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Middle class parents letting their kids wear nappies until they are ready to stop
Thornfield
Posts: 767 Forum Member
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Sophie Kathir proudly describes her four-year-old son Mahish as ‘a bright boy who can count to 20, is learning to write and could tell you the name of every dinosaur’.
He passed every developmental milestone, from weaning to walking and talking, pretty much on cue. At 3ft 4in, he is almost exactly the average height for a child his age.
So it seems incongruous – and perhaps disturbing – to learn that Sophie, an intelligent middle-class mother-of-two, regularly puts her perfectly healthy boy in a nappy.
Despite the ‘judgmental looks’ from other mothers when they notice the telltale white padding peeking over the waistband of her son’s trousers, Sophie is unrepentant. ‘Although nobody has said as much, their horrified faces suggest I have somehow failed as a parent,’ she says.
Sophie, a 29-year-old NHS clinical trials co-ordinator says that having ‘tried everything’, she and her husband Pirathees, 36, have abandoned attempting to potty-train Mahish.
They have decided they are leaving it up to him to decide when he wants to stop wearing nappies.
Far from being mavericks, the Kathirs are part of a growing army of parents who are adopting this laissez-faire approach to bladder and bowel control.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3805552/As-growing-army-middle-class-parents-let-children-wear-nappies-ready-stop-experts-warn-JUST-POTTY.html
What is it with these barmy middle class mums? Intelligent enough to know better yet they seem to bring up their kids as though they're wild animals.
I feel really sorry for teachers who have to deal with all these children who haven't been properly trained by school age. It's disgusting and it's failing the child on a massive level. When I was at school it would have been the most humiliating thing on earth to wear a nappy or even just have the odd accident! What's changed and why?
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Don't even get me started on that.
Little Britain comes to mind!
So a person who shows controlling charecteristics,someone we would call 'anal' today showed a desire for control at the toilet training stage.
A child who responds badly with emotional outbursts will be a disorganised, chaotic person in the future.
This could all be horlicks but I do think that toilet training is more about society expectation rather than the child itself.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_retentiveness
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_expulsiveness
The child's reaction to toilet training is incredibly important and the goal should be reached in a happy and contented way. If it takes longer than expected then so be it. Just as long as the parent has that in mind and is not ignoring it.
To an extent I can understand what you're saying but is there really any way to excuse children not having been "trained" by school age? I don't think there is, not even for the "happiness" of the child.
It's The Mail who've decided the problems down to "growing army of middle class parents" with the obligatory mumsnet comment thrown in. Reality says it's not. Whatever, it's another example of both missing and bone idle parenting.
You could be right, I certainly got mine trained by then but one of them went through a proper trauma to get there.
If that trauma and unhappiness effects their personality adversely into adulthood and even effects a relationship with a parent forever - surely it would be prudent to rethink how these things are handled?
If someone comes out says your child will become a more balanced person if you take a chill pill with toilet training by extending it then surely you would take the advise?
Well, yes this is partly the usual fail clickbait but it does seem that middle class mums jump at the chance to go down the road of unconventional parenting, sometimes right from birth with things like the dangerous "freebirthing" trend.
I'm possibly horrifically old fashioned and though I do strive to be live and let let, it seems like a whole load of hippie dippie nonsense to me.
Lots say we should do it this way because we've always done it this way any deviation from 'the way' is a heresey.
I think it's good to challange the orthodoxy because the results could be better.
I'm not parent so possibly don't have a "right" to be guessing what I'd do since theory and reality are always two completely different worlds but I can't imagine letting a child of mine go to school not trained, and if they have severe trauma from training attempts I would worry they weren't ready for school anyway.
For what it's worth that's not what I think. I'm feeling solely about how things are NOW and what harm this might cause children and how unfair it is to teachers NOW.
If things change naturally overtime then whatever, but not training your child "just because" seems really harmful to me.
Sure, most kids should be potty trained by his age. But there will be a small minority who aren't, either because they have lazy parents, because of a medical reason or simply because they will not cooperate with it. Sounds like her kid is one of the latter.
Kids develop at different rates. Got three young kids myself and am just going through potty training the last one. My little girl was out of nappies at 21 months. My next one (boy) was about two and a half. My last one (boy) started potty training four days ago and he's 26 months.
For all of them, we've just done it when they've shown signs of being ready. I'm in the camp of waiting until that time rather than trying to force it on them. A friend of my wife's is a bit of a Hitler with her kids. She basically bullied her son into potty training just after he was two. The poor kid blatantly wasn't ready for it so God knows what psychological damage she's done him. Her second (girl) is barely 19 months and the woman is showing signs of doing the same to her. Totally wrong.
I do of course acknowledge (as I've said) that most cases of four year olds still in nappies is down to lazy parenting. But in the case of the woman in the article, I don't think that's the case. If this kid is at school and there's no medical reason for it, I'd bet he'll want to potty train pretty soon.
However, even following a child led method, there are times you need to give your child a nudge in the right direction though a gentle prod rather than a full on push.
I never went down the potty route as it seems to be adding an unnecessary stage for no real point and just encouraged her to use the loo.
However, I do think its something a child needs to be starting by the age of 3 rather than 5!
You shouldn't conflate going to school with toilet training.
A child might start school not fully toilet trained but might be the only one in the class able to read.
It's flipping hard man. My first was a breeze and the second took years and still had accidents when he started reception. He just got confused and scared. He'd keep it all day not knowing what to do.
We're putting him on the toilet trying to predict it and nothing. Then suddenly 5 minutes later BAM out it comes. By that time we've taken our seats in the theatre.
You make a lot of good points.
I suppose a lot of my reaction to things like this do come down to not being a parent myself. And I fully appreciate what a tough job parenting can be, and don't like to make a hobby out of slagging off parents.
I just hear so many stories of kids not going to school trained and teachers having to deal with it and it is alien to me. I'm not that old, only early 30s, but you just didn't get this when I was in school and if you did the poor kid would have suffered something awful over it possibly even if there was a genuine medical issue.
5 out of 29 were not toilet trained
several didnt know how to use a knife and fork but ate a roast dinner with their fingers
half the class were some sort of 'special needs' cases..
this is in a wealthy middle class area in cambridgeshire.
True, got to feel sorry for the teachers ☺
I can't agree when it involves humiliating a child, which it does and while inflicting the problem on teachers.
My 5 kids were all allowed to go their own way on this and it never involved trauma. I've never understood why it should. Just lots of praise and a ceremonial burial at sea (toilet) with our own daft song when I first caught them in time to stick a potty under their bums by leaving their nappy off.
It certainly reads as though the parents have tried and met with resistance - whether deliberate or physiological - and reached the point where they feel all they can do is wait and see.
It might be interesting to see if the 'out of nappies' age has changed over time as the relative comfort has (if advertisers are to be believed) improved over the years. If it's all too easy and comfortable then is there less incentive? OK, serious over-simplification there, it's all relative to various meanings of 'easy' and 'comfortable'...
We make it too easy to ignore the problem for parents and children IMO.
I have wondered myself if the fact that modern disposable nappies are designed so that the child doesn't feel wet and dirty means they don't have that urgency to get out of them as compared to the old school terry nappies which ended up sodden and heavy.
Lol, good strategy. Mine would look at me like I was an idiot 😆
Anyone can have special need kids so thats lower, middle and upper class ,
If you're implying that I and others speaking against the idea haven't read properly, I can assure you I did.
I'm just struggling when I think of how this would have gone down when I was young. I get that things change but isn't it more concerning these children might be horribly bullied and be an awful burden on some poor teacher in the long run?