Modern nappies & potty training - AIBU to think old terry nappies made it easier?

[Ilovepastafortea]

Spent the afternoon with a friend who looks after 3 year old (4 in October) GS 3 days a week. Her DIL has decided not to try potty training until the child decides he's ready.

Friend & me discussed that at 3 - nearly 4 he should be using the potty by now at least in the day time.

Obviously friend isn't going to go against DIL & potty train the child - that's up to the child's parents.

However, given the good weather we were wondering about if she might suggest to DIL & DS that they allow the child to run around the garden with just pants on & introduce the potty where accidents don't matter. Again I stress that it's up to the children's parents. But we're concerned that this child will be going to nursery in September & still in nappies - well nappy pants.

I used to take mine out to choose 'Big Boy/Girl pants' to prepare them & talk about 'now you're a Big Boy/Girl you get to wear nice pants with Thomas the Tank or the like on them. I would frequently suggest that they may want to sit on the potty, praising him if they 'performed' ignoring any accidents - saying 'no problem, maybe next time you could tell me when you need a wee & you can use the potty like a 'Big Boy/Girl'?'

I also used to put my DCs into terry nappies when potty training as I felt there's nothing like a cold wet nappy slapping around a toddler's thighs to focus them on a better alternative.

My point is that modern nappies/pants don't tell the child when they've wet themselves.

Also surely 3 years off the 4th birthday for a child who has no issues, is intelligent & sociable is leaving it too late.

edited to typos

You're right. Disposable nappies train toddlers to pee with impunity, none the wiser. Summer is perfect time to get them used to toileting properly.

Ridiculous. All this ‘when he’s ready’ is pure laziness and basically them not having a clue what to do. Not helped by the Nappy companies promoting all the nappies and pull ups as ‘normal’ for older children. I’d be embarrassed if my GC was still in nappies at nearly 4 if no Special Needs were involved.

I put normal pants on under the disposable one so he would be more aware. I'll do the same with my youngest.

I think you are probably right. My mother, who brought up 3 children before disposables, opines this often. It's not just that it's uncomfortable for the child to be wearing a wet towelling nappy so more motivation to potty train, but also from the point of view of the parents, washing heaps of cloth nappies was a hassle! Nowadays people can just throw the disposable in the bin and it's gone from their life with no fuss and they don't care to think about them lying in landfill for centuries.

I used terry nappies the whole time with my two. I’m pretty sure both were potty trained by about the age of two and a half, and were dry at night soon after being reliable in the day (it was 25 years ago!). Both were ready and there were no big battles.
I used to dress them in just a long t-shirt or leave them naked in the summer if we were in the garden.

This is how the conversation happened when my friend's grandson told her that he needed his nappy changed & I expressed surprised that he was still in pull ups &, since he was aware it needed changing surely he was ready for potty training.

But, she's a good grandparent & is guided by the child's parents. What can she do but suggest that it's high time that he was introduced to the potty - which she was going to do when they collect the child tomorrow,

She's already pissed DIL off by suggesting that microwave pre-packaged food possibly not the best for the family & giving her gifts of frozen home-made cottage pies, bolognaise sauces etc. Her son rang her to tell her that DIL took it as a subtle criticism of the way DIL & him managed their family & reminded her that they both work full time & no time to cook.

Personally, when I had small children, working in a PAYE job & helping my DH who was working 80plus hours a week in his own business, I'd have kissed anyone who gave me a meal that I only had to heat up.

I used modern cloth nappies on my 2nd and he toilet trained by himself quite early. They know when they are going as it's slower to absorb than disposable nappies

Totally.

As I say nothing like a cold wet nappy slapping around their thighs to focus them on a more comfortable option.

There was zero difference in age for my children whether it was the eldest in terries or her younger sister in disposables. I just started finding dry nappies at changing during the day and in the morning a couple of months later.

Well, there was actually a couple of differences. The youngest never had the slightest trace of nappy rash, whilst the eldest needed metanium at every change and I didn't have to try and find a way of drying nappies in a flat with no space for a tumbledryer and no drying space.

My children are under 10 and we used disposable nappies. A toilet trained child is so much easier than changing nappies. Both my trained around 2. I took their lead but we had a potty out and had spent lots of time talking about being a big girl and using the the potty and toilet. It took my second child a full year to fully get it.

If my children got nappy rash I used a remedy that my grandmother used - egg white. It forms a natural barrier to the skin, give it a chance to recover. Worked like magic!

Obviously no good for a child with allergies to eggs, but I understand that you can do the same with a paste made from cornflower.

My father found it very amusing & used to bounce the baby on his lap singing 'XXX has got an eggy bot, an eggy bot is what they've got, do da, do dah' 😂

I used reusables. I tried with DS in the summer at 2.5 but he really had no clue about what he was doing. He wasn't bothered about feeling damp in them. He also had a speech delay and wasn't communicative.

We ended up trying again at 3 and he got the hang of it in a few weeks and could communicate a bit better which helped a lot.

It turned out later on that he's autistic so being later than average isn't so surprising with hindsight. Many years later, he's still not great at registering his body's cues for food/ drink/ toilet.

But washable nappies weren't automatically helpful as a motivator.

His sibling was self-motivated to toilet train by 2.5. That was mainly wanting to follow DS1 to the toilet like a big boy. Peer influence can be a strong motivator.

Yes it would piss me off tio if my mother in law criticised everything from how i parented my child to what I fed the family
Does the child not have two parents?

Yanbu that a nearly 4yo should ideally be potty trained, but imo the choice of nappy is not to blame.

You could just as easily argue that the trend of child-placating parenting is to blame: mothers (it's always mothers) are made to feel immensely guilty when we make children do something they don't want to do, so we put off unpleasant things like removing the dummy, potty training etc because we just aren't equipped to do these things in a manner consistent with the softly-softly "don't traumatise them" approach that's in vogue.

Said that in the 90s when nappies were nowhere near as comfortable as they are now!

So much trendy modern parenting requires lengthy explanations and dialogues about feelings and so on. There just isn't the blueprint for business-like getting on with unpleasant but necessary stuff.

So mothers who wholeheartedly buy into that model, put off difficult stages until the child "is ready" ie can have long conversations about it. Because they have no other model for how to approach things.

Let's face it, a just-turned 2yo cannot have long conversations about how the potty makes them feel. When I trained my 2yo I did it the untrendy way which was giving her a bit of dried fruit every time she went in the potty. This would be deeply frowned on by trendy parents

I potty trained my older dc 30 years ago, we had disposable nappies then but it was seen as something that you started at around age 2. Yes it was hard work but they were both trained within a few days at just over age 2 and were definately reliable by 2.5 out and about. And yes I had a job, I just planned it around Easter or Christmas or whenever I had a few days off. 20 years later with my youngest everyone was talking about 'waiting until the child is ready' it's a nonsense imo. She was nearly 3 with mild sen and very reluctant to give up nappies, if I had waited for her to be ready I would still be waiting.

Should have used a clicker with the treat. Mine probably learned the concept of going to the bathroom from the animals and whilst their in your bed wasn't 100%, their SIT was absolutely impeccable.

I was brought in an Irish ex-pat family. My youngest uncle is about 14 months older than me & the youngest of 7 children, of which my mother was the oldest.

I was always very advanced, walked at 8 months, talked in complete sentences very early etc. My mother tells me that, when I was about 16 months old, I announced that I didn't want to wear nappies anymore because I wanted to be a Big Girl like my aunts (the youngest of whom was 7 years older than me) & wanted to wear Big Girl pants. Apparently I refused to use a potty because that was for babies. I used a lavatory & was clean day & night from then on. My parents used to tell a story about when I was a few weeks off my 2nd birthday when I got up to be sick & they only knew because I'd been sick in the lavatory, but it was an old fashioned one with a chain & I couldn't reach the chain to flush it down.

Frankly I'd be mortified if one of my children had been sick in the night & not woken me, but this was 1965 & times were different.

I thought I was helping as they both work full-time - I've listened & don't offer it anymore.

I didn't take it as a criticism. I was only trying to help. I'm grateful that DS is able to talk to me about this as so many MNers aren't able to have this kind of constructive discussion.

It would piss me off if I had to change shitty nappies and my grandchild's nutrition was being neglected

I so wish that I could add a laugh to this. A clicker works on our dogs why not a child?

I understand that, in China, the traditional way is to have your child in crotchless trousers which makes life much easier.

A decade or so ago, I had problems with incontinence - I only had to walk past a ladies', or think about doing a wee, and I'd lose a bit of urine. Yes, it was surreal. I couldn't feel it coming out, just when I felt the wetness on my clothes. Until it was cured, I wore pads when out and about; and they are so good at what they do that I didn't know I'd wet myself until I looked. I think it would be a frustrating uphill battle trying to train a child who's wearing disposables, because they won't be aware they've urinated.

She doesn't have too she could decline if she wanted to. ,she's also gossiping to her friend who has decided to start a thread on mumsnet about it that ,s no being a great ,grand parent

When I was a neonatal nurse in the 80s we used to use this on our tiny premature babies.
We'd lay them on their tummies with a nappy underneath.
We would spread the egg white on and then dry it with oxygen...
Only in extreme cases of nappy rash...