This article about potty training is the biggest pile of poo I have ever read

[emkana]

yes yes I know it's the Daily Mail

but really.

How many seven year olds do you know who are still in nappies (apart from SN of course)???

And I really really think trying to potty train at 18 months is doomed to failure in 99% of cases. Why bother?

I trained both my dd's at just under three years, took 2 to 3 days, only a handful of accidents since. Easy.

I feel depressed by this article.

My DD is still in nappies at 3.3 and won't use her potty....have tried every incentive. She is bright but for some reason won't wee or poo on the potty..yet.

I hate the way that parents are blamed if one's child is in nappies beyond 2. Apparently according to the Daily Mail if my child is still in nappies at 3 I am a lazy parent. This is far from the truth..I just have not yet found a way of persuading my daughter to use the potty or loo.

Emkana - its great that your children were trained at this age in 2-3 days but this doesn't always work..my daughter was in pants for 5 days over Easter and we only had one wee on the potty in that time..in the end we had to go back to nappies.

A lot of people lie about child development. If a child cannot go to the toilet on their own initiative then they are not toilet trained. Its just the parents catching the wee at best.

katebee, I'm sure your daughter will learn to use the toilet soon.

My son was 3.3 year old when he potty trained and he learnt really quickly. In the end I used bribary, ie. one bit of easter egg for a poo or wee.

We found it helped to get a doll that weed from woolworhts and my son had fun "training " dolly.

Now he is six years old no one cares whether a child was potty trained at 18 months or 4 years.

Oh, and get all that slagging off of nurseries (see, Evil Career Bitches? Nursery staff don't care! They won't take your PFB to the toilet, ever!)
DS was trained at about 3.5 because the nursery offered to do it: he didn't want to know at home but when two of his best nursery friends were training and the nursery suggested letting him try too, it was sorted within a week or so (barring the occasional accident).

Both my sons were 3.5 when potty-trained, but then they were dry overnight. I say potty-trained. I never actually trained them. I would not say I am a lazy parent. I can just think of so many better things to do with my life than run after my child with a potty. If you wait until they are ready, you can "train them" overnight. Lovely!

I also hate pottys. I hate emptying them. I am too lazy to do so. I make mine go straight to the toilet and just flush!

Loving this DM article though. Its entertaining!

Reallytired - thank you for posting - you have cheered me up on this issue!

Unfortunately the chocolate incentive is not yet working here...and Mummy is getting fat eating the chocolate buttons up. However your doll that wees idea is brilliant..I will be at Woolworths looking for one tomorrow! Thanks for the great tip.

My mil claim that DH and brothers were trained at 10 months. I think they must have been permanently sitting on the potty all day long just so she could claim they were potty-trained. LOL

Katebee, ds1 was like your dd and I was tearing my hair out trying to train him. I had actually started training him at 2.6 and it took an entire year before he was reliable. With ds2 I waited till he was 3 and he was trained within a month. With ds3 I waited till he said "Mammy, I'm doing a wee-wee" which was just last week when he was 3.4. He actually manages to keep himself dry most of the time, except when watching TV when he can't be bothered! Do you use cloth nappies? I find ds3 seems more aware of when he has done a wee as the cloth feels wet. Ds1 and ds2 were in disposables so I don't think they were as aware.
I would talk about weeing on the potty etc to your dd to give her the idea but with no pressure.
DM article is a load of shoite!

I'm just going to read the article but, Really Tired, do they do boy dolls that wee?

I trained ds1 in a few days at 2.6 but am under absolutely no illusions that this had anything to do with my parenting skills.

DS2 is going to need more than a trip to asda to choose his own pants.

what a load of tosh

I dont know any children who wear nappies to school

And when were all these children trained at 18m? My Mum (who knows everything about child rearing ) swears by 27 months for potty training. The last toddler she trained was about 35 years ago.

God, the DM really is a pile of crap isn't it? I'm so glad I boycott it

Right, I've read it now.
I must say that for most children 18m would be a bit young. But our nursery is fully involved when a child is potty training - in fact with ds1 they said he was ready and they were right. They did say though that quite often they will say to a parent that their child is ready for potty training but the parent says 'oh just keep him in nappies' as they think potty training will be hassle and don't want accidents in their perfect houses.
I know a local mum who was shocked that my 2.6 yo was potty trained, she has 5 children and each of them was potty trained in the summer before they started school.
So if the child didn't grasp it then presumably they would go to school in a nappy. It never occured to her to try it earlier!

I expect the nappy wearing offenders are all Polish too.

There are so many things wrong with that article.

Children used to be potty trained at 18 months. Oh really! Well my 22 month old DS has had a potty since he was 18 months. He stands in it, he puts it on his head, he might occasionally even sit on it. Did he know what to do in it and does he now? No.

Modern nappies are to blame. CRAP. The last time I looked, modern nappies don't absorb poo and keep it away from the skin. Bowel control is supposed to come before bladder control, isn't it? Well at nearly 2, DS certainly knows he's about to do a poo - when he's already doing it. I have neither the time nor the inclination to chase him around with a potty all day long just in case.

Presumably nursery staff don't have the time to waste on this either, which will be the origin of the complaints that they can't be bothered. Can you imagine trying to keep tabs on maybe 20 2 year olds who all might be needing the potty at any time? Nightmare!

I have been worred recently that I'm not doing potty training properly, if at all recently. This thread has cheered me up. It's just not worth the hassle. Why the rush? Nappies are so much easier until your child actually understands what's being asked of them.

7 year olds wearing nappies? Apart from valid reasons like SN, surely most children will pretty much self-train (fairymum's experience) by 4 years old.

This thing about nurseries being lazy certainly did not apply to my dcs. They did not pressure me to potty train and when I decided to bite the bullet at 2.7, they were fully behind me with charts, stickers etc. Same support for all the other children, with boys generally training later than girls.

I don't think the writer knows very much about potty training or child development IMO.

Mil swears her 3 were "dry by a year".

Yet photos show them wearing nappies at age 2+.

Perhaps by the time they were a year she'd managed to put the nappies on properly?

Well, my two year old DS2 can use the computer and the potty. Which do you think he wants to use more often? I'll give you a clue and it doesn't begin with "p".

I had forgotten all about it but this thread reminded me of a conversation I had with my HV. I bumped into her Asda one day and got talking and I remember her saying that there are increasing nos. of children starting school still in nappies. We were talking about the scrapping of the 3.5 yr developmental review and she was saying that as a result more and more children were slipping through the net and starting school not fully trained and some still using nappies because their parents had no idea about training and the HV didn't see them so didn't realise they needed help. The surgery includes some of the less well educated and 'deprived' parts of the town in its catchment so maybe that had an effect.

However, I don't think she was talking about 7 yr olds but 4 or 5 yr olds and I am sceptical about the fact that there are any significant nos. of 7 yr olds out there in nappies.

I think 18 mths is too young to train personally. My mother swears it was the norm to be trained at a yr when I was a baby but since I couldn't walk and talk I think she was trained to spot the signs not me.

Neither of mine trained before 3.4 yrs. They just weren't interested so I had to practically make them. However, once they realised nappies were no longer an option they were both dry within 5 days - wasn't the best 5 days ever though.

To that extent I think my HV may have had a point. I am reasonably well read and educated and I found potty training difficult. I can see how a child of 4 may still be in nappies at school if their parents were less able to access the information, especially if you wait for them to be ready.

I just got my son a girl doll that wees and it worked. It didn't seem to matter too much that it was a girl doll and my son was a boy. I believe that you can get dolls with willies (ones that wee not sex toys) over the internet, but they are expensive.

I would also suggest having your child naked in the garden with the potty near by. It makes them more aware of their bodily functions.

Seriously, just because children were out of nappies earlier in the past doesn't mean that they had no accidents. A toilet trained child does not need reminders, or being put on the toilet by nursery staff.

Whatever the Daily Mail says very few school aged children wear day time nappies unless they have SEN.

The Daily Mail is pretty much everything that is wrong with this world, but thats probably a whole other thread...

potty trained mine when she was old enough to be bribed 2yr 7month and i had the patience to let her get wet and pee over the floor and learn how much she didnt like it and how great mummys lucky sack of treats was. and what fun covering the potty in stickers was. took 2 days and lots of mopping up.

its an incredibly personal thing and will sort itself out in their own time when theyre ready, dont let anyone pressure you into feeling it has to be done by a certain point, you just end up doing your own head in.

bloody shit article.

i don't think we'd have got dd trained so quickly if it wasn't for her nursery. she wanted to be the same as the older children in her 2-3 yr room so potty trained at 2 yr old.

ds1 was 'trained' by nursery school aged 3. ds2 is only 13m behind him so he caught on easily enough not long after, and ds3 did it himself at 2.
so 3 babies in 2.5 yrs and i didnt train a single one of em and im glad i didnt waste my time/energy/sanity trying coz apparently the path of least resistance is actually the right one it would seem!

It would be alot quicker for the Daily Mail to have a big front page spread saying that parents now are crap and will never live up to the wonderful skills that the grandparents have.

Have yet to see any 7 year olds still in nappies. I do, however, remember lots of children having accidents the first few weeks when I started school and I am 34.

Children at 18mths are rarely potty trained bt potty timed. Big difference.

So, in the interests of historical accuracy, I have hauled out 'Patterns of infant care in an Urban community' and 'Four years old in an urban community' which were studies of children born in 1957 where researchers went into womens homes in Nottingham, talked to them and observed their children. Less than 20% of mothers questioned when baby was a year old were expecting their child to be dry during the day at 18 months, and 40% didn't expect this till after they were 2. Interestingly 83% had started sitting baby on the potty before 12 months, but less than 10% claimed that they were potty trained. Observers felt that this was a significant over estimate based on children who were claimed to be fully potty trained being obviously wet during interviews.

At 4 years old only around 60% of children were reliably potty trained.