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).
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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.