To think that not toilet training your child is borderline neglect?

[PithyNavyViewer]

If your kid is four and still in nappies, that’s not a “gentle parenting choice” - it’s just lazy.

I would add “attempting to” to the title. I certainly wouldn’t judge someone if I saw a four year old in nappies without knowing more.

@Queenfreak same here. My 9yo is having wet accidents at school. He has been toilet trained since 4yo. It took him ages to understand.

Comments like this from OP don't help.

DS needs showered when he gets home from school. He has to take a change of clothing to school. We have spoke with the paediatrician about it. No one has any answers.

MN is awful about children who struggle with toilet training.

Some will have SEN, diagnosed or otherwise, and will need support with that.

Some will come from backgrounds where the parents might struggle to put in place successful strategies to potty train, and they will also need support with that.

And there will be some crossover between the two.

But either way, is it helpful to sneer and condemn? All it does it make people feel bad. That’s literally the only purpose behind it.

I messed up my DD toilet training. She is my youngest and her older brothers were slow to show signs of readiness and trained at around age 3. So I assumed DD would be similar. In retrospect I should have trained her around 18 mo-2 years but I waited til almost 3 and then it was extremely difficult and she was withholding wee for up to 24 hours for a couple of months, as she hated being wet but was too scared to go on the potty or toilet. If she had not been my youngest I am sure I would have put her back in pullups and we would have gone round in a spiral again.

My younger son had minor wetting accidents until he was at least 6, and was in absorbent pants. He has poor interception.

Definitely this, I still have the urge to go to the toilet before I leave home or anywhere because of being taught u go try before u go out and I was brought up in the seventies. They would sit babies on a potty and make them stay until they used it. It was not a good way to teach control and the kids who did have issues would be mocked. The 70’s should not be held up as a great time for child care tbh

Yes, the paediatrician has referred DS for ADHD assessment and thinks the toileting issue may be linked to that due to his lack of focus. Just wish we knew what was going on.

The majority of children can be trained between 2.5 and 3yr assuming no SN or physical issues. The trouble is parents have to work now so it’s tricky for them to have the week where the child can crack it ruining around the house wearing just pants. However, it should be a parenting priority and think how much money gets saved no longer needing nappies. Accidents are inconvenient but part of it. Most toddler rooms work along side parents but often pick up cues they are ready before the parent and then have to convince the parent to work with them.

If a parent has a child with undiagnosed SEN by four, they have probably tried to toilet train and will know in themselves something is going on with their child. No-one should feel bad about that.

I think OP is referring to parents who can't be bothered even trying, which I don't think there would be many of really.

I think a lot of people who call themselves gentle parents make the same mistake. They think it means ‘no parenting’ and so they don’t parent but think it’s fine.

The evidence is in Reception classes across the country where the numbers of children untrained has absolutely sky rocketed and parents on the playground quite openly say, ‘Oh I can’t face it yet so I thought I’d let school give it a go’

This.

I see the issue the other way around. Four is still early years. Very few countries in the world start children at school this young ( and the ones that do are all former British colonies). If schools are not prepared to deal with personal care issues, they should not be taking children from age four. I am in Wales where most kids start school age three. I have seen teachers snd TAs refuse to wipe the bottom of THREE year olds as it’s ’not their job’ , but leave children smeared in faeces instead. Disgraceful. If you don’t want to do personal care, don’t work in early years.

There are also a lot of things teachers say more young children can’t do now, put their own shoes on, zip or button up clothes. It’s because most families now have two full time working parents. This means they have less time to teach their kids independence skills. But instead of questioning the society we have created where parents have far less time with their children, we blame the parents, or let’s face it, the Mothers.

My point was that at four some disabillities are not disgnosed so a chikd may well be delayed due to an undisgnosed disabillity/ need

DC1 was out of nappies at the age of 2. DC 2 could do all his wees in a potty at the same age. Getting him to consistently poo in a potty/toilet took another two and a half years. I felt a pressure from people like the OP to use harsher methods, but as soon as I did, he started witholding. I went with my gut (and advice from ERIC) and used a very gradual method. I've seen too many children with long term physical problems from refusing to poo, so I'm very glad I let him get there in his own time.

I'll be sure to tell my cousin she's a neglectful parent and should be ashamed of herself. She already beats herself up about her daughter not being potty trained despite trying over and over but I'll be sure to remind her of her laziness and inadequacies.

Am I also considered neglectful? My 6 year old still wears pull ups at night as he has the odd accident

Trained my son at 20 months. He was in cloth nappies so we totally followed the old fashioned toilet training style to train before 2. Well at 5.5 he’s still having accidents night & day, particularly bad at school, We have tried every technique going to get him better at it & he doesn’t have obvious SEN either.

Basically at this point I’m clueless & I have no idea what this is about. Did the older generations hide this issue better e.g. there were a tonne of kids that weren’t reliable but it was kept quiet & of course like us they might have been terrible at using the toilet but they carried on with life without using nappies anyway. Obviously some in this situation or maybe even many just decide it’s not worth the hassle and use nappies which probably wasn’t the case historically. We get on with it because we used cloth nappies anyway so I guess at this point we are not going to introduce the convenience of disposables & there’s no point in being nappies as at least they’ll have bits of success each day.

This issue is more complex than the media or stats really show I think.

My 2 were dry in the day at different ages. Ds got it really quickly and was dry by 21months. Dd was nearly 3. However ds had Terry nappies and the discomfort of being wet probably helps. Nighttime was a few months later.

My own dd took a week off work to focus on toilet training dgc when he was just over 2. Then she informed nursery and they worked with her, I think it was about 3 weeks when he clicked.

It really takes effort on the parents part but even then some dc are quicker than others.

4 is very late unless there are special needs.

I literally don’t know anyone who claims that not toilet training their child is a gentle parenting practice?!

Love it when someone uses ‘gentle parenting’ as a term of insult. It’s the same as people using ‘woke’ as a put down. It simply shouts out ‘I’m just using random words without understanding them because I can’t be bothered”.

As the mother of a SEND kid, who had no issues toilet training, I don’t feel adequately qualified to comment on the toilet training issue.

Absolutely agree.

I have twins. DS has clear learning difficulties and diagnosed as autistic aged 3, other diagnoses followed. Now 15 yrs old and still in nappies/pull-ups. Everyone would have known his SEN meant toilet-training was challenging.

His twin sister had difficulties, and was still wetting at night/having day accidents when she was 5. Finally got there but dear god it was a slog. At that age she was believed to be neurotypical.

And then…

At 10 years old she was diagnosed as autistic, and with additional language difficulties that put her below a 6 yr old for comprehension. Very significant SEN. Despite the school supposedly being outstanding for SEN, teachers failed to notice her difficulties for years because she was “quiet”.

If anyone had seen her between the ages of 4-10, you’d never have known she had SEN because she flew under the radar. You’d just have thought I was a crappy parent, despite being seen by the continence service and doing everything I could, to no avail.

This is why judgement matters. For everyone saying “oh, I only mean children with no SEN!” - the point is those children/parents you’re judging for “not trying”? There may be undiagnosed SEN which may not be picked up for YEARS. Especially in girls.

Depends, doesn't it? My son is autistic and was fully potty trained at pretty much 2 years old on the dot. We tried a few weeks before his 2nd birthday and it went really well.

A friend has a son the same age, apparently NT but had huge issues with digestion, allergies, constipation, pretty much from birth until about 3/4 years old. He was on medication and needed a small procedure done at 3.5. Drs recommend holding off potty training until things were settled down. Now at 5 he still has issues around toileting. School have also implied they should investigate possible ND due to extreme behaviour like lashing out, extreme rigidity, sensory issues - things that before now had been kind of lumped in with his physical issues. After all, who wouldn't be angry/sensitive/emotional if they were constantly uncomfortable due to stomach aches/constipation/being hungry but full/having to take medicine or special formula that doesn't taste very good?

I don't actually know anyone in real life who kept their kids in nappies past about 3 purely due to not wanting to train them.

4 year old child with no additional needs not toilet trained is because nobody can be bothered and parent or parents assume somebody else will do it.

4 year old child with additional needs not toilet trained is completely different.

Modern nappies/pull ups are more comfortable when wet than cloth ones. It’s also more difficult to potty/toilet train a child when you’re working because you need a concentrated length of time. Mine were all trained in summer, when they played in the garden without nappies, so they began to understand the correlation between the feeling of needing a wee/poo, and it happening. That was easy as a SAHM; not so easy for working parents.

Equating absolutely anything parenting related that you don’t like to “gentle parenting” is reeeeeally starting to get tedious and shows that you don’t know what gentle parenting is.

People hear the words “gentle” and “parenting” together and just decide to guess what it means.

In most gentle parenting literature elimination communication is advocated (basically potty training almost from birth) or traditional potty training around 18 months. Not starting potty training by 4 years has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with gentle parenting. Nothing. I’m guess you have misunderstood gentle parenting as “let your kid do what they want when they want” and that isn’t it at all.

I think most people are starting too late and then getting resistance from their child and then giving up and pushing it even later. Two year olds resist everything. You have to commit to it, it's something you have to actively teach them since they already know how to do their business, we're just teaching them the polite place to put it.

Start before 2 and it's much easier in my experience, even with a kid with ASD. Obviously not all kids with ASD, but saying SEN makes it harder to potty train isn't always the case. My DD has PDA and resists almost every form of personal care but she was fully potty trained before 2. I know if I'd started later it would never have happened.

Before disposable nappies, almost all kids were trained before 2. And there isn't a huge swathe of adults with toilet issues now. There's no such thing as being "ready" or too young.

Then you get the posters who seem to be able to diagnose SEN (and presumably physical disabilities) by a glance on the playground.

There's usually a load of comments like "there's this 5 year old at school in nappies, no SEN". So fucking ignorant/ annoying.