To be appalled that parents need to be supported by government to potty train their child

[Wisefishswimpast]

That^^

Why are these parenting fails happening? - not potty trained for starting school, tooth extractions in young children, rising obesity rates….

Is there no accountability?
Why is this happening?

YANBU - parenting standards have declined which is terrible

YABU - this is how things are because….<explanation>

I know there will be exceptions to the above, for example certain health conditions, late maturation of signals between brain and bladder. I am referring to the more widespread rise in these instances.

I wonder if the difference is to do with families needing 2 working parents and how many of these families are either using relatives for childcare or are trying to WFH with their children and don't have time to do it.

These are often things that are said every year and I remember when my 11yo started being told more and more children weren't potty trained. It would be interesting to have actual figures to compare.

I wonder if school refused entry for any child who didn't have some kind of medical exemption it would make people do it. However I suppose demographically speaking if you cant be bothered to potty train your child they are potentially the one suffering by not going to school.

@XStitcher87

personally, I think that potty training is quite straightforward. My daughter copied me and went on the potty when I went on the loo from around 15 months, as she showed interest in seeing other kids doing it at the childminder, so we did about 3 months of just practising here and there at home and then went full training and she was fine within a weekend. My son was harder work at 2.3 - I did it with annual leave - I took two days before a BH so that I had 5 days and then we went away on holiday for a week and continued there - totally trained by the end of the 12 days. Was it less relaxing on holiday - yes, but I had a two year old, I wasn’t expecting an easy life and it was convenient because I could give him my full attention.

i really don’t think it is a big deal - secret is to have a high mess threshold anyway and/or be willing to spend lots of time outdoors to minimise cleaning! It is also very important to be able to communicate clearly and firmly and kindly that you want them to try to do it but keep calm and let them know it’s ok when they fail “oh dear, next time on the potty” and genuinely mean it. Lots of parents get really stressed about it and every accident is a failure and then it is hell.

That was how it was for us in the 1970s. I was out of them by two years old as my mum wanted to use the same Terry nappies for my by-then-imminent sister.

Those Terry nappies did duty as floor cloths for years afterwards until they finally disintegrated.

Now they’re saying to start between 18 months and 2.5 years old. But it wouldn’t have been uncommon 3/5/10 years for everyone to be utterly unconcerned with an untrained 3 yo. It was still wait until they’re ready. Why people refuse to acknowledge that fact baffles me.

Yes it is worse - certainly compared with the 1980s

This is on the NHS website

When should I start potty training?
Almost all children can be potty trained between 18 months and 2-and-a-half years old.

Starting around this age gives your child time to practice these new skills and build confidence without nappies.

The best thing to do is to start the training.

You do not need to wait for your child to show signs or ask to use a potty before you start

A free website. Pass it on.

https://www.nhs.uk/best-start-in-life/toddler/potty-training-your-child/#when-to-start-potty-training

Surely what's changed is that it's basically impossible to afford to live now without two incomes coming in. And responding to school emails is now becoming a full time job. More and more admin is required in every aspect of life just to get by in a basic way. Human children are being raised in nuclear family settings with two working parents. There is no village anymore. If your child has SEN instead of support you get a whole new full time administrative job, The whole model is unmanageable and parents can't cope.

I never rushed my kids but it was never a fight either. They just would eventually say when they needed to go. I don't know how they can get to that age and still be in nappies without any other issues.

I mean I’ve seen a baby with a phone and a big bag of haribo in the buggy while mum was picking up an older child. Maybe 2 years old?

Our DC are early 30s/late 20s.

They could go to the lovely little private nursery for three hours in the morning or afternoon from the term after their 2yr 6mth birthday, providing they were dry and out of nappies. I don't recall any child starting reception in nappies - I don't think they'd have been allowed.

There is no incentive.

I'll be honest whilst I'm not denying this doesn't happen, it feels very pushed and exaggerated in the media. My DS is the youngest in his class, he started year one this September and his class of around 25 have a mix of family backgrounds and dynamics including one child with a developmental delay. Of that they are and we're at starting school potty trained, I'm including in that my friends and families children too. Which will be around the same figure of children when I started primary in the mid nighties.

My DS and his friends thought it was weird when the 'toothbrush lady' came in and showed them how to brush their teeth as we'd already done it that morning...

Again, I'm sure it does happen but does it really happen so much and on such an increasing scale that we need constant articles over it?

This is the NEW advice. Children starting Reception now, or last year, or 5 years ago wouldn’t have benefited from it.

Also, it only changed because of the focus on the Kindred surveys (about school readiness , including using the toilet) and lobbying from the ERIC charity.

Tbf, in the past few years , the only children starting Reception at my school (very deprived area) still in nappies are those with significant needs/delays.

lazy parenting! Probably overweight themselves and too f**king lazy to teach basics.
I say that having grown up with a parent who said “the schools should be teaching….<enter a basic life skill not on the curriculum>. No time for it. Kids being fed crisps, chocolate, frubes, crap yogurt’s to keep them snacked and quiet. Then the children who are well parented are scratching their heads wondering, why can’t Johnny go to the toilet or wash his hands? “Because some children’s mommy’s and daddy’s are useless” . But you can’t say that, you have to be PC and say something like “well mommy and daddy helped you, so maybe they need help from theirs too”…. Or some shitty excuse, to normalise shite parenting.

This is certainly not the advice I was given when my children were born in 2018 and 2021.

Not that my two ever showed any signs of readiness anyway, but they needed to be dry by 3 to start the Kindergarten which feeds into their school, so I didn’t really pay much attention to the advice at the time.

Same age as ours. Pretty sure our primary school would not allow reception-age children to attend in nappies, unless there was some medical or SEN-related reason. There were of course occasional "accidents", which were attended to and the parents notified discreetly at the end of the day, but it was never a big deal and always the exception rather than the rule.

I wonder whether giving young children frazzles etc for breakfast contributes to ADHD, SEN, etc etc, because of the lack of nutrition?

My well parented child ate (still does at 15 tbh) frubes!!!! I shall tell her she can run feral from now on, because... Frubes!

It sounds like you had a very different experience to me. I have a little boy (which I’ve heard are more difficult to train. I have a little girl as well now so time will tell!). His issue was that he wouldn’t actually go and would hold on for hours to the point we were concerned about UTIs. That was stressful in itself but it also meant he wasn’t having any accidents he could learn from, which when you only have a few days increased the pressure.

It was never an issue of the mess (I’ve had a dog since a puppy so am all to familiar with accidents). It was more the psychological aspect.

Don’t bother. I’ve been saying this for the past two hours to echoes of “lallalalallalalalallala” “not true”.

None as blind as those that don’t want to see.

I’ve been a reception class teacher since the mid 1990’s. Apart from a couple of children with special needs none of my classes in the 1990’s had children who were in nappies. There would be a few that had occasional toileting accidents, but the contrast in 30 years is absolutely unbelievable. Children then started school toilet trained, most could have a good go at using a knife and fork and knew how to handle books. It’s unbelievable and very sad how standards have fallen in that time.

A spoon of sugar is cheaper, just give them that sure.

Lol and how did it go with your other 28 children (you need 30 data points for a statistically significant sample)?

So how many children do you have in this cohort that aren’t toilet trained out of 30, this year? Last year? 5 years ago?

There was a post on here the other day where a woman asked if her friend was unreasonable for telling her reception aged daughter she should use the toilet now. The woman thought nothing of changing the child in the living room, letting her sit on the potty watching tv, with numerous posts about how potty training has been hard with no accountability as to the lack of consistent effort. I get some children take longer, or some may wear pull ups at night, but for so many it just seems like neglect. The woman that posted had her child attend groups with her, it did not seem there was a lack of time just a lack of effort.

They see no issue in their child crapping in a nappy at school. There is no accountability and as a pp said, shame. I cannot compute how someone can not prioritise that as a child’s life basic life skill.