Wiping their own bottom

[ninaprettyballerina]

What age is the norm to teach your lo to wipe their own bottom after a poo? My DS is 3.2 and nursery told me they'd had to change his trousers as he'd tried to wipe his own bum and his clothes ended up covered in poo. I have no intention of teaching him yet as he's really not ready and my biggest worry is him walking off with pooey hands and spreading the mess.
What age did others do this??

as soon as they sit on a toilet rather than a potty

they all have to learn sometime

I got my DD wiping her own bottom as she potty trained and then to always wash her hands afterwards. She was about 3.5. Wet toilet paper/wipes is helpful.

Hhmmm. Well he never did the potty - straight to the toilet. Maybe I should take the time to teach him now then

my ds4 will be 4 in march and just in the last month he has started wiping his own bottom, his success depends on what the consistency of the poo was like [boak] but he is generally pretty good :)

3.5. They start school at 4 so need the practice .
I have actively encouraged them to wipe their own bums .

ds is 5 and still gets me to help out/check his bottom after he has done a poo. He tends to save it for after school so rarely has to do it himself when he is there.

Ds is four. He has only just started doing it himself. Sometimes he wants me to check, or will need help.
He will only do a poo at home.

I have to say my DD is pretty competent and is most offended if I question her wiping and ask to check!

Some children are physically capable earlier than others - and some have less runny poo than others. I doubt anyone would expect their very young child to clear up their own diarrhoea unsupervised.

Some children simply aren't physically ready to do a good job wiping their own bottom until they are over 4 years old. You don't know how capable they are until you encourage them to give it a try, though! (Although since children tend to fall either into the camp that want to be independent or the camp that would rather eat their poo than wipe their own bottoms, it's sometimes quite difficult to find out....).

The school point is mostly a non-issue, though, since most children would rather not poo at school unless they really, really had to. Those that do have to poo at school often have poo at the runnier end of the spectrum, however (otherwise they would probably have been able to hold on a bit longer....). The result being that a lot of po-faced parents of children with solid poos and no anti-bottom wiping fetish, think that parents who have failed to teach their children how to wipe their bottoms effectively before starting school are very poor parents indeed.

dd1 wipes her own. she's 5.

dd2 wants to wipe her own but i'm not actually sure she can reach!