stay at home whilst the children were small giving time to toilet train

better disposable nappies and less hassle (ie if you’re soaking pooey tweet nappies, there’s quite an incentive to get them into pants).

knowing that schools/nurseries can’t prevent your child from starting if they aren’t in pants

My school has a bit of each of those, but also pupils with significant SEND who would have been in special schools 10+ years ago but because there’s no spaces now, are in mainstream. Also pupils with sensory difficulties/ASD-this seems to come hand in hand with toilet troubles, particularly with withholding.

I’m not sure that’s correct. When I was at primary school, there weren’t least 3 children who weren’t toilet-trained. One in KS1, two in KS2. They were most definitely allowed in school - because they had reasons that they weren’t trained, ie actual physical/medical verifiable reasons.

An exception to the rule was made for them because of their issues. This was before the 90s and the Equality Act.