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#1
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? About Potty training at an older age and school issues
Hello,
With Thanksgiving being yesterday, somehow the BIG TOPIC of the day among all our relatives was why our 3.5 yr old daughter isn't potty trained, and my what a travesty it is that we are such lazy parents, how she "runs the show" in our house, and boy, aren't we going to have fun with her when she is 15. Blah, blah blah... My and DH's response to all this is simply "MYOB, she'll use the potty when she feels like it." Another comment we tend to throw out is that, "Nobody graduates highschool in diapers." However, we did get some mouthy relations asking us, "well, just how long DO you intend to change her diapers? 3rd grade, 6th grade, 9th grade?" Among our circle of contacts, I've never heard of any child older than 5 requiring day diapers (I have a few friends of 2nd/3rd graders that still wear night diapers). If I have to change her diapers til she's 5 or 6, I don't care. The only concern I have is that her future public elementary school won't change her diapers in kindergarten, so she may not be able to start that school with her friends, but would hopefully be able to join them in 1st or 2nd grade... It's never occurred to us that we may be changing diapers for a child older than 6, but I'd thought I'd ask if that has been anyone's experience, and if so, how did you handle the school situation? I know of several private Pre-K programs and even one 1st-3rd grade program that will change diapers (it is rather expensive, unfortunately), but no programs for 4th grade and up that will change diapers. My assumption is that by 4th grade, non PT kids are pretty unheard of (kids without physical/mental challenges, let me clarify). Thanks for your replies, Chris |
#2
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In article , Christine Chase wrote:
With Thanksgiving being yesterday, somehow the BIG TOPIC of the day among all our relatives was why our 3.5 yr old daughter isn't potty trained, and my what a travesty it is that we are such lazy parents, how she "runs the show" in our house, and boy, aren't we going to have fun with her when she is 15. Blah, blah blah... My and DH's response to all this is simply "MYOB, she'll use the potty when she feels like it." Another comment we tend to throw out is that, "Nobody graduates highschool in diapers." Not potty trained at 3.5 years is not unusual. Don't sweat it. However, we did get some mouthy relations asking us, "well, just how long DO you intend to change her diapers? 3rd grade, 6th grade, 9th grade?" Among our circle of contacts, I've never heard of any child older than 5 requiring day diapers (I have a few friends of 2nd/3rd graders that still wear night diapers). If I have to change her diapers til she's 5 or 6, I don't care. The only concern I have is that her future public elementary school won't change her diapers in kindergarten, so she may not be able to start that school with her friends, but would hopefully be able to join them in 1st or 2nd grade... Unless there is a physical disability or a serious mental problem, you should be out of the diaper business before age 6, and probably before 5. Most public schools do require kindergartners to be potty trained, though the evidence at the school my son went to was that some of the boys were trained to go to the bathroom, but not necessarily to go in the toilet. In kindergarten, my son refused to use the toilets at school and simply held his pee until he got home (an easy task for him, since it was only a half-day kindergarten, and he'd gotten in the habit of refusing to use the the toilet at the full-day preschool). ------------------------------------------------------------ Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics Senior member, IEEE Board of Directors, ISCB (starting Jan 2005) life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels) Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed) Affiliations for identification only. |
#3
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Christine Chase wrote in :
It's never occurred to us that we may be changing diapers for a child older than 6, but I'd thought I'd ask if that has been anyone's experience, and if so, how did you handle the school situation?**I*know*of several*private Pre-K programs and even one 1st-3rd grade program that will change diapers (it is rather expensive, unfortunately), but no programs for 4th grade and up that will change diapers.**My*assumption*is that*by*4th*grade,*non*PT kids are pretty unheard of (kids without physical/mental challenges, let me clarify). Silly question, but aren't you planning on ever pushing it? Have you ever mentioned underwear or whatever to her? I do know one girl (now a teenager) whose mother only started potty training when the child start changing her own diapers. I don't know what age she was at the time. -- Penny Gaines UK mum to three |
#4
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Christine Chase wrote in : It's never occurred to us that we may be changing diapers for a child older than 6, but I'd thought I'd ask if that has been anyone's experience, and if so, how did you handle the school situation?**I*know*of several*private Pre-K programs and even one 1st-3rd grade program that will change diapers (it is rather expensive, unfortunately), but no programs for 4th grade and up that will change diapers.**My*assumption*is that*by*4th*grade,*non*PT kids are pretty unheard of (kids without physical/mental challenges, let me clarify). I think you are borrowing trouble. I don't know of any kid who doesn't have medical problems going beyond about 4-1/2 to decide to start using the toilet. And if I DID have a child who was 4-1/2 or so and still not using the toilet, I'd probably find a way to force the issue -- like telling them that kids that age have to handle their own diapers if they are still using them. She's probably old enough to have a conversation about using the toilet. What does SHE say about it? -- Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care |
#5
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We've had some good talks about the toilet. Basically, she is just scared
of the potty and not ready to use it. She sets goals for herself to be ready, but they always pass and she is not ready yet. Her current goal is "when sissy gets here" (I am 8 mos pregnant). We'll see... At 2.5 she showed the typical signs of readiness, so we let her pick out and decorate little potties for the bathrooms, as well as inserts and stepstools for the big toilets, so she'd have a choice of either. We read her pottying books, took her to pick out big girl Princess panties, bought a big dollhouse that we made a star chart for her to "earn" playtime with, yada yada yada... I wouldn't say we "pushed" toileting on her, but we definitely presented it positively and as something fun and rewarding for her to start doing. Right from the start, she did not want to sit on either the potties or the toilets - she was scared of both. I've always modeled toileting for her, and we've also had her little friends model for her too, but she does not transfer the positive experience that others have on the potty to something that would be positive for her. She loves to run around naked, but only if she can hold a diaper in her hand, and the second she gets that urge, on goes the diaper (she knows how to put one on herself). She has complete control over this, but I don't see that as a terrible thing. A terrible thing would be to disallow her to wear diapers, or force her to sit on the potty, when she is terrified of both. The last thing I want to do is turn toileting into something traumatizing - it just shouldn't be like that. For whatever reason, she is afraid, and I respect her fear. She used to be afraid of slides... Now she loves them. She used to be afraid of "bouncy houses"... Now she loves them. I would no sooner force a crying, shaking 3 yr old onto a potty than I would force a crying, shaking 3 yr old down a slide or into a bouncy house - that is cruel. Eventually she'll come around about the potty too, but in her own time. The upside is that she does pretty much handle the diapers on her own, she can do the pees all by herself, and only needs me for clean-up on the poops. She even "pays" for the diapers ! She gets a quarter a day for chores, which she used to save up to buy a new book every couple weeks, but we explained how expensive diapers are and that she'd have to either help us out with the cost or give diapers up. Needless to say, diapers beat out new books. I must say, I admire her resolve ! Christine On 11/27/04 9:14 AM, in article , "dragonlady" wrote: Christine Chase wrote in : It's never occurred to us that we may be changing diapers for a child older than 6, but I'd thought I'd ask if that has been anyone's experience, and if so, how did you handle the school situation?**I*know*of several*private Pre-K programs and even one 1st-3rd grade program that will change diapers (it is rather expensive, unfortunately), but no programs for 4th grade and up that will change diapers.**My*assumption*is that*by*4th*grade,*non*PT kids are pretty unheard of (kids without physical/mental challenges, let me clarify). I think you are borrowing trouble. I don't know of any kid who doesn't have medical problems going beyond about 4-1/2 to decide to start using the toilet. And if I DID have a child who was 4-1/2 or so and still not using the toilet, I'd probably find a way to force the issue -- like telling them that kids that age have to handle their own diapers if they are still using them. She's probably old enough to have a conversation about using the toilet. What does SHE say about it? |
#6
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"Christine Chase" wrote in message
... Among our circle of contacts, I've never heard of any child older than 5 requiring day diapers On the potty training mailing list I used to belong to, there were plenty of kids older than 5 -- but they generally had other, underlying issues. My daughter was completely off of diapers the day she turned four, mainly because we lowered the boom on her. It's really ok to do, if you're sick of diapers. I certainly was. -- Warm Regards, Claire Petersky please substitute yahoo for mousepotato to reply Home of the meditative cyclist: http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/ See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky |
#7
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"Christine Chase" Hello, With Thanksgiving being yesterday, somehow the BIG TOPIC of the day among all our relatives was why our 3.5 yr old daughter isn't potty trained, and my what a travesty it is that we are such lazy parents, how she "runs the show" in our house, and boy, aren't we going to have fun with her when she is 15. Blah, blah blah... My and DH's response to all this is simply "MYOB, she'll use the potty when she feels like it." Another comment we tend to throw out is that, "Nobody graduates highschool in diapers." How obnoxious of your relatives. However, we did get some mouthy relations asking us, "well, just how long DO you intend to change her diapers? 3rd grade, 6th grade, 9th grade?" Among our circle of contacts, I've never heard of any child older than 5 requiring day diapers (I have a few friends of 2nd/3rd graders that still wear night diapers). If I have to change her diapers til she's 5 or 6, I don't care. The only concern I have is that her future public elementary school won't change her diapers in kindergarten, so she may not be able to start that school with her friends, but would hopefully be able to join them in 1st or 2nd grade... OK, now I shift to the side of the mouthy relation. I think "before K" should be a sort of hard-and-fast potty training rule. My oldest was pretty old when he "trained" -- and that's in quotes because when you wait until they're as old as he was (just about 4), they don't need to "train," they just need to do it. For me, it became a discipline issue. I knew he could use the toilet and that he chose not to and I felt he should. At 9, the attitude of "don't interrupt me for ANY reason; I'm too busy doing my own thing" still reigns. I decided I would not have a 4 YO in diapers and I warned him about that fact for a few months, and then one Friday afternoon about 2 months before his 4th birthday (with much pre-warning), when he came home from preschool, I made him (yes, I made him) put on undies. He peed in them. He peed in the next pair. He pooped in another pair that night. He saw my shock and horror; he shared in it by helping me clean the poop off the undies. And that was that (for daytime): end of diapers. I would have issues changing the diapers of a big 5 YO kid. Why should I? We use toilets in our culture. 5 YO poops are too big and gross for diapers, IMO, unless the poor person has an impairment preventing him/her from using the toilet system that our forebears were good enough to invent for us. And what will happen on playdates? You wouldn't expect a friend's parent to change the diaper of a 5 YO, would you? It's never occurred to us that we may be changing diapers for a child older than 6, but I'd thought I'd ask if that has been anyone's experience, and if so, how did you handle the school situation? I know of several private Pre-K programs and even one 1st-3rd grade program that will change diapers (it is rather expensive, unfortunately), REALLY?! Are you sure this isn't done only for kids who *cannot* manage the toilet? but no programs for 4th grade and up that will change diapers. My assumption is that by 4th grade, non PT kids are pretty unheard of (kids without physical/mental challenges, let me clarify). I suspect it's more like 1st grade. I bet there's regularly a small number of K'ers in any school who will sometimes wear diapers -- just to catch accidents or because of the fairly common "poop withholding" problem that results not so much in actually using diapers for pooping but in messy half-accidents that are easier to clean up if they happen in a diaper. Beth |
#8
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I have three kids, and we never made them sit on the potty. A 3 1/2
year old is smart. You pick a date, circle it on the calendar, buy them new underwear, and go cold turkey. They will figure it out. You don't need to schedule potty sessions (total waste of time and way more time and effort than this mom had patience for). Expect a fair bit of laundry, but the very vast majority of kids your daughter's age will "get" it within a few days. That is not to say they will be dry at night, as that is a whole other thing (its a function of physiological maturity and often takes much longer than daytime dryness). I would not let my kid be left behind in school or left out of activities and play opportunities because of toileting issues. I think you are confusing readiness and desire. There are lots of things kids are quite capable of doing but don't necessarily WANT to do, including picking up toys. Sometimes some low level parental direction is not only needed, but a Good Thing for everyone in the bigger picture. Mary G. |
#9
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In article ,
Mary Gordon wrote: That is not to say they will be dry at night, as that is a whole other thing (its a function of physiological maturity and often takes much longer than daytime dryness). Don't assume that because a child is dry at night that they are necessarily ready to give up diapers---my son had full control of his bladder (including being dry at night) about a year before he stopped having poop accidents. ------------------------------------------------------------ Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics Senior member, IEEE Board of Directors, ISCB (starting Jan 2005) life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels) Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed) Affiliations for identification only. |
#10
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Kevin Karplus wrote:
Don't assume that because a child is dry at night that they are necessarily ready to give up diapers---my son had full control of his bladder (including being dry at night) about a year before he stopped having poop accidents. Mary responds: Dunno how you got that out of what I said regarding night time dryness. To recap what I said...night time dryness is frequently a function of physiological maturity (i.e. the child making sufficient vasopressin to dial down kidney function during the night, so their bladder isn't filling to bursting while they are heavily asleep). Mary G. |
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