I have a kid with a late August birthday who was very challenging to potty train. We decided to not do prek3 for this reason. The extra year at the DPR co-op gave her the time to work on potty training without the extra stress and anxiety.

All children should be potty trained by age 3 unless they have a special need. As a former preschool teacher, parents get lazier and lazier sheesh. As soon as they turn 2, you can start.

We were at a charter that did not require potty training but did require that parents/child be working in it in pre-k 3. My kid was trained but had accidents the first few weeks of school (as did other kids), and it was treated very gently and calmly. They’d just inform you at the end of the day and send the clothes home to be cleaned; they wouldn’t call you or make a big deal out of it. There were a few kid in pull-ups.

They had the right approach. Kids are all over the place in terms of their availability at 3/4– particularly in a new environment.

In pre-K 3/4 at MV C8 they take a lot of bathroom breaks, basically hourly. They encourage you to make sure your kids learn to change their own clothes incase of accident but they will help if necessary.

A friend whose daughter struggled with accidents at home mostly due to not wanting to stop playing etc., had virtually none at school because they went so regularly.

I’ll speak up as one of the parents of a DCPS PK3 student who is not potty trained. Our child is on the younger side (Sep birthday) and has ASD plus developmental delays due to prematurity and an IEP (though it doesn’t address potty training specifically).

So far the school and teachers are very understanding, we are starting potty training at home but are making extremely slow progress as DC does not really have a concept of wet/dry and has only recently started - inconsistently - indicating this to us. We provide diapers/pull ups to the school and they do changes in school plus enforcing communication we are using at home.

So I’m very grateful that the school is understanding. Having a kid with pretty significant SN is a lot, and having a deadline looming to achieve perfect toileting by x date is just another thing to stress over.

Yu Ying in the old building was very clear that pre-k kids had to be fully potty trained with minimal accidents AND able to go to a separate bathroom down the hall unsupervised, because the classrooms did not have bathrooms and teachers couldn't be out of the classroom all the time supervising bathroom use. I believe the new building is supposed to have a much better layout.

but the change of schools and routine definitely triggered accidents in my august kiddo, and if i had went from what they had *said* yu ying probably would have kicked my kid out.

we're in a regular DCPS pre-k with an in-classroom bathroom.

please get your kid potty trained. Can you imagine being a PK teacher with 20 3 years and having to change diapers or pullups on kids.