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.

As a teacher this topic is at the forefront of undermining the vast diagnoses of neuro-diversity. Today over 30% of children are entering reception not toilet trained Vs 2% in 1995. It's impossible that there has been a 1400% uplift in neuro - divergence so what is it?

There is a chunk of children who are not toilet trained by 4 due to medical reasons - my oldest full dry in day by 2.5 abd night by 4, but my youngest, whatever we did, would not poo on the toilet, no developmental issues, but her bottom used to bleed every time she went on the toilet. We recently found out she has coeliac disease, took her off gluten and now it doesn't hurt her to go and she will go on the toilet, but it took 2 years + of going back and forth to gp to get them to figure out the issue. Had I not been such a 'persistent' parent she may still be using nappies for poos now.

However, as a governor of a primary, the number of children in our reception starting not toilet trained was about 15%/ 10 children. Of which around 6 clearly had SEN, but only 2 had actively sought support for their child's needs, other 4 thought their children were 'fine' despite not being toilet trained, unable to put shoes/coat on, delayed speech. Support for this cohort when they were tiny was delayed by covid, which may explain part of this, but it is concerning that some parents are not even seeking support.

What about those that have tried and tried but it isn’t working yet.

What about those that have undiagnosed SEN?

I think your comment is very judgemental and completely unnecessary. Have you got nothing better to do?!

Societal attitudes and the idea that you can wait until a child is ready. It's gradually gotten more and more acceptable to see a 2 year old and then a 3 year old in nappies, so people leave them in nappies. Then they sometimes find more resistance with toilet training an older child so it takes even longer. If you've spent 3 or more years of your life going in a "stay dry" nappy, it's going to be a big change to adjust to for a lot of kids.

It's like removing a dummy or bottle, stopping spoon feeding, etc. Often, the longer you leave it, the harder it gets. But parents push it later because they can't face the battle and "one day they'll be ready".

But you don’t know they have Sn at the time you are trying to train them. My son was diagnosed autistic age 6 and it’s got more obvious as he’s got older but age 3 he appeared very much like a typical 3 year old. It was really difficult to toilet train him, I just thought I was a rubbish mum as everyone else was managing it. The trouble is parents who are neglectful aren’t bothered by campaigns etc that say a child should be doling x y z by time they get to school they carry on not doing what they are doing, but parents that are already struggling with a yet to be diagnosed child and are already finding it difficult and feeling like the worst parent in the world comments like op make them feel a million times worse

Night is hormonal, you can’t train it.

I waited until mine was 2yr9 months (tried earlier but it didn’t take), she woke up one day, told me she was a big girl now and needed pants and that was that, no day accidents since.

I meant 3 at the start of school. I do think it’s a not particularly pleasant and a time consuming process but you may as well get it done.

Yup.

my eldest wasn't diagnosed until nearly 11.

is their support available if people ask for It though? I’m doubting there is much readily available without a long waiting list. I don’t have direct experience of asking for support with this particular issue but I’ve asked for support with other issues for my autistic child and have struggled to get any. Some of the sn groups I am member of on fb people often comment thst they struggle to get referred to continence team when child is very young (even age 4/5) as it’s still considered to be within the “normal” range.

Yeah I think it’s this, I was conflicted about whether we should go with the “wait and see” approach or not. The thing that gave me a shove was my own cultural background which encourages “early” potty training and that she simply would not have been accepted into school. Kids have accidents thats totally normal but the longer you leave it the more engrained an action becomes.

Even if no diagnosis, there is usually some evidence that there is something going on, and the fact that the child does not 'get' toilet training may well be one of the signs.

I really don't think parents are keeping their kids in nappies due to laziness, it's a lot harder to keep changing nappies. When mine were younger it was just regular reminders and help wiping, now they are older I just prompt them before long journeys although I don't really need to these days.

My youngest is turning 8 this year and still has the odd time when he wets himself at school or in a childcare setting. It's because he's worried about interrupting everyone, we've spoken about it and I've tried to reassure him that he won't get into trouble, that's all I can really do.

There can be multiple truths going on at once:

• there probably are more children now with SEN who find training harder.
• there is a general lack of support for parents as health visiting services have been cut.
• there will be parents who aren’t prepared to put the work in.
• The general trend of leaving it later might be making it harder to train ditto better nappy tech.
• people have to have resilience and persistence for the trickier kids and parents might not be in a position to cope with that.

In my own experience, different children can be very different. One of my children basically self-trained at around 2 day and night. I can’t really take any parenting pride in that because other than a few accidents it was incredibly easy. My child who trained closer to 3 was much, much harder. It took a lot of work, patience and frustration. She just didn’t care quite frankly and would rather wet herself than stop a game. I still remember her getting distracted on her 3rd birthday and having an accident in her party dress. I can see how some might have given up and just left it a little later.

Partly. But there is also the practical fact that house prices/ rents are vastly more expensive in 2025 than they were in 1995, necessitating two full time working parents to pay for a roof over their family’s head. This means it’s far harder to find a stretch of time to toilet train. It is time intensive.

It is so easy to use modern nappies that the incentive to toilet train, for both parents and child, is much lower than in the past. Hence it can easily be overlooked. I don't think I toilet trained my DC as early as I could or perhaps should have but they have grown up just fine. Obviously there are cost and also pollution considerations that really ought to outweigh other concerns. In general, as a mother of children in their 20s, I think that that the consumer goods industry is responsible for an awful lot of "poor parenting" - parents are bombarded with endless goods and services that make their lives easier in the moment but store up problems for the future. Small children are far more capable than the current goods and services industry and safetyism culture allow them to be and the sooner they are allowed to use their muscles and brains for their own autonomy, the better.

Back in 1995 schools were allowed to refuse entry to children not meeting milestones, now they can't.

And I don't know for sure but I'm pretty sure compulsory school was 5 then, not 4 like they make it out to be now. That year makes a big difference.

So was mine, but I take the OP to mean not putting any effort into getting a child out of nappies, rather than spending many years trying to and not being successful.

Yes it is which is why DH and I booked a week off work to do it. It won’t happen magically. We skipped a holiday but it was worth it.

I recall when I was a small child in the 70s we had the health visitor do home visits quite often to check on us, I’d imagine my mum could ask questions about development during these visits. Ds was born in the 2010s and we just took him to be weighed a couple of times when he was tiny, he had a 2 year check and that was the involvement of health visiting team in his life. He was diagnosed autistic age 6 but it wasn’t picked up till he went to school

But the trouble is everyone is tarred with the same brush unless your child looks very disabled then people perhaps give you some leeway but if they don’t look disabled people assume you are just lazy or haven’t put enough time in.

My son took far longer than a week to toilet train!

Luckily, we were in Scotland ( start school age 5, P1) rather than Wales ( most kids start school age 3) and the wonderful early years provision he was in supported the toilet training there.

Good grief. This is extraordinary and really worrying.

I was listening to the Born in Bradford programmes on Radio 4 recently and a teacher there was talking about how far behind many children are when they arrive at school - not toilet trained, struggling with basic social skills, very poor speech and language. She was speaking factually, not judgementally, and didn't go into detail about why this might be happening, but clearly something's gone very wrong in the support and guidance given to parents, and children are being let down as a result. It can't all be down to undiagnosed disability.

My children are in their early 30s now. Obviously there may have been children in their classes wearing nappies or pullups and I wouldn't have known, but I was in school a lot helping with reading and the PTA and I was a school governor. If the school staff had been noticing a trend of more children arriving in Reception who weren't toilet trained I would have heard about it one way or another. I know it was rare for children to turn up at our nursery school who weren't toilet trained from their reaction to my son's occasional accidents (bowel).

Thinking about what might have changed between the 1990s and now, far more families have both parents working. There are probably more single parent families too. However, I'd be surprised if it's working parents whose children have never even started toilet training. No reputable child carer (childminder, nursery or nanny) is going to just ignore the need for toilet training, surely, even if the parents have?

It's not disposable nappies and pullups, as those were available and affordable in the 90s, and the vast majority of parents I knew used them. Those probably did lead to a delay in starting toilet training - more like 3 than 2. My mother definitely thought I was leaving it a bit late, but she would have been desperate to get us out of cloth nappies because of the horror of washing them without an automatic washing machine.

My health visitor was fairly useless, but at least we had one. I have the impression there's far less support for parents now than there was, probably because of the massive cuts from 2010 on. False economy, as it's led to these serious problems which are now going to cost far more than health visitors, subsidised baby and toddler groups and Sure Start would have done.

My hunch would be that the parents whose children are arriving untrained are either not on Mumsnet at all or are studiously avoiding threads like this.

Bit of a sweeping statement. Context is needed.

The economy requires 2x working parents to afford living costs. Then we are told parents are 'lazy' when children's milestones aren't met because parents literally don't have the time. If a parent does work less to be home more, and god forbid claims UC, then they are also lazy. Some on mumsnet are so out of touch with reality

This is one of those threads where the voting and the replies go in opposite directions...

I assume (hope) op is talking about kids where there is no medical / sen need for them to be in nappies at age four. It's been well reported in the news that there has been a marked increase in children starting school in nappies. Personally I think the three day method that is very popular often doesn't work and not all kids will "do it when they're ready". Obviously it all works out fine for lots of cases but for my two it was definitely not that straightforward. If we'd waited until they did it themselves they probably also would have started school in nappies.