To have expected her to take the kid out when this happened?

[OneAmusedShark]

Best friend came round for lunch today with her (just) 4 year old who my DD and DS absolutely adore.

She’s not toilet trained (nursery age, not yet at school so not judging).

To cut a long story short, she squatted down and started to take a dump in her nappy in our lounge.

It was obvious what was happening as she stunk the place out, and was grunting,
red in the face etc, and my friend asked her “have you finished” on more than one occasion.

Afterwards, my friend took her out to the bathroom to change her.

I didn’t say anything but surely the polite thing to do would have been to
remove the child as soon as it was obvious what was happening? (or even ask her
to take herself to the bathroom if she knows she’s going to fill her nappy!)

The room still stinks! 🤮

"I wouldn’t really care what the full situation is. If the child can’t be either relied upon to not shit in the living room OR immediately be taken out of the living room if she starts shitting, her parents need to confine their activities to places where people won’t be forced to see, hear and smell the defecation."

Do you think the same about incontinent adults too?

"My son is bowel incontinent due to medical reasons. Should we never leave the house either? It really isn't always as simple as taking them out right away for several reasons."

That poster can be the one to move my adult son mid poo and be the one who gets punched and bitten for doing so.

I'm not sure, but I have a child who due to neurological issues has no sensation around this. I won't go into how we deal with toileting, out of privacy, and it'll look different from how most people would.

What I will say though is that where there are medical issues, there is often a tightrope parents have to walk between ensuring their child has appropriate privacy, and not creating issues of shame, and a whole host of psychological issues, where they can't help it.

A child can be meeting developmental milestones, no issues with neurodiversity, but still have medical issues which mean a non-standard approach has to be taken.

Here though there's no indication this is anything other than laziness on behalf of the parents.

If the little child was grunting and going red in the face with straining it seems really obvious there are issues with constipation?
Maybe your friend assumed you'd recognise that?

It seems odd the child has such clear ways of showing they are going to go, and the mum just sits there watching. I would take them to the toilet if the kid is giving enough notice. Ideally helping them to go into the actual toilet or at least change the nappy.

I think putting all of this down to 'laziness' is unreasonable. Yes it's possible to toilet train some 1 year olds, but it's a much lengthier process which requires full time parental presence over a long period of time. I have a friend whose little girl was potty trained by 18 months, but she had been doing elimination communication virtually from birth. Crucially, she could do this because she is a SAHM and spends all day every day with her daughter.

Most modern families can't support a full time SAHP. The majority of parents are in full or part time work. It's not laziness to not have potty trained before 2 if the reality is you aren't at home with your child 24/7 for months at a time.

Older children will potty train quicker. My eldest got it within a week when we trained him at 2 years and 3 months. He absolutely wouldn't have if we'd tried before 2. And we both work full time, so we needed to know that we could focus on it for a short, intensive period, rather than spending months on it. My second was a little older, 2 and a half I think, because we simply didn't have a week to take to train her before then. Sneering comments about 'parental convenience' don't account for the reality that it's often actually necessity not convenience - the necessity of working to keep a roof over everyone's head, etc.

So it's laziness for this one parent but every excuse under the sun comes out for the rest? Maybe this mum has her 'reasons' too - maybe she has 'necessity' too.

Sneering comments about parental laziness are only for people who are not... you?

Did you mean to reply to my comment, or someone else? I don't understand what point you're trying to make at all.

I haven't called the mum of this child lazy at all. If you see my first comment on page one of this thread you'll see I said OP should aim for understanding because there might be good reason why her friend's child isn't toilet trained yet, and no parent is still changing nappies at 4 because they just can't be bothered toilet training.

My point in the comment you've quoted is that toilet training at the age of one isn't possible for the majority of families, as it really requires one full time SAHP.

children should be trained for pre school not school, our preschool won’t accept them unless they can manage the toilet themselves - ratios of care aren’t high enough for managing nappy changes for children. I thought I was late with my last child at 2.75 years - the others were dry and clean night and day at just after 2. There were children in my son’s reception class last year still wearing nappies at the start of term. The school soon got it sorted on their behalf so not sen (clearly different if there are special needs and then the child should qualify for extra funding) just lazy parenting. OP your friends behaviour is vile, I would have been so embarrassed if my child had done that at 3 let alone 4 and in no world would I even stay in the room with a baby that was clearly shitting. 4 isn’t even a toddler it’s a child. Grim.

That’s disgusting. She should have taken her into the bathroom. Some parents seem to have no clue about basic etiquette.

It was hard toilet training my youngest ds. He finally got it aged 2y11m (did it in 5 days and was dry both day and night). However, by around 2 years, he would hide behind furniture to do a poo.