Can you be too busy to potty-train your child?

SHONA SIBARY (Femail) admits she struggled to combine her work as a freelance writer with raising her first child, yet went on to have three more children. Her complaint that no one should criticise working mums too busy to potty-train their children will cut little ice with previous generations of mothers, who also worked yet would have been ashamed to have sent their children to school unable to manage this basic task. mrs José H. o’Ware,

methwold, Norfolk. Shona Sibary believed her work was more important than that of her children’s educators, yet a teacher’s job specification does not include ‘you will potty-train the children of parents who want to abdicate their responsibilities to you, or are just too lazy’. Children not prepared for school should not be admitted to it until they are.

Margaret Dewar, Boroughbridge, N. yorks.

PERHAPS Shona Sibary should have a spell on the other side of the fence. Before she retired, my wife was a cleaner/classroom assistant at an infants school. Sometimes, coming home at the end of her weekday shift, she would be in tears of dismay and frustration after clearing up the mess left all over the school toilets by children whose parents had been too lazy to carry out such basic training.

Pete Williams, Hayes, middx. If Shona had to wash and dry towel nappies, as we had to, her child would have been potty-trained before 18 months old and toilettrained soon after. There is no excuse for parents sending a normal, healthy child to school in nappies, expecting others to do what is their responsibility. They should also consider that their child may be ridiculed by other children. Alan Stackman, calne, Wilts.