JUST POTTY!
As a growing army of middle-class parents let their children wear nappies until they are ‘ready to stop’, experts warn that they are...
SOPHIE KATHIR proudly describes her four-yearold 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 laissezfaire approach to bladder and bowel control.
Whether the increasingly fashionable child-centric parenting movement is wise, or well-meaning but ultimately damaging, is the subject of fierce debate – with a recent national teacher survey claiming a rise in school-age children wearing nappies, and an increase in soiling accidents.
Sophie says: ‘I know Mahish can control his bladder, but he’s lazy. He never has accidents during his three hours at nursery every morning but when he’s with us, I don’t think he wants to [hold on].’
She claims taking Mahish out of the family’s London home without a nappy on can be disastrous. A fortnight ago he urinated on the floor of the crowded grocery aisle at the local supermarket.
Sophie says: ‘People clearly considered me lazy and incompetent. But I’m not. And neither was I about to l oudly admonish Mahish. Instead, I just told him he had to tell me next time he wanted the toilet when he was wearing pants.’
NHS guidelines suggest that potty-training should begin by age two. Some children will be dry during the day. By age three, nine out of ten are dry most days – with the odd accident.
Forums such as Mumsnet, however, are full of posts from mothers who say that training at two ‘feels too soon’, and that tearful protests from their children led to them going back to nappies.
Sophie says she was flooded with support from other mums of pre-schoolers who were similarly ‘behind’ when she described her situation on Facebook.
A seminal article entitled 3 Reasons Kids Don’t Need Toilet Training (And What To Do Instead), by parenting guru Janet Lansbury, was published online in 2014.
In it, she said: ‘If parents have an agenda around toilet training, healthy toddlers are inclined to push back [resist], even if they might have been otherwise ready.’
But other experts are less convinced. Rachel Waddilove, author of The Toddler Book: How To Enjoy Your Growing Child, says: ‘I am seeing increasing numbers of healthy older children who have yet to be potty-trained – it’s a worrying trend.
‘It is a parent’s responsibility to teach children to use the potty, just as we show them how to clean teeth and wash their hair.’
PSYCHOTHERAPIST Phillip Hodson, spokesman for the UK Council for Psychotherapy, claims child-led pottytraining is a ‘terrible’ idea and ‘bad parenting’, adding: ‘Being incontinent by the time you start school turns a child into a problem. I can see no upside to this. Parents need to set boundaries.
‘No one wants to go back to the Victorian way of punishing bedwetters, but if you never say no to children, you won’t educate them.’
And cognitive behavioural therapist Anna Albright says: ‘Pottytraining is a mucky job for parents, and children won’t understand that it’s worth it in the long run.
‘Parents need to consider that their kid may well end up in nappies while their peers are using the toilet, and that they will be seen as outsiders.’
Sophie, who also has a daughter, Laksha, seven, firmly believes she has made the right decision. She says: ‘Children learn to use the toilet in their own time and I’m not about to force Mahish.’
Although her daughter declared ‘no more nappies’ when she was two, Sophie says there was ‘no way’ Mahish was ready at that age.
She explains: ‘He took longer to talk than his sister, and wouldn’t have been able to articulate that he needed a wee in an emergency.
‘It does worry me that he might not be trained by the time he starts school next September, but he should be able to learn at his own pace.’
Sophie refutes any insinuation she has been neglectful.
‘My husband and I have both done everything we can to gently encourage Mahish. We have used sticker charts and offered sweets as incentives, but we’re not prepared to banish nappies altogether or shout if he has an accident.
‘Ultimately, when he finally ditches the nappies is up to him – and I’m not going to beat either my son or myself up for that.’