Children should be potty trained by the time they start school....

[Littlepurpleprincess]

According to This Morning I am 'lazy' and 'unskilled' because DS wasn't potty trained when he started school! He was FOUR and he tried his level best. We worked with him and our health visitor for 2 years to get him potty trained.

HOW THE FUCK IS THAT LAZY?!

I am childminder and have potty trained many children. HOW IS THAT UNSKILLED?

I do wish people who new sod all about child development would stop commenting on other peoples parenting skills!

Any other additional need and people wouldn't dare say it's down to poor parenting on National TV!

Ooooh I have sussed it

My posts where I am in conversational / advice mode come out as female
My posts where I am arguing enjoying the cut and thrust of debate come out as male

Cos women use language which is kind and sensitive and not to definite, while men use language which is decisive and strong and certain.

And there you have it!

Arrrgh wrong thread! Ignore that.

Teachers are hired to teach. Being responsible for the toilet training and nappy changing of a class of 4 year olds will reduce the amount of time they can teach for, thus reducing the quality of education a child receives. SN excepted, children should be out of nappies by the time they go to Nursery (School Nursery, the year before Reception).

Say you've potty trained you child and sent them into school. You then find out that the teacher spends a quarter of the time they should be teaching changing bums. Would you honestly be happy that your child is receiving less than expected time learning?

Teachers are expected these days to teach children far too much 'additional' stuff - parents should be taking responsibility for toilet training, using cutlery, tying shoelaces, learning to tell the time, colours and shapes and dressing and undressing themselves. They should not fall to the teacher to be responsible for.

Depends on what you define as 'teaching' though. Life skills are more important than learning to read and write and children have many complex needs- the child needs to be seen as the whole child and 'teachers' need to address this issue. You cannot separate care and education- the two are inextricably linked.

I thought I would report back on the progress of DD3's potty-training. For three weeks now she has been in pants rather than nappies. She is able to hold on and stop mid-flow (that's what prompted me to begin teaching her not the fact the HV was looming for her 2.5 year check). She is able to get pants and trousers/tights down and pull them back up again. She is happy to sit on the potty. I remind her every 30 minutes or so. I bribe reward her with a smartie or malteser for every bullseye. I ignore accidents.

YET, we have 6-10 "accidents" a day. She appears to need do a full wee about every 20-30 minutes. Sometimes she is a long way from the potty when she needs it the most. Sometimes she only realises she is peeing after starting and gets her pants wet anyway. Sometimes she utterly forgets and is bemused when she has wee all over her socks (which, incidentally, she hates)

Some days she does really well and only has 2-3 accidents and gets 7-8 maltesers.

I would not in any way describe her as potty-trained. She is simply in pants. I am looking at another 2 or 3 years of this probably, judging by how my older children performed in this department.

My child will DEFINITELY still be having accidents in 18 months time in reception when she is 4 yrs 3 days old. She will probably still be having accidents in years 1 and 2. Any advice from any expert potty-trainers of the "my child was potty trained in a week and hasn't had an accident since" variety? I'm sure I must be doing SOMETHING wrong here.

I didn't start school until I was 5y3 months. I was born in 1981. That year, my school actually took TWO intakes - my year group, that started AFTER they were 5yo, and the year below, where they started to take 'rising 5's'. Before that point, no-one in this area had started school BEFORE their 5th birthday. My mum was born in 1963, and she didn't start school until she was over 5yo too.

In some areas, it is a relatively new thing to have 4yo's starting school. My DS's primary school only stopped having 3 intakes to Reception two years ago, when the LEA forced them to take just one intake. My DD (Early March birthday) started school full-time when she was 5y1month, after the Easter Holidays. My DS1 (early April Birthday) started school full-time at 4y9months. My DS2 (Late November Birthday) started school full-time at 4y9months too. I find it unthinkable that now, some dc are staring full-time school at just days over 4yo. FAR too early IMO. Ensuring that you don't take dc into full-time school until they are at LEAST 4y9months is going to ensure that most late-developers are trained.

This has had the result that there are more dc in Reception having accidents than there were in previous years. These are dc that may have turned 4yo just one DAY before they start FT school.

My DD was clean during the day at 7.2yo, and at night at round about the same age. She was dry during the day at 9.5yo. She wasn't dry at night until she was 12y7mo. She was on the list for the enuresis clinic from the age of 4yo until they SHUT the enuresis clinic, just as she was at the top of the list, when she was 11yo. We haven't had an enuresis clinic since. She never got SEEN. I had been attempting to toilet train her from 2y6months.

My DS1 has been clean and dry, and has NEVER had an accident, since he took off his nappy at 18mo. And I mean NEVER had an accident. Was I a better parent to him? NO! It was slightly surreal to have a clean and dry 18mo while my 6.5yo was soiling and wetting constantly.

My DD has SN - which is WHY she wasn't toilet trained until she was so much older. But when she was in Reception, her SN's were not diagnosed - so that would have and did placed her firmly into the category where the teachers thought I was just a 'lazy parent'.

My DS2 also has SN, yet I was able to potty train him BEFORE he could walk OR talk. It was the ONLY area of his development where he was 'on target'. He was clean and dry by day at 2.7yo, and at night by 3.3yo. He didn't take his first steps until he was 3.5yo, and didn't say 'mum' until he was 3.7yo. Does it make me a better or worse parent that he could pee and poo in a potty when he couldn't walk or talk? .

DS3 is 13mo. If he hasn't decided to get rid of the nappies by 2 and a half, I'll start actively training him. But the one thing I have learnt is is that EVERY child has their own age at which to be 'ready', and as long as you keep TRYING to potty train every couple of months, it doesn't matter whether they are dry within a week or 10 years, in 99% of cases it will happen in the end!

It doesn't make someone a terrible parent to put their dc back into nappies if after a week, there has been NO success with potty training and they have a miserable child, they can't go anywhere, and they aren't keeping up with the washing. As long as they KEEP trying every couple of months, the child will be clean and dry in the end.

I know only too well that there are a myriad of reasons as to WHY a child is not clean/dry - and VERY few of them point to lazy parents, and a very HIGH number point to (at that point) undiagnosed medical issues or SN's. Do you know that it is incredibly difficult to get a diagnosis of Autism and/or Aspergers before 7yo in a lot of areas, for example? And that while your dc may have been diagnosed with Global Development Delay at a very young age - you are offered NO advice on how that will affect their potty training, no on what to do if they aren't 'getting' potty training, not even put on a waiting list until they are over 4yo.

I also don't agree that pull-ups are pointless - they have their place in making a child who HAS toiletting issues feel a bit more 'grown up' whilst not having to suffer the embarrasment of being stared at while they have an accident. No amount of wet knickers helped my DD to train - I took her out of nappies at 2.2yo, never bought pull-ups, when she was older she refused to wear them - I wish I HAD bought them, she was NEVER going to potty train before the age she did, regardless of wet knickers, and it would have saved her YEARS of embarrasment. So I CAN'T discount them on that basis alone - but I wouldn't go thinking that they are a natural progression from nappies either IYSWIM. IMO Pull-ups have their place, but only for when potty training fails.

After the last few days we've had, I'm afraid that after over 3 weeks I have just thrown in the towel, put the potties away and put her back in nappies. I estimate that I have spent more than 40% of my waking hours over the the last 3 weeks mopping up puddles of wee, changing wet pants and trousers and sponging upholstery. I wouldn't mind if there were an end in sight but it's getting worse rather than better. So far today we have had 2 successful wees in the potty and about 8 in the pants/trousers. I cannot see any good reason to keep flogging this horse at the moment.