News

People really seem to think that children are just born with the knowledge inside of them and they will just figure it out cause we as adults know it.

In regards to potty training, that is actually quite the way it is. There is a reason you cannot teach a newborn to be potty trained and a reason why the vast majority of kids age 5 do not use diapers.

The "training" part of potty training - as in, sitting down, pooping/peeing, wiping, flushing, washing your hands - is a social necessity. This should absolutely be taught. But the feeling of "oh, something's coming, I gotta go" is absolutely something that kids do figure out by themselves and cannot figure out before the right time has come. This is a neurological thing and rushing it won't do any good and won't work. You can help guide your child to listen to their bodies once the time comes. But at the end of the day, it is their body and their connection to what is happening in there. You can condition them to use the potty every time after X Y Z happens (after you get up, after you eat before we leave the house,...), but this is not the same as learning to feel their bladder, how full it is, how much time is left before they really gotta go, and so on. And the latter is so much more important - which is why there has been a push for later potty training.

This is to say - it is a good thing that potty training takes place later now as it is now much more child led and child focused. Not out of a societal need to function. As others have pointed out, this article is confusing because it doesn't clearly state what school/age they are talking about and what "potty trained" entails. It makes you think that elementary school children get their shitty diapers changed. Are they "not potty trained" because they fail to wipe correctly or wash their hands? Do they do their business into diapers? Are we talking poop or pee? Are we talking more frequent accidents? And especially, what age group are we talking about exactly?

Like, believe me, even in a climate where kids are allowed to do this at their own pace, our kindergarten (ages 3-6/7) is not full with kids that have diapers on, especially past 4. Have you seen the reaction of a baby vs toddler vs preschooler when they poop their pants, even in diapers? A baby doesn't realize it, a toddler might actually enjoy the warmth. A preschooler usually hates the feeling and starts to cry and wants a change immediately. When they are ready, they are ready, they don't want to run around dirty or wet.

And last but not least - I assume we are talking about kids under 6, i.e. under elementary school age. In that case: What does it matter if a kid is potty trained at 33 or 39 months? We are making a big deal out of a couple of months or maybe a year, while this year might actually be incredibly beneficial for the kids in their bodily autonomy and body feel.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, it is now the kindergartens that are advocating for this. While they of course prefer kids to be potty trained there is so much more awareness and understanding from the teachers' side; every kid has their own pace and is an individual and should lead their own way. And they absolutely do in 99% of the cases.

Framing "late" potty training as some kind of societal failure is simplifying a very complex issue in a grotesque way. In some ways, it is a very big achievement in children's rights.