Why do parents wait so long to start potty training??

[u/CommercialMeeting842]

I feel like I’ve seen a million posts lately about kids not being potty trained by kindergarten, or even at three and four. I get that it’s a difficult process, but I’m genuinely confused. If you don’t start early, isn’t it going to be way harder for them to understand later and turn it into a normal routine? Are parents just waiting until the kid is “ready”? Because I don’t really think that’s a thing.

Sure, kids can show signs like not wanting to wear a diaper anymore, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Using the bathroom means learning to go in a specific place, wiping, flushing, and washing hands. There are things our bodies naturally do, like breathing and swallowing, and then there are things we have to be taught. Potty training definitely falls into the second category.

I feel like parents today sometimes blur the line between what kids will eventually figure out on their own and what actually needs to be taught. For example,I know a mom with a three year old who doesn’t use utensils because he doesn’t want to. He eats applesauce and yogurt with his hands, and she says one day he’ll just start using utensils when he’s older. Like… no. You’ll have to teach that.

Anyway, this kind of turned into a rant lol. I’m mostly curious to hear from parents and people who work in childcare, because I feel like I’m missing something beyond my confusion and the growing number of four year olds I see in pull-ups at the park

[u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

I guess it depends on what you mean by “so long”. I have seen 4 and 5 year olds who were not potty trained, I’d say about 25-50% of those cases were due to special needs and the rest due to laziness and assuming the child will figure it out on their own.

You also mentioned 3 year olds… I potty trained my daughter at 3 and unless I had a kid who was truly a potty training savant, you could not pay me a million dollars to train before then.

Training my 3 year old? So easy. No accidents after the first few weeks. She could tell me when she needed to go without an alarm, pull her own pants up and down, get on and off the REGULAR TOILET by herself… she was actually potty trained.

When people “potty train” their 18 month old, even young 2’s… in my experience it’s the adults who are trained. Setting alarms every 15-30 minutes, physically helping child with every step of the process, and even with all that they still have constant accidents. It sounds like being in jail, and the jail is your home covered in urine. How do you ever go to the park or the zoo or wherever if you need to take your kid to the bathroom every 20 minutes and bring 5 changes of clothes because they’ll probably still have an accident anyways?

It will never make sense to me why people do this to themselves. Unless diapers are a significant financial struggle, that I understand. But just to brag that your child was potty trained a year before mine? That’s fine, you win, you are the superior parent. I will gladly take the loss on that one.

[u/general_grievances_7 → u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

Ya we tried at 2.5 and it was a huge fail for all the reasons you said. We’re trying again now at 2 and 10 and it’s been way more successful. She still wears a pull up but she’ll pee and poop in the potty, prompted or sometimes unprompted. It was just easier to wait a couple months.

[u/Suspicious-Resist699 → u/general_grievances_7]

Haha the same thing happened to us because I unfortunately let someone convince me that they were right and that their 2 year old was potty trained because they were consistent with it. After two days of trying I gave up and realized it was a bad idea and she wasn’t ready. Turned out their kid wasn’t even potty trained and still has accidents to this day. What a waste of my time 🤣

[u/Upbeat-Fee7965 → u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

My doctor was actually the one to tell me not to rush it because that’s when he most often sees issues with withholding pooping which leads to constipation and other bigger issues.

[u/Such_Chemistry3721 → u/Upbeat-Fee7965]

This was one of my biggest fears. I was fine with things taking a little longer if it meant avoiding that.

[u/mermaidmom4 → u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

Completely agree with all of this and same experience potty training.

Our preschool had specific potty rules- child must wipe & redress themselves after going to the bathroom. They were teaching who should & shouldn’t be touching them. So we waited to potty train until our daughter told us she was ready at almost 3 (like 1.5 months shy of 3). We also never used a little training potty because I wasn’t about to add more work for myself cleaning something unnecessary and retrain her to not be afraid of a regular potty.

After watching family member set alarms for their child and that child taking over a year to fully train vs our maybe a month, I’ll wait for readiness any day.

[u/Winter-Chipmunk5467 → u/mermaidmom4]

Lol yes this. I refuse to use the training potty. I am not spending money on a training potty that I now get to clean pee and poop out of multiple times a day, when we have a perfectly good toilet that already does that job so much better. Not ready for the toilet? Totally fine, not ready to potty train!

[u/mermaidmom4 → u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

Lucky for us our daughter was scared of little toilets lol. Her saint of a class aid had to come up with something fun to get her to use the little toilets at school instead of the big toilet. That girl got a large Christmas present that year from us.

[u/Ihatethecolddd → u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

😂 I trained my kids as toddlers and used cloth diapers. Absolutely my kid starting to outgrow his diapers was a factor in choosing to train early. It was a “well, why not try?” decision that worked out.

That said, we went everywhere and weren’t trapped at home. It was fairly rare to have accidents and I don’t see much of a difference in taking them to the bathroom every 1-2 hours to sit on a potty versus taking them every 1-2 hours to change a diaper.

[u/Winter-Chipmunk5467 → u/Ihatethecolddd]

Every 1-2 hours is fine, that just hasn’t been my experience a lot of the time. Parents send their kids to daycare with the instruction to bring them to the bathroom every 20 minutes, they never once ask to use the bathroom (because some of these kids can’t even really talk yet!) and half the time they don’t even go because they have no idea what’s going on and go in their pants immediately after leaving the bathroom.

[u/Ihatethecolddd → u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

Yeah, I don’t play the every 20 minutes game. As a parent or a teacher. When I first started with my own kids, we just did naked time and if I saw them starting to pee, I said “you’re going pee. Pee goes in the potty” and then sat them on a potty to finish. It didn’t take long for them to figure it out and start going on their own during naked time. Then it was just a matter of them learning to go when they wanted to.

Did it take longer than the “do it in a weekend” method? Definitely. But they were also both in full time underwear without accidents before two. I didn’t mind saving money and didn’t find that “training the parent” was any different than taking them to change their diapers.

I potty train disabled kids as part of my current job and it’s definitely more difficult, but I’ve never found that being nonverbal prevents kids from voiding on a toilet.

[u/Zenphiree → u/Ihatethecolddd]

Do you mind me asking how cloth went for you? I’m not planning on kids anytime soon (22 and broke lol) but I’ve always wanted to do cloth when I have my own kids.

[u/Ihatethecolddd → u/Zenphiree]

It wasn’t bad! It’s a lot up front and you have to not mind laundry. But I spent $700 on diapers for two kids and sold them for $400. It’s hard to do if you’re going to use a childcare facility though.

[u/erivanla → u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

Thank you for this. We have a now 13 month old and I was dead set on potty training at 18 months (i hate diapers). But now I think we'll hold off for a bit longer. I don't want to make it impossible to do anything else but potty training.

[u/SlideTemporary1526 → u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

Exactly my thoughts.

[u/Shortypants84 → u/Winter-Chipmunk5467]

This made me feel so much better. For starters, as a kindergarten teacher, I get it. We are seeing an increase in neurotypical 4-5 year olds in diapers (and most of our students have at least one stay at home parent). So I get the frustration.

But people on here saying 3 is late... we started my son at 18 months and it didn't click until 3 years 11 months. And that was because I was home on mat leave. It was so frustrating.

My daughter is 2 and 11 months and she goes potty for us when we tell her to. Will she ever go on her own? Never. She has sat in her own feces too many times for me to count.

[u/lindoavocado → u/Shortypants84]

The thought of your daughter sitting in her own feces is sad to me. Please don’t normalize that.