The abandonment of responsible parenting

Potty training is a necessary and challenging aspect of bringing up children! I have a 3 year old granddaughter and a 2 year old grandson both of whom are toilet trained. The two more recent arrivals are still in the pram so that challenge awaits with them! Any parent reading this will probably recall all the accidents and misadventures that lead to the point of having your child potty trained but it’s good for the child and it’s up to the parent to persevere. Now let’s take a look at this story

One in four children are due to start school in September without being toilet trained, a charity has said. A report by early years charity Kindred found pupils are losing, on average, a third of their learning time each day due to teachers diverting away from teaching and towards supporting children who are not school-ready.

Now we can question just how accurate these stats are and they may indeed vary from region to region but nonetheless the idea that 25% of young kids arrive at school without being toilet trained is a scandalous indictment of their parents. Which then raises the question precisely WHICH parents are abolishing themselves from training their children to use the potty and instead sticking a nappy on them and hoping for the best? Might there be a specific demography that is doing this? Has any data been gathered on this deeper dive into the problem and if not, why not?

If you bring kids into this world then you are responsible for them. Transiting them out of nappies and into being able to use a Potty and then a toilet is down to the parent. It makes me feel sorry for those kids whose parents abandon teaching them this rite of passage from baby to child.