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.

How on earth were you meant to do it without nursery’s help though? DS had a fair bit of trouble potty training but heaps of support and encouragement from the nursery staff. Each child had their own star chart and the staff expected and were unfazed by accidents.

There have been crap parents in all era. So why are there more now? It's almost as if there's a reason.

This is fairly interesting. You took 3 days leave, so a small proportion of your leave for the year and describe yourself as being utterly exhausted by 5 days of potty training. That seems to sum up the issue really. Being 'exhausted' by a normal part of parenting and considering that 3 days off work is what you were prepared to devote to it.

Interesting.. I was going to write that I agree with you (I still do!) and say that the NHS advice listed the “signs of readiness” and said children potty trained more quickly and with fewer accidents, the more signs of readiness they showed, and that that probably pushes children back because mine certainly didn’t show those signs so if I’d waited they’d have been much older.
I’m 100% sure that’s what the nhs advice was but I went to look it up to check I had the wording right, and it now says “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.”

So maybe they realised the “wait until they show all these signs” was not overly helpful.

Failing to seek out that information and act on it, without it being spoon fed to you is pretty indicative of lazy and poor parenting

"wait until they're ready" made a lot of sense when more toddlers were being potty trained between the ages of 1-2. If you try it then and it's not working, your child probably isn't ready. At age 3.5, unless there's a medical issue, "now is the time".

My daughter brushes teeth morning and evening, she is still little so we help her. But do they need to do it lunchtime at school too? Or is it something you’re trying to get them used to brushing? We’re still in nursery and I don’t know much about the school system yet haha

Assuming you’re not hinting at the covid jab, I suspect it’s stress, overwork, lack of time, and lack of pressure due to high-quality disposables removing the cause-and-effect aspect for the potty trainees.

Again, not new though.

I mean 'Monster' is probably new, but in the 80s we had plenty of children coming in, having been given a pack of crisps - or even Monsters Munch' and a panda pop on the way to school, rather than some cereal or even toast and milk at home.

Can potty training be hard work? Absofuckinglutely. Is it worth it and should it be the parents job? Absofuckinglutely.
I’m currently in the thick of it with potty training a 2.5 year old (DC no4). He’s pretty much got it now and his sense of achievement is massive!
It should not fall on teachers/TA’s to teach toilet training or change nappies. The thought of a poor teacher/TA having to change a 4-5yo is just bloody crazy.

Nope ive always been busy and managed to do it....as have most of the non-feckless

Why has potty-training been delayed ?
It used to start at c.1 year-old, & going to school in nappies was unheard of.

I think people are too 'busy' with themselves, hair, nails, dating, instagram, tiktok to do something as mundane as teach your child to pee in a toilet

I don't recall my rural supermarket selling them. And even now they are expensive. 94p for a mango Vs a banana for 12p. I find mangos unreliable too, they can be heavenly or overripe mush.

When I was a kid we had apples, pears, bananas, and when in season mandarins, strawberries, redcurrants and plums. Cherries were a once a year treat in summer because they were so expensive.

Maybe you’ll think this makes me sound like a judgy cow, but I actually do consider myself a pretty different parent to ones who give cans of monster to a young child! There was a woman I used to see at school drop off who had a ~2 yr old in a pram and every morning that child was eating a bag of frazzles. That is just crap parenting.

I was busy. Me and husband worked full time. Both kids were potty trained and have table manners. I hate to say it but some parents today are just bloody lazy.

A large part of it is the tiny number of HV compared with dc on their caseload, so they only get time to attend Child Protection Conferences and very little else.

There used to be regular clinics and weigh ins, and classes and groups and the HVs (or midwives if you are going back to the 60s / Call the Midwife era) would be aware of who they hadn't seen, and would have the capacity to follow up with those families. There would also be some liaison between schools and other services and quiet conversations about worries could be shared and followed up much more easily.

Sure Start did a lot to redress the balance, but then of course the Tories slashed the funding for what was a tremendous thing to counter some of these difficulties.

The problem these days is that there is so much information out there and much of this is conflicting. Authoritative parenting or gentle? Adult or child led? Elimination communication at 8 months or wait til they write you a letter to say they're ready? No more nappies and keep going or stop and try again?

If there was one quick, simple, failsafe way to potty train every child then there wouldn't be a problem would there?

Yes, it's changed quite recently as they've realised what problems the 'readiness' argument has caused.

It’s another government scheme pushed onto schools to help address poor dental hygiene in children. At least if they’re brushing in school 5 days a week, that’s better than nothing is the thinking behind it.
But I’m teaching children who already have the top row of teeth rotted and black from going to bed with a bottle still (at 4 & 5 years old!) so not sure how much difference it could possibly be making.
I feel so sorry for and angry on the behalf of these children, as none of this is their fault and we do our very best to help them achieve these basic life skills. But when I look back over my 20+ years of teaching, the fact remains that more of my time is now spent on what I would call ‘basic parenting skills’ than education.

I really don't think it's down to class (if that's what you mean by 'us' and 'them' - I might have misunderstood).

I was brought up in a coalmining town and attended primary school in the '60s/'70s. We had only one pupil in our class all the way through primary who still messed himself at times.

So far as the business of table manners etc is concerned, I was berated on another thread for using the example of parents within my own family who decided to leave teaching manners to their child's private nursery and primary school. Apparently, I didn't understand the pressures that the mother might be under.

This puzzled me, since I had a good understanding of the mother's work pressures, but I'd stated that the father was the stay-at-home parent and he wasn't juggling work commitments with parenting.

The example that I'd given of poor parenting was that the parents had allowed the child to eat sweets at the dinner table, resulting in the child choking while we were out. (An entire creme egg had been shoved into the mouth. Fortunately, the child managed to cough it out.)

@MellowSubmarine me too....i used to be friendly with a guy at work who had a kid....but omg i did judge him and his family when he told me that for the babies first birthday they bought him a bottle of coke to drink and he said it was a family 'tradition'...i mean what the hell, get the baby some teeth and then rot them all out with acid and sugar

It's the increased isolation of society. All we do is come home and stare at screens. All of us. Look at us now on Mumsnet 😂
In the last people actually went home had a cup of tea and. Anatger then some people would spend half the evenings nattering on the phone to someone else)actually speaking to their children face to face.
In addition to how tech dominates our life, it has also enabled us to feel we can move and live far away from our support networks. So people will move away from family for better rotation work/cheaper housing, eaving behind social networks that would have supported them through struggles.

The only thing that I can think of is that some parents became helicopter parents as their children reached adulthood and those adults then failed to become self-sufficient, hence their belief that they shouldn't have to engage with the 'boring' side of parenting when their time came.