Toilet trained by 12 months

[AintHeavy]

I was born in 1980 to a teenage mum. I was looked after by an older (female) relative whilst DM went out to work. I recently learned that due to this relative hating nappies, I was out of them and dry as soon as possible. Definitely dry before I was a year old.

I am not a parent. Can anyone tell me what opinions on this would be back then, and also what is the accepted wisdom nowadays?

I'd class potty trained as being when a child is dry and asking for the toilet / potty.
Not necessarily when they can deal with clothing and wiping themselves.

But even I think it's a stretch to say a child was asking for the toilet at 12mths. Holding on and going when plonked on the potty at regular intervals maybe but I'd be stunned to hear a 12 month old asking for the potty.

I think small children did a lot of things when they had to as a survival response

In safer times there isnt the same imperative

My MIL is adamant that my husband was potty trained at 10 months. Don't believe a word of it but she insists that it happened.

Absolutely.

Were we all smacked if we didn't shit on the potty?

Maybe!

Yes my mother was like this. And she had her DC around that time. She was also anti-breastfeeding and very much against feeding on demand. Complete opposite to me.

Maybe its largely generational but I tend to think there's a big personality element, too.

Or possibly just ignored completely. My mum was potty trained by one in the 1940s but her mum was a widow and working multiple jobs to pay the bills. I don't think there was any option at all. My mum is pretty anxious as an adult.

my partner says his older children were toilet trained by 1 year however a relative came over and mentioned that his eldest was in nappies still at age 4/5 so one of them is telling porkies

A child isn't toilet trained until they can do it all themselves at 1 it's the adult wee/pooh catching it was quite common to feed children on potties and to do extended sitting I guess it's a bit like us we can force a wee before we need it and pooh is commonly at specific times....but does that mean weak bladders? There are lots of continence issues in adults and older generations used a lot of laxatives into adult hood. They didn't drink as much ( at school age drinks only offered at lunch for example) and only ate 3 times a day....did the effect continence? Is it why babies stayed in prams longer and putting children to nap in nursery aged 4 was common what about regression that was a big thing far more than now at school age or on birth of siblings?

There may be sone truth in that. My DS is 4, wasn't potty trained until almost 3 but has a bladder like a camel. Can hold more than me.

I think it's definitely possible, OP.

My 10 and 8yo were both out of nappies at 22 months. My oldest was ready by 16-18months but I wanted to wait until I had a full week off work. Had I been at home I would have started sooner.

It was nothing to do with pride for me (I had no idea how late most people left it); I just hated nappies and was concerned about the environmental cost of using nappies. Our nursery also expected all children to be potty trained by around 2 when they moved up to the main room.

I was definitely out of nappies at 20 months. My mum went to hospital to have my sister, and I was shipped off to my grandma for a week. Apparently, she told me that I was too big for nappies and I could use the potty. So I did.

My eldest took his nappy off at 2 and a half, and just announced that he didn't need it any more.

Yes it’s possible and in most countries children can control their bowels by 12-18 mths and are wiping themselves properly by 2 years old. There is a lot of babying that goes on in the UK

I was scalded over my body legs and hands at 6 months old and couldn't wear a nappy. I was in bandages for a few months. DM used to hold me over a potty or toilet and tell me to 'tinkle'.

Yep, that's exactly the reason. I had DD dry day and night by 18 months and she wore Terry nappies so if she wet them she would have felt wet and uncomfortable.

My mother bragged about having me out of nappies at 12 months.I was born in the mid 1940s and was her first, there were five of us altogether,
I think she must have had me permanently on the potty! My younger siblings were not as early, she admits this.
I can remember her sitting one of my younger sisters on a tiny potty resting on her knee when this sister was a few weeks old, she was just ''catching'' her having a wee.

It was perfectly normal to be out of nappies between 18 months and 2 years, and this is genuinely trained as wet cloth nappies aren't nice. Modern disposables don't feel wet so kids don't know what to do. I was told there's an optimal window around 2, miss it (I did) and it's a lot harder as they get stubborn. I also think we lack patience now

My siblings and I were all out of nappies by 1 year old. Washing nappies was a huge hassle so as soon as we could use a potty we did.
We weren’t independent with using it until a bit older though.

My now 18 yr old started potty training himself at 1. He walked at 9 months and hated being handled so copied his older sister. By 18 months he was doing it all independently.
In contrast my youngest was in nappies until well after three.

In the Alfie books by Shirley Hughes, written in the early 80s I think, Alfie's little sister Annie Rose can only just walk a little bit, but she only wears nappies at night. There's one of the stories where she likes to sit on her potty and scoot around the floor on it. This is all treated as totally normal and I do think many babies were probably trained that early then - they didn't need to be walking to the actual bathroom, they'd have an accessible potty and probably a stay at home mum not too far away to help them wipe their bum, which would be a lot easier than changing and washing all the nappies.

I was born in the early 80s and my mum had terry nappies and definitely got my sister and me out of them before we were 2.

I think when children as young as that are toilet trained it's a bit different - it involves the main carer being very attuned to the signs that they need to or are about to go, and getting them to a potty or toilet. So maybe more likely to happen in the days when mothers were not as likely to be working.

I did a version of EC with mine and DS1 only poo-ed on the potty once he was on solids, so just after 6mths, as I think he must have been to able to feel & control the more solid poos from eating solids. For wees during the day it was about 1 yr - probably actually earlier but I wasn't convinced as most sources of info said it wasn't possible, so he was in disposable nappies then EC pants but they'd be dry the whole day until I confident we wouldn't have accidents. I didn't bother with night-time as that is a different biological mechanism. With DS2 it was a bit later due to having another kid to deal with. I did a bit of baby-signing so that's how they asked for the potty. It made a lot of sense to me when I read about it & didn't seem hard.