To be annoyed at people that think that a 2.8 year old should be potty trained by now

[pigletmania]

I have encountered some people RL and not that think that any child over 18 months should be potty trained. My frind from India said that they train them in India at about 9 months! How, when the nevers between the brain and bladder are not fully developed. I have heard that Europeans think that English people are lazy because their children are toilet trained later.

IMO surely if the child is not ready, no amount of training will work. I tried my 2.8 year old in knickers and sat her on the potty every hour in the summer she did not understand a thing, and gave up after 2 weeks, i tried later in October and put her in knickers and sat her on the potty regularly but while the poo bit was nearly sorted, she had no concept of going for a wee and that she was wet and could not tell you wether she had done a wee or poo despite me perservering for a month and a half. So i put her back in pull ups but still put her on the potty regularly

wow no nappies from birth. Still, I guess that is the reality in many rural places in the world - shows how spoilt we are!

I got quite worried about people namely grandmas, telling DS should be trained when he hit his second birthday but pregnant and still working I put it off. Very glad I did as when I did do it, at 2yrs5mths when DD 6wks old, he did it in a week, both wees and poos and two weeks later dry at night. This was 4 months ago and since then I've heard so many stories of it taking ages. Surely better later and faster? Not sure you can 'miss' the timing as both grandmas warned!

Beehivebaby- interesting re research btw

our method was 1.talk it up, point out friends using potty. 2. Use stars in 5 colours and present after 5 stars. 3. Potty in week one taken Everywhere and cheered when used correctly regardless of where!

Found poos a little more challenging and pretty sure he was scared to do it but first few done clutching onto me on toilet and never worried again!

Anyone got tips on how to get them wiping properly as he's coming back from nursery with messy pants?

My DS is 2.4. He can perform on potty but not tell you when he needs to go and isn't interested in being potty trained. I am not overly pursuing it as DC2 is due in 4 weeks. I will wait till she gets here before potty training DS. My friend potty trained her DD at 18 months and then when she had her DC2 6 months later her DD regressed back from being fully potty trained into nappies. She said it was far worse moving backwards from having 6 months of a nappy free life to a nappy wearing toddler again.

facebook - self-wiping is something else! seems to take much longer to acquire.... 4-5yrs seems to be not unusual (not sure what the older generation would make of that or how it was back then!).

I have come to the conclusion that the whole 'ready' concept in the way it is applied these days is a load of rubbish. That's not to say I potty trained mine particularly early (2.3 and 22 months), but I certainly believe that it is entirely possible and that our parents / grandparents are not making it up when they say that they had us all out of nappies at 18 months. The fact is it's a lot harder to potty train a younger child - takes a bit longer and more commitment. Still possible though and with the right motivation - i.e. terry nappies and not very good washing machines. Using disposables and waiting until they are a bit older is easier, that's all. And let's face it bringing up children is hard enough so why make it harder for ourselves when we don't have to?

A friend of mine was a manager at Kimberly Clark (Huggies etc) and she would proudly say that one of the greatest marketing achievements of the disposable nappy industry was convincing people in the western world that it is normal and entirely acceptable for children still to be in nappies at 3. It increases their sales by at least a third effectively. It's a shocker for the environment though 9and she had both her own DCs out of nappies before 2!!). Around the world and throughout history it is not normal. My grandmother found it really rather revolting that my DDs were in nappies as long as they were (not helped by my SIL with same aged children having them clean by 9 months and dry by 18 months - bloody hard work in my book and not something I wanted to do). Anyway, that's my rambling over.

Agree there was more incentive in the "olden days". My mum had to handwash terry nappies, so she said she trained my brother and I fairly early!

I started at 6 months, sitting them on potty while changing nappy. Obviously a 6 month baby can't ask to go, but for some reason a lot of poo and wee came out while sitting on potty. Son 1 didn't poo in a nappy after about 9 months, and was dry (day and night) by 19 (convenient, as that was when his brother arrived). Son 2 took a bit longer.
Wasn't a problem to park them on potty while sorting out new nappy.

I had read about the training from birth thing but didn't fancy it in a house with carpets.

Well, my oldest is only 13 months and not yet walking and my mind is just boggling trying to fathom how you'd train a 9 month old Sounds more like elimination communication than potty training to me.

My MIL always tells me how, despite all her best efforts, my husband was not dry until shortly before his 4th birthday! She was dreading repeating the process with his younger sister but, to her huge surprise, she pretty much trained herself and was dry at 13 months old!

When I asked her for some pearls of wisdom she thought hard for a minute and said "whatever you decide to do, just remember that they all end up dry eventually" lol. That's why I love my MIL

Ok, so just looked at the last page and I see elimination communication has already come up. My bad

I think there is a distinction. I would class a potty trained child as a child who has a sufficiently large bladder not to need frequent wees, can distinguish the sensation of needing to go and then control it long enough to get to a potty, can communicate this feeling. Children vary considerably in this, the size of their bladder increases usually I think between their 2nd and 3rd year.

On the other hand there are children whose parents choose to catch their urine in a receptacle other than a nappy.Fair enough, I can see arguments in favour of this, but I would not refer to it as toilet training.

Kurri I agree - obviously when mine were very small I was just catching the poo at the right time rather than them asking - although son 1 used to have this "poo-imminent-face" which was like a 2 minute warning....

There doesn't seem to be an easy way with the bottom wiping though.

Oh yes -the poo-face, remember it well

My DS IS 3.5YO and still not once done anything in the potty or toilet and is still not interested in training at all no matter what I do so YANBU.

DS1 - disposable nappies - asked for pants at 2.3 then did all his poos in his pants for the next 8 months.
so was he "ready" age 2? he certainly wasn't being naughty, I can still remember his huge grins of delight when one day he sorted it out.
Ds2 has demanded pants at the same age, also seems set to poo in them for the foreseeable. He wore cloth nappies...
wish I knew the answer to this one! but don't think it is unreasonable to keep a child inn nappies if they wet/soil themselves all the time in pants. I know there was a period when we found ds1 was being defined by toilet-training success and the lack of it...not fair on him at all.
Friends tell me the answer is "have a girl". silly me.

No, girls can be just as hard! DD had been eager to wear pants but still just wee'd & pooed in them until 3.3. then she suddenly got it (well the pooing was not so easy). I honestly think she was physically unable to do it before then. Babies & toddlers develop at vastly different rates in other areas so why in in toilet training? My DD began speaking at 9months but couldn't walk until 20 months, some parts of their brains develop quicker than others. I say don't sweat it but it my mum did bug me giving me the look if toilet training mentioned!

KurriKurri, ECing is not toilet training but it is something more than simple timing. (after the very early baby stages which oif course is pure timinG)

My DS whom we have done very little pottying with, will still BSL sign potty when he goes and/or point, he knows when he needs to go.

My DD is 2.8 and I've had no end of pointed comments from my mum and her many friends because she is still in nappies. She will go on the toilet first thing in the morning and before bed but when I tried her in pants she just wet herself.

I tried to train her sister (21 years ago) just after she turned 2 and had months of wet pants. In fact the whole situation totally destroyed our relationship She was always wet and stinky and I was always angry. It was a bad time. Her brothers trained themselves at 2.5 and almost 3 with very little stress and no fuss.

I can't believe this "race" and competitiveness is still going on about potty training. I am going back over 35 years and it was in full swing then.........none of my children were "trained"till they were 3 and yes I had the comments too. For god's sake why can't people just chill out and mind their own business. My MIL was always going on about it and told me her sons were out of nappies at 9 months BUT I found a photo of one of her sons in nappies at around 2 years and gleefully pointed it out to her! In those days they were terry nappies of course and the thick folds were clearly to be seen sticking out from the leg of his romper suit.

I just think it's such a shame that parents are still getting het up about this - just not worth it.

My mother potty trained me at 18 months (didn't want to have to wash two sets of nappies).

She says I got smacked when I got it wrong .

(I wonder if parents who manage early PT correlates with those who smack )

Honestly, still being in nappies past two and a half sounds rather extreme, unless there are genuine developmental reasons for it.

how dull a life would you have to have to be prepared to have an opinion on someone else's childs toilet habits?

GrumpyYoungFogey - do you actually have children? Utter rubbish.

I'm prepared to be in the dissenting minority (and I do have two children btw, as the charge of childlessness seems to be levelled at the dissenters on this thread).

As a society, we've become acclimatised to potty training later and later. Just examine the trend data. Nappy companies love it of course and do everything in their power to encourage it.

But not having potty trained by 2 yrs and 8 months seems way too late to me - unless some medical reason for it. You just have to persevere.

I am lmao at the "extreme" comment.

Gotta love MN for these kinds of comments.

Why do you have to persevere?

I did it my way. Left DS1 to choose when he wanted out of nappies and he did it at 3.5. From that day on he was dry/clean day and night with no accidents.

No fuss, no drama. Nice and relaxed boy and mum.

I don't mind anyone else doing the whole potty thing at 18 months so not sure why anyone thinks there's something wrong with waiting.

He was in re-usables at that point so the nappy companies made no money from me.

Bollocks to potty training extremism.
Let your DD do it when she's ready. It worked perfectly for me. She did it all by herself in about 3 days. She's 2.6 now and dry at nights nearly all the time too.
Times have changed - its no longer the 50's where smacking was considered normal and leaving a baby in its pram outside for hours was good for its health. Ok, that produced a generation of people who are probably far more decisive and practical than the following ones but my DD has become very independent since she decided to train herself and I'm so proud of her.
Best bet is to drop the pullups when she's showing signs of enjoying the potty a bit more. Get her to help you clean up the mess if she has an accident and put it in the toilet together. Maybe take her to buy a potty and/or toilet seat of her own choice and have a choc load of her favourite treats for anything that ends up in there. I know it sounds weird but maybe get her to decorate the potty with stickers too - DD loved doing this. And maybe get her to play on it - surround it with her favourite toys and get a game going (picnics, doctors and nurses). Once she realises how comfy it actually is to sit on there, the only problem you'll have is getting her off!