DS and DiL "babying" 3yo GD

Always it should be the parent's choice as long as they aren't harming or neglecting the child. However I do think this modern way of using nappies for so much longer than used to be the case is a bit odd. If a child is introduced to a potty at a young age than they usually do not have any problem with eventually getting the hang of it. My son had a potty from 18 months, originally he used it as a crash helmet! Then he gradually got used to what he should be using it for and was out of nappies day and night by 2 years.

@Callistemon21, my brother could read at three and knew his multiplication tables. He worked out the tables up to 16 for fun at this age. He could tell the time including five to/past etc before he was three. He was an outlier though.
@Amy71452, it is so difficult to observe and not be able to say anything, isn't it? I don't understand this trend of waiting to potty train until a child is "ready." My children were born in the nineties and the thinking then was that girls were ready around their second birthday and boys around the age of 2 1/2. Even so, my mother's generation thought this was late. My second son and daughter were almost textbook with those milestones but my oldest was nearly three and l thought I had failed. It turned out later that he is quite profoundly autistic so had actually done very well. As for the dummy, well they are much easier to give up than thumb sucking but I don’t like seeing a child older than two using them in the day. It's a different matter if they are just used at bedtime.

My DGS will be 4 in December, and still uses a dummy if he is tired or upset, but until recently he was non verbal - now he chats and understands that his 'dumdum' is not to be used all day, as he is a bigger boy.

His potty training wasn't a thing until about 3 months ago, when he decided nappies weren't overly comfortable and he's doing quite well. I think it helped he goes to nursery and is with older children. He has wanted to be like them, and soo has changed immensely in the past 6 months...maybe your DGD will do the same?

Successful Grannies don’t have opinions.
Our ways are out dated.
No suggestions and just follow parents instructions.
My Grand child was breast fed till she was 3 and I thought it was too long (didn’t say tho)
We’re there to adhere to the parents ways.
Just bite your tongue.
No pushing your ways. Like the rest of us you’re learning too.
Enjoy being a granny, if you don’t follow parent’s instructions, you could be a lonely Granny.

Do not initiate it and do not mention it to them. It is up to them to decide when these things should happen. By the time they start school at 5 most children have reached all their goals, does it matter if they get there more slowly than other children?

If it's any consolation, my youngest GD was still having 'poo' accidents when she started school. I was totally horrified but managed to keep quiet. She's 10 now and doesn't do it any more!

Dummies for a long time do alter the way teeth grow in but not anything like finger sucking. I worked with a Consultant Orthodontist for 4 years and saw the damage done by both. As to the toilet training can understand you feeling GD should be out of nappies but she is not your child so just go with what her parents say. At least GD is asking for a change, noticing she is uncomfortable. Does GD ever notice other children her age not wearing nappies. Sometimes that sort if thing can encourage a child wanting to be "big" too.

I’m coming to this thread late but had some concerns about one of my GDs. She’s 7 now and doing fine. DS and DIL had an odd daily routine especially with nap and bedtimes but the nursery said that on the 2 days she was there she would have to follow their routine. They weren’t happy and even contemplated DIL giving up her job. In the end they gave in and all was well. I had GD one day a week and stuck to the routine but it didn’t work well.

Guidelines are now 3+. All my grandchildren were toilet trained very easily just did it in a weekend, but all over 3. Exceedingly bright also 🥰

It is not your child. Do not interfere. The child will survive in spite of it, and you will lose out if you continue to put in your pennyworth. Bite your tongue.

Btw my son is in preschool at the local primary school and they are quite happy with the situation. He doesn’t have his dummy at school but he does wear nappies

I agree with those who say don’t intervene. My grandson isn’t potty trained and still has a dummy. He is also three. There’s plenty of time. These things come when the child is ready.

Interfere at your peril
Only offer advice if asked and only then with great care

Callistemon ☺️

Grammaretto

I can't say I have had any hangups despite being clean and dry from 13months.
But each to their own!

😃

I can't say I have had any hangups despite being clean and dry from 13months.
But each to their own!

We lived in a country with a tropical climate where babies rarely wore nappies. They were carried all the time by their mothers, who quickly became attuned to their baby and could sense when the baby was about to perform. At that point they would just hold the baby over a suitable place and that was it. They would have a cloth underneath the baby sometimes but they had nothing fitted and as they grew older, ran about with bare bottoms. These children were trained pretty quickly, as you can imagine!

It happened that way because nappies were unaffordable (putting your child in nappies was a way of boasting about your financial status) and most people had nowhere to wash them anyway, except ditches or rivers. People didn’t have prams or even cots, which they called boxes. You rarely heard a baby crying as with large family there was always someone to take care of them.

It would be hard to live like that in a cold westernised country, though.

Not your child not your business. Grandmas job is to to love and support the family not attempt to parent and intervene. I wouldn’t say a word or try to “train” her on your time. It’s not your place

Sad to see so many falling for the ‘when she’s ready’ myth about potty training. A myth pushed by the makers of disposable nappies btw, no surprise there. Have a read of ‘Oh Crap, potty training’ by Jamie Glowacki, She talks a LOT of sense. You can bet people wouldn’t leave toilet training so long if they used cloth nappies and had to wash and dry them. 100 plus years for disposable nappies (and all the Tena pads) to decompose in landfill…..

Grammaretto

We arrived in NZ (DF home) when I was a year old baby and soon after my 3 yr old sister and I were left with DGrandma while my parents looked for a house.
My DG had me potty trained in a day so the story goes

She was a kind woman but firm.

Apparently I was trained at 15 months, probably explains my problem with running taps now!!

After having trained many kids, the one thing I’ve learned is that there’s zero point unless they decide they’re onboard. I’ve had kids train around two, others closer to four. Trying to push the issue never works.

I waited until they were 2, too, Daddima, having read that they didn’t usually possess the physiological control before then. It took just a week both times - clean and dry in the daytime at least.

A non-Brit neighbour I had when dd1 was small, had a child the same age and when dd was 12 months was constantly telling me that I must take the nappies off and train her.

TBH her dd was reliable no sooner than mine, and in the meantime she had an awful lot of puddles to clean up.

We arrived in NZ (DF home) when I was a year old baby and soon after my 3 yr old sister and I were left with DGrandma while my parents looked for a house.
My DG had me potty trained in a day so the story goes

She was a kind woman but firm.

BlueBelle

I couldn’t bear a child to be in a nappy after 12/14 months and
I d have that dummy gone too BUT can’t alter the fact that it’s not for you to decide and only the parents can
Thankfully all my kids thought like me and nappies and dummies went quite early and as my grandkids are all in the late teens twenties it doesn’t seem to have harmed them in any way 🤣

I would love to know how you go about potty training a 12-14 month old. I always just waited until I felt they could understand that the toilet was the place to ‘go’, and it was usually done and dusted in a few days, and they were definitely around two years old.

The dummy certainly didn’t affect my DD’s speech development. At any rate, IMO they’re preferable to thumbs.

My dd1 sucked her thumb from day one.
Even at 16, when she had a lifeguard job at the local pool - so was sitting in one of the high-up chairs keeping an eye on everybody - she wasn’t put off by one of the staff mischievously calling over the loudspeaker, ‘Will Helena Thomas* please take her thumb out of her mouth?’ 😂
She didn’t care!

She was still sucking it after she learned to drive! And yes, her teeth were somewhat affected.
*not her real name.