Everyone stop yelling at each other!

Turns out: some kids train better early. Some kids train better later. Some kids train easier, some kids train harder. There is actually a wide variation in potty training experiences and behavior.

I don’t actually care when people potty train their kids but if I had one wish on this subject it would be that people stop being so critical (and smug!) towards other parents. You really have no idea what their experience will be or was. MYOB.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - parents today make everything sooo much harder.
Everything. More stress. What is the most stressful way to handle a situation? That is what they will attempt to do and then think/say it's the standard practice.

Just turning 3, they will be potty trained in 2 days.

THAT IS NOT TRUE!! Jesus, stop spreading that lie! I started potty training my DD at exactly three and it took NINE MONTHS. At the voiding clinic where we ended up taking DD for not being able to poop on the potty, the experts said it was because we waited until 3 to toilet train her.

But you wouldn’t know this UNTIL you actually had this experience.

I’m the pp above - the kid we waited until 3 WAS potty trained overnight. The kid we started at 2 pooped in a pull up until he was 4. You picked the wrong time - it is what it is, and there is nothing you can do about it.

We never tried before three based on posts like this one claiming it would be so easy!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - parents today make everything sooo much harder.
Everything. More stress. What is the most stressful way to handle a situation? That is what they will attempt to do and then think/say it's the standard practice.

Just turning 3, they will be potty trained in 2 days.

THAT IS NOT TRUE!! Jesus, stop spreading that lie! I started potty training my DD at exactly three and it took NINE MONTHS. At the voiding clinic where we ended up taking DD for not being able to poop on the potty, the experts said it was because we waited until 3 to toilet train her.

IT IS TRUE!!

My kid trained right before 3, in about a week. He wasn't ready till then. He has a sibling that trained the week they turned 2, in a few days-that child was ready then. Was your dd ready and you 'didn't' train her, or was she not actually ready till age 3. My guess is-if she had issues so severe that you needed a voiding clinic, it wasn't related to a few months difference in training. Sounds like it was physical or developmental.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - parents today make everything sooo much harder.
Everything. More stress. What is the most stressful way to handle a situation? That is what they will attempt to do and then think/say it's the standard practice.

Just turning 3, they will be potty trained in 2 days.

THAT IS NOT TRUE!! Jesus, stop spreading that lie! I started potty training my DD at exactly three and it took NINE MONTHS. At the voiding clinic where we ended up taking DD for not being able to poop on the potty, the experts said it was because we waited until 3 to toilet train her.

But you wouldn’t know this UNTIL you actually had this experience.

I’m the pp above - the kid we waited until 3 WAS potty trained overnight. The kid we started at 2 pooped in a pull up until he was 4. You picked the wrong time - it is what it is, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Nanny here who has easily potty-trained 9 kids from three different families all before two-years-old. It’s easier on the child and so much healthier. Those who say those before two have constant accidents are wrong.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mom’s on here swear their three year olds potty trained immediately and easily but that has never been my experience as a nanny. The longer they poop standing up in diapers - the longer it takes to get them to sit to poop.

+1 We waited with my eldest and he would only poop standing up. It traumatized me to potty train him at 3.5. I actually cried over it, it was so awful. The next two got potty trained at 2 years and it only took a week.

+3.

I potty trained DS in five days at 22 months. By two he was pooping in the toilet (not little potty). At 2.5 he could go into the bathroom, pull down his pants, pee, pull up pants, wash his hand and turn off the light. Why would I have waited and changed a three year old’s diapers?!!

Anonymous wrote:OP - parents today make everything sooo much harder.
Everything. More stress. What is the most stressful way to handle a situation? That is what they will attempt to do and then think/say it's the standard practice.

Just turning 3, they will be potty trained in 2 days.

THAT IS NOT TRUE!! Jesus, stop spreading that lie! I started potty training my DD at exactly three and it took NINE MONTHS. At the voiding clinic where we ended up taking DD for not being able to poop on the potty, the experts said it was because we waited until 3 to toilet train her.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes diapers are easier. There is no lint of potty training at 2 and then dealing with “accidents” for another year.

DD trained at three and had accidents every day for well over a year. I’m trying pre-two training with the next one.

Mine trained at three and no problems.

I trained both my kids starting on their third birthdays and they were both accident free within about 48 hours. No clue why anyone would push for weeks (or months!!!!) at an earlier age if their kid isn’t ready. Potty training doesn’t have to be some long haul ordeal if your kid is ready.

OP - parents today make everything sooo much harder.
Everything. More stress. What is the most stressful way to handle a situation? That is what they will attempt to do and then think/say it's the standard practice.

Just turning 3, they will be potty trained in 2 days.

I wished I’d trained earlier because I have a very strong willed kid and it wound up taking forever. I envied my friends who potty trained when their kids were right at 2 because I think there was less push back and it went faster.

Having said that, I do think it’s more of a pain than people let on to train early because friends who did this spent forever with the portable potties and structuring their day around making sure their 2 yr old had access to a potty quickly. I guess you get used to it but I’m not sure that it’s that much easier than just carrying a diaper bag. I’d meet friends at the playground and I’d just have a backpack and my kid on a scooter. They’d have their stroller (in case they needed to get home fast), a portable toilet with bags, a change of clothes, etc. For months and months. I never had to do that because by the time my DD trained, she had the bladder size/control to hold it plus the communication skills to let us know she had to go with plenty of warning. Most just-turned 2 yr olds don’t have that.

So in terms of hassle, I don’t think training earlier magically liberates you. BUT to me the main advantage would have been training before my DD hit her obstinate toddler phase, which for her started around 2.5. Potty training was brutal and took way longer than it did for people I know who trained earlier.

I wanted to train early because my kid got bad diaper rash but didn’t get serious about it until 2 because daycare wouldn’t support it until then. Joke’s on me — my kid is now perfectly potty trained for pee at 2.5 but insists on continuing to poop in her nap/night pull-up. 🙄

I haven't read the other responses. For me- I was a SAHM exclusively changing these massive toddler BM's while trying to get the kid to lay still enough to wipe well. It was time around age 2 for both of them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The disposable diaper industry hired some primary care MD to write “the signs of readiness” that became very popular stating to keep kids in disposable diapers until 3. Made billions for them!

No other reason. Prior to the readily available disposable diaper, all kids potty trained around two or earlier.

Yes, disposable diapers are easier for the parents but not better for the kids.

My kids are early 50's now, so we were near the end of cloth diapers. Late 60's early 70's. Kids trained at much the same time as now, certainly not "two or earlier."

In 1957, 92 percent of children in the United States were toilet trained by 18 months of age. But by the turn of the millennium, the number of toddlers who were potty trained at age two—that is, 6 months later than those kids in the 1957 statistic—was only 4 percent.

These days, most parents don’t even start potty training their children until 21 to 36 months of age. And less than 60 percent of today’s kids are potty independent by 36 months.

https://theeverydayenvironmentalist.com/episode-18-how-diaper-companies-doubled-the-average-age-of-potty-training/