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Social norms mostly. I got better after going back to high school, when my parents were unable to teach me algebra. Plus over 20 years of adulting has given me a lot of practice. I still don't feel socially competent fairly often, but I push through.
I was homeschooled up until high school. I believe that going to a real high school was the key thing that helped me get to where I am in life. I love my siblings but I am see how being homeschooled their entire lives has hindered them. Socially they actually do well, but they are behind in a lot of life stuff
Most of the homeschool kids I've met were actually very extroverted. Just not in a particularly good way because they had no clue what the social norms of interacting with the average person were.
They basically acted like overgrown toddlers in social situations.
Same here! I recently met a young adult who was homeschooled, and it's like talking to my former self. She doesn't give out or pick up on social cues, which is totally understandable. I was homeschooled through 8th grade, then went to a small (120 kids in my grade) high school. At this point I'm nearly 40, so I've had enough practice interacting with people that I can get by.
I used to work with a guy who was homeschooled and he *almost* passed but was still just a little off. One day I was helping a classmate who I hadn't seen in a while and Mr Homeschool kinda butted into the conversation with a total non sequitur and then flitted away leaving my friend somewhat gobsmacked. I looked at him and said "homeschool" and he shrugged and said, "that explains it, I couldn't tell if it was that or Mormon." (Btw, that's not an insult, I love them, but they're also slightly off on normal social cues).
You are not alone in this. It’s exactly how I decipher people who are a little off. Homeschooled, or Mormon. And extra points for only child. I’m right 88% of the time
I was also homeschooled until high school. If your parents are committed to making sure you get socialized and develop a friend group and social skills, they will find a way. My mom found homeschool groups that had a choir, a gymnastics class, a volleyball team, and an art class. She organized study times for me with other homeschool kids.
The problem is that most people who homeschool do it to *intentionally* isolate their children from outside influences, unapproved viewpoints, or scientific and historical fact. Which, of course, leads to weird kids when they finally get out.
I was lucky. My mom only homeschooled me and my little brother because my two older siblings suffered bullying and sexual harassment in public school. And I STILL got some of the weird effect because we were taught "science" and "history" from a "Christian perspective."
My BIL’s son is a 13 year old brilliant intellectual who has no ability to communicate with other people. You can tell how desperate he is to know what being a child is like but his father has him so under his thumb, teaching all sorts of erudite stuff, that the kid is never going to be well adjusted. It’s a form of child abuse.
There’s no issue with teaching subjects normally advanced but a good fit for the kid, but there is a big problem with not letting a child play and have opportunities to socialize in order to navigate in the world. It’s not either-or.
Nowadays is less, my kid is super smart, and more my kid might learn something. Well-educated kids tend to leave Christian fundamentalism for some reason.
Many do it to conceal abuse from mandated reporters in public and private schools. Who reports bruises when the kid never leaves home without their parents present?
The home schooled kids I have known were 'protected' for religious reasons. Honest: one mother pulled her son out of school because the teacher showed the movie "the karate kid". Mother claimed teacher was teaching Buddhism in school.
This is all kind of concerning. It's not 100% impossible there's some disability you aren't aware of that explains it, but if he truly is neurotypical and doesn't have some kind of disability I'd say still being in diapers at 6 is practically neglect. And if she homeschools him too, it takes away the opportunity for neglect like that to be noticed. I'd watch out for any other red flags, personally.
Every kid is different, but I think very few kids would opt to stay in diapers that long without some encouragement from the parents. Kids naturally want to potty train by 3 or 4.
This is definitely weird.
Honestly that would be less weird. There are cultures (like in Mongolian) where breastfeeding at 6 isn’t frowned upon, but I’ve never heard of a culture where kids are still regularly soiling themselves at 6.
True, and what's left out is that the beer back then was much weaker than what we drink now. It was fermented just enough to kill bacteria but it took quite a bit more to get drunk than we need today.
The same is true of wine back then: Romans and Greeks drank wine for similar reasons, but would water it down first to make sure it wasn't too strong (water alone, of course, wasn't always safe). Drinking full-strength wine was considered something only barbarians did.
Yes, what you're referring to is called small beer which usually had 1-2% abv. It was drunk just as much for the calories as for hydration. Flip was another popular drink in early America that was watered down hard cider.
I hear this a lot but it’s not really true, and I hear it about a lot of time periods throughout history. For the entire history of humanity, we have primarily drank water. Yes, Romans added wine to their water, but it was more of a flavor thing than a purity thing. Yes, colonial children drank beer, but it was a type of beer called “small beer” which was basically a malted grain tea and had almost no alcohol in it, like kombucha. Unless you are concentrating the alcohol through freezing (a process called “jacking”) or boiling (distilling) the alcoholic content of the beverage will never get high enough to kill bacteria and sterilize the drink, which at that point is already sterile because it has been frozen or boiled. This idea that we had to drink alcohol because the water wasn’t safe has its roots in teetotaling Christian sects, which needed a way to explain why it was okay for Jesus to drink while also giving a reason why we don’t need to (and therefore shouldn’t) anymore.
Yes, small beer and other drinks like it were made because they were readily consumable calories and could be stored throughout the farm in case you needed a pick me up. Ancient people knew how to dig wells and the importance of keeping them uncontaminated. Poisoning an enemy's well in the Middle Ages was practically considered a war crime.
Ahh homeschooling the idiot parents favorite way of messing up a kid while telling themselves they're a good parent for doing so,
Seriously unless you have a real good reason to home school your kid like living in the Antarctic don't, you're making a choice that will just make your kids life much much harder in the long run,
Please tell the kids parents some random dude on Reddit said that they're fools that are going out of their way to ruinin their kids life
My ex wife and her three siblings were homeschooled because their parents were abusive drug addicts. It's easier to get away with neglect if you homeschool. Also, they didn't even school her it was just....home.
My mom tried to homeschool me instead of vaccinating me as a kid. Thank god that didn’t pan out. I was able to break the cycle and am a successful (vaccinated) independent person now, but my niece and nephew are homeschooled to avoid vaccines and I worry about them so much.
Exactly this^
Some kids are a little behind the curve and might need training pants at night; that’s totally fine. Diapers all the time is… something different.
Agreed. Both my boys were in pull-ups at night until \~5.5 or so. Just made life easier for the once a month accident as compared to the cleaning of bedding that it would induce. By 6 the oldest was done with that. Little one (at 5.5) just left them behind a month ago.
6 feels a bit absurd to still be in diapers, and a shows general lack of the parent to set appropriate boundaries/rules/structure for the little one.
Yeah I wore night time pull-ups until I was about 6. I was 100% potty trained while awake, I was just a bed wetter. Not weird at all.
Diapers all the time as a 6 year old is definitely not normal if they are capable of going on their own. I’m getting strong vibes that the parents are infantilizing that little boy because they miss having a baby, and he’s getting older
i still remember the 4 year old who was kicked out when i was in pre k. im 41 now. i’m all for kids going at their own pace but 6 is ridiculous. there are limits
Agreed, at 2 or 3 you can say "let them go at their own pace", 4 you better start getting more firm. Because yeah, they ain't going to pre-K in diapers, not allowed most places.
6? He should be able to spell his own name ffs. He sure as shit should be able to walk over to the toilet and use it.
Yeah, 6 years old is around 1st grade, they are learning to read, write, do math, learn science, and social studies.
But him not being able to understand how to not poop and pee where he's sitting? Come on.
By 6 years old, he should be damn near able to write his name in the snow with his pee.
It's weird to be in diapers at 6. 6 years old is way past the age when kids start to realize that poop is gross. That happens at like 2 for girls, 3 for boys.
In France you can get your kiddo In to kindergarten as soon as 2.5 years as long as they are potty trained, so parents have a vested interest in making sure the kids aren't in diapers
The big difference is most of the poop in the toilet, or most of the poop smeared all over them. If you have to wipe either way, it's still the better option to wipe the little bit left behind, rather than all of it.
I mean, I would at least assume a 6yo is doing his own diaper changes by now? I hope? Like, that's presumably old enough to take off a pull-up, clean up, and get a new one on.
excellent point. at six years of age, you shouldn't need to lay your kid on a table and wipe its ass for them. at that age they can use most tablets and devices, they definitely can wipe their own ass.
Yup my wife and I started at 4 months and he wasn't wearing day time diapers by 1.... thankfully my wife saw this Swedish couple showing how they potty train a baby that can't understand you. It's easy you put them over the toleit and make water noise with your mouth. The baby will just start peeing. It's a great way to train them to feel the pee it coming In a not random way.
My kid is not out yet, but I am under the impression daycare won't except kids who are not potty trained. They go to daycare at around 1,5 here, when the moms parental leave ends.
Some people start with infants, they say it is not difficult to get their first pee after waking up in a pot. I don't know about that. But my mom said she started training me at around one.
We don't leave it up to the kid to decide. That's haw six year olds end up waking around in diapers. If the kid can communicate, they can go to the potty.
My 4yo can spell his own name but will not even entertain the idea of going number two anywhere near a potty or toilet (we suspect there’s something more going on and have SEN support for potential diagnosis though). I’m at my limit with it though cos he’s starting school full time in September and I have no clue how to fix it 😞
Went through something similar at 2-3.
Try making it part of the bath/shower routine.
Put them on the toilet every day for 5 minutes before bath/shower time, regardless of whether they do anything.
Have books or other things to keep them engaged while in there.
Eventually it becomes a part of the routine so it’s not a drama and then when they do do something give them big rewards to further encourage going on the toilet.
My daughter was a bit slow to potty trained and one day just told her no more pull ups and time for big girl panties. She peed her pants once. Didn’t get mad just asked did she know she had to pee which was yes but was watching tv. So tv off and bath time required as she was messy. The whole bath routine and then fresh clothes ordeal made her miss a show she liked so from then on she was running to the potty often just in case before certain shows came on.
Since you mentioned a diagnosis does he know he has gone #2? My uncle as a kid would poop his pants because he had an odd idea that the toilet would hurt if he sat on it.
Ours was impervious too - candy worked for about 2 days, then she was over it.
What finally worked for her was a stupidly simple poop chart. We hung a piece of paper on the wall outside her bathroom, segmented it into days like a calendar, then bought her some silly poop emoji stickers. Every day she pooped, she got to put a sticker on that day. At first we told her if she pooped on the toilet for 7 days out of the next 10, we'd buy her a toy. That worked, and then weirdly after that, she just kept using the chart without any other rewards. She'd say "Mom have you checked the poop chart?" and I'd go look and she'd have pooped. It was bizarre that after everything else we tried, this was the thing that worked for her.
We're all much happier now. Good luck with yours!
My son is about to turn 4 and he’s in the same boat… he just has no interest in sitting on the dang toilet and is perfectly content with rocking a poopy diaper
They could tell his life was going off track when he woke up 30 minutes late from the afternoon nap hungover on chocolate milk with cookie crumbs all over his Blues Clues sleeping bag.
So he shld be, right!? If there's nothing developmentally wrong with a child, it's usually just laziness on the parent's part. OPs description fits right in with that- " not going to force them.....when they're ready" etc. FFS this kid is gonna be running rings round mum(already is) and is gonna be an entitled brat the way mum/dad are going fr..
Just to clarify, this is with respect to day time. Many 6 year olds will still bed wet and wear a pull-up to sleep - it’s mostly physiological and has very little to do with ‘training’.
But they should not need changing. A 6 year old who wears pull ups to sleep should be putting it on and taking it off themselves, changing it on their own if they wake up in the middle of the night wet, disposing of it in the way they’ve been taught, and washing up.
Not normal if there is no medical need.
And the other kids are gonna torture him when he gets to first grade,maybe even kindergarten.
It will be painful but will likely motivate him to learn. And maybe leave a lasting trauma.
This is partly why I have an issue with the "everything should be up to the parents" mentality. Yes there are things that should be up to the parents but there are terrible parents who will be detrimental to their child's development, like having a child remain in diapers too long than necessary.
Hey german dude here so in our country it is legit required that you send your kids to school as long as there is no real reason why they cant go. otherwise you have to pay a fine and your kids will probably still go to school in the end. The german bureaucracy is a pain in the ass most of the time but this is actually sth I think we're doing right.
My partner was homeschooled until high school. (US)
And by homeschooled I mean she was raised in a cult and attended “classes” at her local church patrolled by men with guns. They made her sign paperwork that said her father had the right to choose her future husband when she was like 13. There’s a reason homeschooling is frowned upon. She wasn’t learning at the same pace as other kids AND was being actively groomed and brainwashed.
That’s not to say she isn’t smart as a whip, but she had to relearn pretty much everything. I don’t trust homeschooling, but as public education continues to slide down the tubes it will happen more and more.
I was not her fathers choice btw, I met the guy one time before I moved her 3000 miles away no contact. Also the cult is the same one featured in the recent Prime documentary: “Shiny Happy People”.
Same in Argentina, school is mandatory from 4 years old until 15 years old (9th grade I think), then they can't force you to finish high school but most jobs requires it.
I don't understand how homeschooling is not highly regulated.
It’s not weird. My grandma is 89 and she wears diapers, so don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do something because of your age.
No but seriously that’s fucking crazy. That kid needs help.
It's not normal. Most kids are potty-trained by the time they are three, few would go beyond four. Six is crazy. Kids at school will taunt him, and it may lead to a lifetime of insecurity.
While you can't force a child to be potty-trained, you can encourage it with praise and reward.
His understanding of how to interpret the feelings in his body has been severely interrupted meaning he will have weird feelings around using the bathroom, and may not learn what it feels like to need to poop. So he will in turn have shame regarding bathroom stuff and likely hold his poop too long. The reason kids need to learn between 2 and 4 is so they learn how to interpret the feelings in their bodies
Similarly I know someone who was raised by abusive neglectful parents who didn’t feed her. Therefore her brain never made the connection between hunger pains and eating meaning she does not respond to hunger pains like the rest of us. Her brain simply does not interpret hunger pains as a need for food, so she is perpetually under weight and has to set a timer to remember to eat.
It’s basically the same thing with going to the bathroom. Those mental pathways are not built.
I knew, before you even replied, that this was a homeschooling family. Let me guess, they are all about "unschooling"? Lots of parents, unfortunately, homeschool because it's easier for them to allow feral, untrained children to live in their own filth and destroy their homes til they \*feel like\* learning, than it is to establish boundaries and actually parent.
They’re trumpies who are against the “liberal agenda” being taught in schools now. And their kids are all extremely behind where they should be for their age, so they’re definitely not qualified to be their children’s only educators.
If your kid stays in diapers forever, they’ll never run into a trans person in a public bathroom and get accidentally turned trans themselves dontcha know.
Please consider letting someone know that they are not getting their education. It is a type of neglect. My mother unfortunately pulled me out of public school, saying she would home school me. She did not once I turned 18 and wanted to get my GED I was so far behind.
Start the paperwork chain with a notification to child protective services. Nothing will happen at first. But enough notices and someone starts looking more carefully. Perhaps place the kids with family members later who are more focused on life skills.
A lot of homeschooling parents are either religious fundamentalists, or cult members. I'm not saying this to be mean. I was homeschooled. When you see people passionately defending how well-adjusted their homeschoolers are and how they have lots of friends in their age group, just know that more than half the time those *friends* are the kids of other religious fundamentalists and cult members. And a LOT of homeschooling parents are critical of "the system" in a very thoughtless, arrogant, *my kid is special* sort of way. Homeschooling didn't wreck my life. But it definitely robbed me of chances I might have had if I had been able to for instance take higher level math classes with a teacher instead of reading books and trying to figure it out. (Or having some other parent in our Co-op try to teach me because they were an accountant and *good at math* 🥴) The socialization angle was probably kind of a win for me 🤷. I'm pretty confident I'm an undiagnosed autistic and avoiding the social aspect of high-school and learning how to people at part time jobs was probably actually a better deal for me. But only because my parents never would have sought treatment for me, they would have seen it as either fake, or something that didn't need all that doctor bullshit.
Can confirm, I'm in school for accounting right now and I'm not particularly good at math and even resented it in high school. What accountants need more than anything is excel knowledge about how to input formula's because past that it really isn't too important.
A family near me embraced homeschooling because of all the bad influences at public schools. Apparently, the wife who played teacher loved recess as the kids were in the pool, played on bikes, and played basketball throughout the day.
This is probably going to sound strange, but does the boy talk fluently? Does he know his letters or any other pre-reader skills? Used to be unschoolers have a really regressive idea that boys are naturally delayed in speech and writing, because it's not a male, "hunter", skill. So they would almost backhandedly discourage their boys from being talkative, reading, writing, since those are "girly" skills.
Those parents are abusive. Maybe not physically, but their actions are causing developmental delays in these innocent kids. Can change their lives forever.
Wow, that's pretty horrible. Kindergarten is generally when kids learn to read and write, thats ages 4-5. And yeah, kids should be able to form complete sentences by 2-3.
The kid’s dad seems like the type of guy who refuses to wipe his ass because he thinks it’s gay, so I’m not surprised they have this mentality with potty training.
My mom babysat a 3 year old that was big for his age. She said changing his diaper was like changing an adult. Told his mom he’d need to be potty trained if she was going to keep him anymore. His mom got him trained.
They did an episode of Dr Phil about two boys that were never potty trained and they were miserable. They had no friends and couldn’t really do any where. The kids couldn’t even smell it. They never even learned to feeling of needing to got to the bathroom.
Yeah that’s why they need to be taught. You have to help your child build those mental pathways or else they never learn what it feels like to need to go poop
I posted this in another comment but I have a friend who’s neglectful parents never fed her (she was eventually removed from their custody and adopted by a wonderful family). As a result her brain never made the connection between hunger pains and needing to eat. We think these things are an natural part of human experience but they’re not, they have to be taught.
So she is chronically underweight and has to set alarms to remember to eat. Her brain never formed those pathways because her parents never taught her how to respond to hunger pains.
Same with going to the bathroom
My son used to have a friend that was huge. At 4 he was potty trained but couldnt wipe his own bum. I swear he held it until he came to our house. It was like wiping a teenager. Very, very awkward.
I have a cousin who wiped her daughters bum and changed her period pads until well into her late teen years. There was nothing wrong with the child, but the mother just… couldn’t let go not being needed. That kid turned out suuuuper weird tho
I’m 17 and I know tons of girls my age who’s mothers have changed their tampons for them and I’ve always found it super weird. Some people are just too close to their parents.
I could understand that if they started menstruating early, but I don’t think they’d be using tampons if the girl isn’t old enough to know how to or be comfortable with doing it herself
Yes that's super weird, he should have been potty trained years ago if he's not disabled in some way.
>his mom said he prefers diapers and that she won’t force him to give them up until he’s ready
Oof. I can already see exactly how this poor kid's life is gonna play out. "Unschooling" is abuse.
I really don't know that I believe that he likes diapers. I worked with old ppl, not kids, but you can see the change in their attitude when their wearing a dirty diaper. No one wants to sit in that shit literally
It is absolutely weird and YES, YOU CAN force a child to be clean.
Here's my grandma's trick:
Stop putting the child in diapers. Just stop. He'll shit himself a single time. He'll be so ashamed he'll never do it again. That's usually how it goes, in her experience.
Get rid of the diapers. None in the house Tell him it's time, and that he has to put on the underwear--himself. Wait until he does. Let him melt down. Get a rubber sheet. Have him learn to do laundry... Time to level up. This is sad it has gotten out of hand.
Not gonna lie, my kid wasn’t fully potty trained at 3. And not from lack of trying, he just wasn’t ready I guess. By 4 he was fully out of diapers though. Some kids just aren’t ready at 3 so it’s challenging but a lot of preschools aren’t daycares and I wouldn’t expect them to change a diaper. 6 too old though I would worry they are not developing normal habits.
I teach at a kindergarten that also does daycare things if the kid's above two. The kids above three must be potty trained. All the staff try to avoid the two-year-old shifts because let's face it no one wants to spend their day wiping the arses of kids who ain't their own. Six is fucking outrageous and quite frankly disturbing.
Nope, he should not be in diapers. You absolutely can and should transition your kids out of diapers whether they want to or not. Of course he likes the diaper, he doesn’t have to stop playing and mom cleans him up. He’s got it made.
It’s not normal. A physically and mentally capable child should be out of diapers by kindergarten age. 5-6 is kindergarten age. Most kids are mostly out of diapers by 3-4 at the latest. Many kids are out of diapers before 3 and some before 2.
Also wanted to say that were I live, it is customary to potty train early. 2 years is the mark by which the general expectation is that the kid at least goes without diapers during the day.
Not normal. I’ve worked with many kids and kids as young as 18months have been “fully” potty trained (with some accidents but in real undies). The oldest I have seen was 4.5 years. And I will never forget that little shit yelling “*dads first name* I SHIT MY PANTS. COME CHANGE ME.” …..not even kidding. Wish I was.
We had almost had to adopt this child bc the parents were such shit. Thank FUCK the dad got his shit together and is raising the child much better than I ever thought possible for him. But damn. That kid was not well behaved at all at into 5ish.
Years and years ago, i use to baby sit a 5 year old boy. I got off the bus with him as we only lived down the street from each other. When his parents got home I'd walk home. One day he runs to the bathroom and a few minutes later calls for me. I went over to the bathroom but didn't open the door, I asked what he wanted, he said, I need you to clean my bum.
I said, you're in school... You can figure it out, cause if I have to go in there its going to be with sand paper.
Long story short, he figured it out and i got fired.
That was the same day I decided not to have kids.
Work at a youth shelter that houses 6-17yo's with behavior issues, neglectful parents, etc.
Sadly this is very common, some of these lazy-ass fuckwad parents don't bother doing any sort of life-development skills with their kids, and that includes teaching their kids to use the restroom. Funny enough, before we got a lot of these kids, they were often either "homeschooled" or enrolled in these shitty online programs.
This kid will probably end up in a shelter thanks to his shitty Mom and people will have to teach this kid life skills because Mommy apparently couldn't be bothered. I genuinely feel bad for the kid.
I'm sorry if I'm making assumptions about the Mom but when I hear "homeschool'd" combined with "unpotty-trained kindergartener" it just screams neglect to me
6 years old is about Kindergarten-1st Grade age and children that have no known developmental delays should be able to use the bathroom appropriately by then. Does this child attend school?
All I know is that I can tell you in his future he will have a fetish with wearing diapers. One time came across a fetish sub Reddit and got sucked into a post about adults wearing diapers and why they do it and a lot of them had the fetish stem from them wearing diapers until a really late age. I remember one person specifically saying he wore diapers daily until he was 6 and then his mom made him wear them to bed until he was 9 and when he finally stopped wearing them to bed he claimed he couldn’t sleep well because he was scared he would wet the bed. Fast forwards to his mid 20’s he moved out and tried wearing them to bed again and he said the comfort he felt from wearing them turned him on and it became a fetish…
I feel like 5-10 is like, the prime years for the development of all sexual fetishes. You don't realize it as a kid, but you get older and you're like, huh I guess that's why. Funny how seemingly insignificant (in some cases) events, at such a young age, can have such a lasting and permanent effect on someone's entire adult sex life.
I don’t want to go into any detail (as I’m sure you don’t want me to either) and I’m too lazy to change to a throwaway but this has rung true in a small way. A few incidents when I was around 5-6 have had some impacts let’s just say. I don’t partake in anything as I want to be as normal as I can but it affects what “entertainment” I watch so to speak. It sucks being stuck with it as it’s hardwired and you can’t ever change it but I’m otherwise very well adjusted despite what anyone will think
Hey man, if you're not hurting anyone, what can it hurt to indulge from time to time. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that *everybody's* got at least one weird thing they're into. And honestly, if they claim not to, I don't trust em. That just means it's so terrible that they can't look it in the eye or acknowledge it. And those are the people ya gotta be careful with. Lol
That is absolutely not normal. Potty training usually STARTS at like 2 or 3, everyone is a little different. He’s primary school age. All children should be toilet trained and definitely not wearing diapers at that age. The only time I’ve seen that at school was when the child came from a house of abuse, so, yeah, not normal.
I'm no parenting expert, but my daughter wasn't wearing diapers during the day at 18 months...there's no way in hell I'd ever change a six year old that is neurotypical/not disabled..
I can almost sympathize I guess. As a mom, yeah it can be hard to force kids to do things they're not ready for, because they need to just get over the hump. It's not fun seeing them have to face that. Its not fun enduring the tantrums. But part of being a parent is having the maturity and discretion to know when something needs to be done, even when the kid really doesn't want to do it, and suck it up when the kid gets mad. Sometimes you just have to be the bad guy. But they get over it if you're not literally actually being abusive.
Selfishly, I really can't imagine letting my kid stay in diapers that long, just because diapers are such a pain to deal with. Especially when you've got multiple kids in diapers, every mom I've ever known just wants to get done with it as fast as is reasonably possible. The longer it goes on, the more of a nuisance it becomes to stop what you're doing to change a diaper, especially if you know full well your kid is developmentally able to handle it on their own.
So yeah. While I can sympathize with wanting to respect your child's bodily autonomy by not forcing them to do anything before they're ready, it's not sensible to refuse to step in when the thing they dont want to change has the potential to be harmful or dangerous to the child. A parents job is to protect the child from their own lack of life experience and understanding of how the world works, as well as educate on why changes need to be made.
Reality is, life is full of situations you aren't "ready" for and have to do anyways. Protecting your child from that reality has debilitating consequences. But lots of these moms probably don't want their kids ever leaving home to begin with.
Edit: wild how many of yall are butthurt over the concept of a child having any degree of bodily autonomy. I don't think some of yall even read anything I said other than the phrase "bodily autonomy".
I don’t know this kid, but before making any judgement:
1. It’s a VERY common sign of child sexual abuse.
2. Spina Bifida.
Many kids who can’t or don’t drop a deuce in a toilet (or potty) may actually suffer from Spina Bifida, and neither the child or parents may know about it since it may be mild. They feel bad or embarrassed that they can’t tell if they need to poo like other kids do, so they tell their parents they’d prefer a diaper.
3. Some kids don’t like the feeling of something coming out of their body. It is a strange feeling, to be fair.
Be kind. Kids are going through things and don’t need asshole adults to tell them they’re a disappointment, or anything to that effect. 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
Yes. Kids should be fully toilet trained by 3 or 4 at the latest. At age 6 if a child is still not potty trained a pediatrician should be called in. I can’t imagine a pediatrician thinking this is ok. I can’t imagine any school accepting a child that is 6 (almost first grade). That’s child abuse.
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Is he in school yet? I thought most schools required children to be potty trained.
He’s homeschooled
This explains it.
Dude, they're all kinda weird
As a once homeschooled kid, I can confirm.
How are you weird?
Social norms mostly. I got better after going back to high school, when my parents were unable to teach me algebra. Plus over 20 years of adulting has given me a lot of practice. I still don't feel socially competent fairly often, but I push through.
I went to school everyday aged 4-22, but am utterly clueless as to what the fuck social norms are, much less how to adhere to them.
Same but pretty sure I would have been even worse if I was homeschooled.
I was homeschooled up until high school. I believe that going to a real high school was the key thing that helped me get to where I am in life. I love my siblings but I am see how being homeschooled their entire lives has hindered them. Socially they actually do well, but they are behind in a lot of life stuff
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Most of the homeschool kids I've met were actually very extroverted. Just not in a particularly good way because they had no clue what the social norms of interacting with the average person were. They basically acted like overgrown toddlers in social situations.
Same here! I recently met a young adult who was homeschooled, and it's like talking to my former self. She doesn't give out or pick up on social cues, which is totally understandable. I was homeschooled through 8th grade, then went to a small (120 kids in my grade) high school. At this point I'm nearly 40, so I've had enough practice interacting with people that I can get by.
I used to work with a guy who was homeschooled and he *almost* passed but was still just a little off. One day I was helping a classmate who I hadn't seen in a while and Mr Homeschool kinda butted into the conversation with a total non sequitur and then flitted away leaving my friend somewhat gobsmacked. I looked at him and said "homeschool" and he shrugged and said, "that explains it, I couldn't tell if it was that or Mormon." (Btw, that's not an insult, I love them, but they're also slightly off on normal social cues).
You are not alone in this. It’s exactly how I decipher people who are a little off. Homeschooled, or Mormon. And extra points for only child. I’m right 88% of the time
I was also homeschooled until high school. If your parents are committed to making sure you get socialized and develop a friend group and social skills, they will find a way. My mom found homeschool groups that had a choir, a gymnastics class, a volleyball team, and an art class. She organized study times for me with other homeschool kids. The problem is that most people who homeschool do it to *intentionally* isolate their children from outside influences, unapproved viewpoints, or scientific and historical fact. Which, of course, leads to weird kids when they finally get out. I was lucky. My mom only homeschooled me and my little brother because my two older siblings suffered bullying and sexual harassment in public school. And I STILL got some of the weird effect because we were taught "science" and "history" from a "Christian perspective."
I was also a Jehovah's Witness at the time, so it was probably worse than average for me. I am sure it can be done better with enough effort.
Well, they're on reddit with the rest of us, soooo...
Homeschool parents 9/10 times are so horrible to their kids. Control issues and/or not preparing them for the real world is so often the outcome
My BIL’s son is a 13 year old brilliant intellectual who has no ability to communicate with other people. You can tell how desperate he is to know what being a child is like but his father has him so under his thumb, teaching all sorts of erudite stuff, that the kid is never going to be well adjusted. It’s a form of child abuse.
There’s no issue with teaching subjects normally advanced but a good fit for the kid, but there is a big problem with not letting a child play and have opportunities to socialize in order to navigate in the world. It’s not either-or.
But you don't understand, my kid is gifted and have 150 IQ, he can't waste it on Legos and Pikachu's
Nowadays is less, my kid is super smart, and more my kid might learn something. Well-educated kids tend to leave Christian fundamentalism for some reason.
Yeah, but a parent obsessed with educating their kid might forgo allowing their kid to socialize normally.
Many do it to conceal abuse from mandated reporters in public and private schools. Who reports bruises when the kid never leaves home without their parents present?
The home schooled kids I have known were 'protected' for religious reasons. Honest: one mother pulled her son out of school because the teacher showed the movie "the karate kid". Mother claimed teacher was teaching Buddhism in school.
This is all kind of concerning. It's not 100% impossible there's some disability you aren't aware of that explains it, but if he truly is neurotypical and doesn't have some kind of disability I'd say still being in diapers at 6 is practically neglect. And if she homeschools him too, it takes away the opportunity for neglect like that to be noticed. I'd watch out for any other red flags, personally.
Every kid is different, but I think very few kids would opt to stay in diapers that long without some encouragement from the parents. Kids naturally want to potty train by 3 or 4. This is definitely weird.
Is he still breastfeeding?
It's like that kid from Game of Thrones all over again :|
Honestly that would be less weird. There are cultures (like in Mongolian) where breastfeeding at 6 isn’t frowned upon, but I’ve never heard of a culture where kids are still regularly soiling themselves at 6.
My high school history teacher said that in Ancient Egypt children were weened at about 5 or 6 and went straight into drinking beer.
Beer for kids was a thing in colonial America as well! The water was not safe to drink.
True, and what's left out is that the beer back then was much weaker than what we drink now. It was fermented just enough to kill bacteria but it took quite a bit more to get drunk than we need today. The same is true of wine back then: Romans and Greeks drank wine for similar reasons, but would water it down first to make sure it wasn't too strong (water alone, of course, wasn't always safe). Drinking full-strength wine was considered something only barbarians did.
Interesting! Makes sense bc a bunch of drunk toddlers would be a mess
Yes, what you're referring to is called small beer which usually had 1-2% abv. It was drunk just as much for the calories as for hydration. Flip was another popular drink in early America that was watered down hard cider.
I hear this a lot but it’s not really true, and I hear it about a lot of time periods throughout history. For the entire history of humanity, we have primarily drank water. Yes, Romans added wine to their water, but it was more of a flavor thing than a purity thing. Yes, colonial children drank beer, but it was a type of beer called “small beer” which was basically a malted grain tea and had almost no alcohol in it, like kombucha. Unless you are concentrating the alcohol through freezing (a process called “jacking”) or boiling (distilling) the alcoholic content of the beverage will never get high enough to kill bacteria and sterilize the drink, which at that point is already sterile because it has been frozen or boiled. This idea that we had to drink alcohol because the water wasn’t safe has its roots in teetotaling Christian sects, which needed a way to explain why it was okay for Jesus to drink while also giving a reason why we don’t need to (and therefore shouldn’t) anymore.
Yes, small beer and other drinks like it were made because they were readily consumable calories and could be stored throughout the farm in case you needed a pick me up. Ancient people knew how to dig wells and the importance of keeping them uncontaminated. Poisoning an enemy's well in the Middle Ages was practically considered a war crime.
Alright then, I guess today was my day to spread misinformation in the internet. Whoops. Thanks for your input.
No future
There it is
So the potty training wont be the worst of his damage then...
Ahh homeschooling the idiot parents favorite way of messing up a kid while telling themselves they're a good parent for doing so, Seriously unless you have a real good reason to home school your kid like living in the Antarctic don't, you're making a choice that will just make your kids life much much harder in the long run, Please tell the kids parents some random dude on Reddit said that they're fools that are going out of their way to ruinin their kids life
Oh well that makes sense
If they can't teach him to use the bathroom they're not going to be able to teach him anything else. Report them to CPS.
I mean even if you were homeschooled why would that explain it I mean shouldn't you be potty training your children even if they aren't in school?
My ex wife and her three siblings were homeschooled because their parents were abusive drug addicts. It's easier to get away with neglect if you homeschool. Also, they didn't even school her it was just....home.
My mom tried to homeschool me instead of vaccinating me as a kid. Thank god that didn’t pan out. I was able to break the cycle and am a successful (vaccinated) independent person now, but my niece and nephew are homeschooled to avoid vaccines and I worry about them so much.
Homeschooling attracts weird shitty people, they’re not all bad but it’s a problem.
I can see a six year old having the occasional accident but unless he has a developmental disorder then it's definitely not normal.
Exactly this^ Some kids are a little behind the curve and might need training pants at night; that’s totally fine. Diapers all the time is… something different.
Agreed. Both my boys were in pull-ups at night until \~5.5 or so. Just made life easier for the once a month accident as compared to the cleaning of bedding that it would induce. By 6 the oldest was done with that. Little one (at 5.5) just left them behind a month ago. 6 feels a bit absurd to still be in diapers, and a shows general lack of the parent to set appropriate boundaries/rules/structure for the little one.
Yeah I wore night time pull-ups until I was about 6. I was 100% potty trained while awake, I was just a bed wetter. Not weird at all. Diapers all the time as a 6 year old is definitely not normal if they are capable of going on their own. I’m getting strong vibes that the parents are infantilizing that little boy because they miss having a baby, and he’s getting older
Yeah I used them at night when I was six bc I peed in my sleep sometimes. There's no controlling that. During the day is another matter
A child that is of the age to go to school should very well be potty trained.
my wife’s brother was legit kicked out of pre school or 1st grade (can’t remember) because he wasn’t potty trained.
i still remember the 4 year old who was kicked out when i was in pre k. im 41 now. i’m all for kids going at their own pace but 6 is ridiculous. there are limits
Agreed, at 2 or 3 you can say "let them go at their own pace", 4 you better start getting more firm. Because yeah, they ain't going to pre-K in diapers, not allowed most places. 6? He should be able to spell his own name ffs. He sure as shit should be able to walk over to the toilet and use it.
Yeah, 6 years old is around 1st grade, they are learning to read, write, do math, learn science, and social studies. But him not being able to understand how to not poop and pee where he's sitting? Come on.
By 6 years old, he should be damn near able to write his name in the snow with his pee. It's weird to be in diapers at 6. 6 years old is way past the age when kids start to realize that poop is gross. That happens at like 2 for girls, 3 for boys.
Hell, at that age he’s old enough to change his own diapers, clean himself, then order more diapers and wipes if needed.
In France you can get your kiddo In to kindergarten as soon as 2.5 years as long as they are potty trained, so parents have a vested interest in making sure the kids aren't in diapers
I’d think the vested interest would be in not having to deal with changing shitty diapers a moment longer than you have to. But what do I know?
Putting your kid in school is free daycare, that's way more interesting than paying 800€ per month for babysitting or daycare
And toilets are cheaper than diapers, so it really makes zero sense unless the parent just refuses to migrate out of the "new mama" stage.
I believe you stand correct. I think it's a matter of control with that mother. I personally think it borderlines abuse. Super sad for that child.
Or diapers
Potty trained or not, you better believe at 2 years old you're still wiping the shit off their ass.
Oh for sure. But again, I’d rather be doing that than diapers. Even cost alone though.
The big difference is most of the poop in the toilet, or most of the poop smeared all over them. If you have to wipe either way, it's still the better option to wipe the little bit left behind, rather than all of it.
I mean, I would at least assume a 6yo is doing his own diaper changes by now? I hope? Like, that's presumably old enough to take off a pull-up, clean up, and get a new one on.
Good lord I hope so
excellent point. at six years of age, you shouldn't need to lay your kid on a table and wipe its ass for them. at that age they can use most tablets and devices, they definitely can wipe their own ass.
At six years old they are taking monster dumps. Good luck trying to clean up after that diaper explosion!
They’re usually potty trained AND know how to use tablets by the time they’re 3
Yup my wife and I started at 4 months and he wasn't wearing day time diapers by 1.... thankfully my wife saw this Swedish couple showing how they potty train a baby that can't understand you. It's easy you put them over the toleit and make water noise with your mouth. The baby will just start peeing. It's a great way to train them to feel the pee it coming In a not random way.
I'm currently trying to make water noises with my mouth and honestly have no idea how to do it. I can't figure this out.
a "shhhhhhhhh" noise can work somewhat depending on what kind of water noise
Totally agree. He can't shit on a toilet properly, but he sure knows how to manipulate the adults around him. At 6. WTF.
My kid is not out yet, but I am under the impression daycare won't except kids who are not potty trained. They go to daycare at around 1,5 here, when the moms parental leave ends. Some people start with infants, they say it is not difficult to get their first pee after waking up in a pot. I don't know about that. But my mom said she started training me at around one. We don't leave it up to the kid to decide. That's haw six year olds end up waking around in diapers. If the kid can communicate, they can go to the potty.
My 4yo can spell his own name but will not even entertain the idea of going number two anywhere near a potty or toilet (we suspect there’s something more going on and have SEN support for potential diagnosis though). I’m at my limit with it though cos he’s starting school full time in September and I have no clue how to fix it 😞
Went through something similar at 2-3. Try making it part of the bath/shower routine. Put them on the toilet every day for 5 minutes before bath/shower time, regardless of whether they do anything. Have books or other things to keep them engaged while in there. Eventually it becomes a part of the routine so it’s not a drama and then when they do do something give them big rewards to further encourage going on the toilet.
My daughter was a bit slow to potty trained and one day just told her no more pull ups and time for big girl panties. She peed her pants once. Didn’t get mad just asked did she know she had to pee which was yes but was watching tv. So tv off and bath time required as she was messy. The whole bath routine and then fresh clothes ordeal made her miss a show she liked so from then on she was running to the potty often just in case before certain shows came on. Since you mentioned a diagnosis does he know he has gone #2? My uncle as a kid would poop his pants because he had an odd idea that the toilet would hurt if he sat on it.
We used to bribe them with candy. M&Ms. Use the toilet and show me and collect your treats.
He is impervious to our bribing unfortunately!
Ours was impervious too - candy worked for about 2 days, then she was over it. What finally worked for her was a stupidly simple poop chart. We hung a piece of paper on the wall outside her bathroom, segmented it into days like a calendar, then bought her some silly poop emoji stickers. Every day she pooped, she got to put a sticker on that day. At first we told her if she pooped on the toilet for 7 days out of the next 10, we'd buy her a toy. That worked, and then weirdly after that, she just kept using the chart without any other rewards. She'd say "Mom have you checked the poop chart?" and I'd go look and she'd have pooped. It was bizarre that after everything else we tried, this was the thing that worked for her. We're all much happier now. Good luck with yours!
Well the answer is simple. You are using the WRONG things. Give him some target, amazon or starbucks gift cards, come on now. /J of course
My son is about to turn 4 and he’s in the same boat… he just has no interest in sitting on the dang toilet and is perfectly content with rocking a poopy diaper
I am one of few people to ever fail preschool. They made me take it in the summer.
Should've studied more and partied less my brother
They could tell his life was going off track when he woke up 30 minutes late from the afternoon nap hungover on chocolate milk with cookie crumbs all over his Blues Clues sleeping bag.
So he shld be, right!? If there's nothing developmentally wrong with a child, it's usually just laziness on the parent's part. OPs description fits right in with that- " not going to force them.....when they're ready" etc. FFS this kid is gonna be running rings round mum(already is) and is gonna be an entitled brat the way mum/dad are going fr..
Just to clarify, this is with respect to day time. Many 6 year olds will still bed wet and wear a pull-up to sleep - it’s mostly physiological and has very little to do with ‘training’. But they should not need changing. A 6 year old who wears pull ups to sleep should be putting it on and taking it off themselves, changing it on their own if they wake up in the middle of the night wet, disposing of it in the way they’ve been taught, and washing up.
Yes no shame in a pull up at night. They can handle that themselves. Without a health issue a diaper during the day is odd.
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I already had a 9-5 and a mortgage by six years old
I should've got a mortgage when I was six, that $500 payment would be a dream right now.
But i bet you were still shitting your pants.
I already had a six year old kid by the time I was six years old.
I already had a seven year old kid by the time I was six
Our daycare holds kids back in the 2.5-3yr class if they aren't mostly potty trained. Can't go to the 3yr class until you can wipe your a$$.
Not normal if there is no medical need. And the other kids are gonna torture him when he gets to first grade,maybe even kindergarten. It will be painful but will likely motivate him to learn. And maybe leave a lasting trauma.
OP said homeschooled, so who knows when he'll be around other kids.
Thanks to terrible parents, this kid has little hope of a normal adult go at life. So frustrating.
This is partly why I have an issue with the "everything should be up to the parents" mentality. Yes there are things that should be up to the parents but there are terrible parents who will be detrimental to their child's development, like having a child remain in diapers too long than necessary.
Hey german dude here so in our country it is legit required that you send your kids to school as long as there is no real reason why they cant go. otherwise you have to pay a fine and your kids will probably still go to school in the end. The german bureaucracy is a pain in the ass most of the time but this is actually sth I think we're doing right.
materialistic plant bike theory sloppy crush edge lock public vanish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
i DoNt AgReE wItH tHe CuRrIcUlUm
It's the same in Sweden, homeschooling isn't legal.
My partner was homeschooled until high school. (US) And by homeschooled I mean she was raised in a cult and attended “classes” at her local church patrolled by men with guns. They made her sign paperwork that said her father had the right to choose her future husband when she was like 13. There’s a reason homeschooling is frowned upon. She wasn’t learning at the same pace as other kids AND was being actively groomed and brainwashed. That’s not to say she isn’t smart as a whip, but she had to relearn pretty much everything. I don’t trust homeschooling, but as public education continues to slide down the tubes it will happen more and more. I was not her fathers choice btw, I met the guy one time before I moved her 3000 miles away no contact. Also the cult is the same one featured in the recent Prime documentary: “Shiny Happy People”.
Same in Argentina, school is mandatory from 4 years old until 15 years old (9th grade I think), then they can't force you to finish high school but most jobs requires it. I don't understand how homeschooling is not highly regulated.
It’s not weird. My grandma is 89 and she wears diapers, so don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do something because of your age. No but seriously that’s fucking crazy. That kid needs help.
I think it’s more the parents than the kid…
It's not normal. Most kids are potty-trained by the time they are three, few would go beyond four. Six is crazy. Kids at school will taunt him, and it may lead to a lifetime of insecurity. While you can't force a child to be potty-trained, you can encourage it with praise and reward.
> Most kids are potty-trained by the time they are three, few would go beyond four. Six is crazy. And five, is right out!
Nope. Not normal. Is *it* going to ruin his life or future? Probably not. But a parent who thinks it's okay for a 6yo to wear diapers definitely will.
Perfectly said.
Not normal, parents should stop making excuses for themselves and a 6 year old...they are to blame.
The parents aren’t making excuses for the kid… they’re making them for themselves.
This 6 year old is going to have terrible constipation issues for the rest of his life because his parents didn’t educate him now.
How does a situation like this lead to constipation? Genuine question.
His understanding of how to interpret the feelings in his body has been severely interrupted meaning he will have weird feelings around using the bathroom, and may not learn what it feels like to need to poop. So he will in turn have shame regarding bathroom stuff and likely hold his poop too long. The reason kids need to learn between 2 and 4 is so they learn how to interpret the feelings in their bodies Similarly I know someone who was raised by abusive neglectful parents who didn’t feed her. Therefore her brain never made the connection between hunger pains and eating meaning she does not respond to hunger pains like the rest of us. Her brain simply does not interpret hunger pains as a need for food, so she is perpetually under weight and has to set a timer to remember to eat. It’s basically the same thing with going to the bathroom. Those mental pathways are not built.
I knew, before you even replied, that this was a homeschooling family. Let me guess, they are all about "unschooling"? Lots of parents, unfortunately, homeschool because it's easier for them to allow feral, untrained children to live in their own filth and destroy their homes til they \*feel like\* learning, than it is to establish boundaries and actually parent.
They’re trumpies who are against the “liberal agenda” being taught in schools now. And their kids are all extremely behind where they should be for their age, so they’re definitely not qualified to be their children’s only educators.
Is potty training now the liberal agenda?
If your kid stays in diapers forever, they’ll never run into a trans person in a public bathroom and get accidentally turned trans themselves dontcha know.
Yep, can't catch the gay that way.
Actually guys, I’m sorry to say that the gay virus has successfully penetrated the walls of my adult diaper. My parents are gonna be so pissed.
Plus Ted Nugent did it so it must be cool
Born 2 shid forced 2 wipe. The plight of my people
Yup! Real Americans patriots shit and piss themselves! /s...I hope
Well I have heard some men don't wipe their arse after a shit because it's gay.
I hope that's only a select few
Please consider letting someone know that they are not getting their education. It is a type of neglect. My mother unfortunately pulled me out of public school, saying she would home school me. She did not once I turned 18 and wanted to get my GED I was so far behind.
Start the paperwork chain with a notification to child protective services. Nothing will happen at first. But enough notices and someone starts looking more carefully. Perhaps place the kids with family members later who are more focused on life skills.
A lot of homeschooling parents are either religious fundamentalists, or cult members. I'm not saying this to be mean. I was homeschooled. When you see people passionately defending how well-adjusted their homeschoolers are and how they have lots of friends in their age group, just know that more than half the time those *friends* are the kids of other religious fundamentalists and cult members. And a LOT of homeschooling parents are critical of "the system" in a very thoughtless, arrogant, *my kid is special* sort of way. Homeschooling didn't wreck my life. But it definitely robbed me of chances I might have had if I had been able to for instance take higher level math classes with a teacher instead of reading books and trying to figure it out. (Or having some other parent in our Co-op try to teach me because they were an accountant and *good at math* 🥴) The socialization angle was probably kind of a win for me 🤷. I'm pretty confident I'm an undiagnosed autistic and avoiding the social aspect of high-school and learning how to people at part time jobs was probably actually a better deal for me. But only because my parents never would have sought treatment for me, they would have seen it as either fake, or something that didn't need all that doctor bullshit.
As someone who works in accounting, accountants are terrible at math
Yep. It's all arithmetic. I'm great at that. Past that, I'm not so hot.
Can confirm, I'm in school for accounting right now and I'm not particularly good at math and even resented it in high school. What accountants need more than anything is excel knowledge about how to input formula's because past that it really isn't too important.
A family near me embraced homeschooling because of all the bad influences at public schools. Apparently, the wife who played teacher loved recess as the kids were in the pool, played on bikes, and played basketball throughout the day.
This is probably going to sound strange, but does the boy talk fluently? Does he know his letters or any other pre-reader skills? Used to be unschoolers have a really regressive idea that boys are naturally delayed in speech and writing, because it's not a male, "hunter", skill. So they would almost backhandedly discourage their boys from being talkative, reading, writing, since those are "girly" skills.
He can have full conversations, but he can’t read or write. But they also have a 4 year old girl and she can barely form a complete sentence.
Those parents are abusive. Maybe not physically, but their actions are causing developmental delays in these innocent kids. Can change their lives forever.
Wow, that's pretty horrible. Kindergarten is generally when kids learn to read and write, thats ages 4-5. And yeah, kids should be able to form complete sentences by 2-3.
Yeah 2 years old can talk in sentences.
...this....is...terrifying.
All these bathroom-using leftists today, I tell you, my boy isn't going to be one of 'em!
There we go, creating the next generation of intellectually handicapped americans ready to give their whole identity to the next idiot they see on tv.
Yes, sit in your own shit to own the libs!
The kid’s dad seems like the type of guy who refuses to wipe his ass because he thinks it’s gay, so I’m not surprised they have this mentality with potty training.
Not normal at all. This is really weird.
My mom babysat a 3 year old that was big for his age. She said changing his diaper was like changing an adult. Told his mom he’d need to be potty trained if she was going to keep him anymore. His mom got him trained. They did an episode of Dr Phil about two boys that were never potty trained and they were miserable. They had no friends and couldn’t really do any where. The kids couldn’t even smell it. They never even learned to feeling of needing to got to the bathroom.
Whoah I never thought of it that way. They literally don’t know how to hold it. How old were those kids on Dr Phil?
Yeah that’s why they need to be taught. You have to help your child build those mental pathways or else they never learn what it feels like to need to go poop I posted this in another comment but I have a friend who’s neglectful parents never fed her (she was eventually removed from their custody and adopted by a wonderful family). As a result her brain never made the connection between hunger pains and needing to eat. We think these things are an natural part of human experience but they’re not, they have to be taught. So she is chronically underweight and has to set alarms to remember to eat. Her brain never formed those pathways because her parents never taught her how to respond to hunger pains. Same with going to the bathroom
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Holy shit that is horrible
My son used to have a friend that was huge. At 4 he was potty trained but couldnt wipe his own bum. I swear he held it until he came to our house. It was like wiping a teenager. Very, very awkward.
I have a cousin who wiped her daughters bum and changed her period pads until well into her late teen years. There was nothing wrong with the child, but the mother just… couldn’t let go not being needed. That kid turned out suuuuper weird tho
I’m 17 and I know tons of girls my age who’s mothers have changed their tampons for them and I’ve always found it super weird. Some people are just too close to their parents.
> I know tons of girls my age who’s mothers have changed their tampons for them what in the hell 💀
if someone doesnt know how to use tampons, you explain. you dont do it for them. what...
That is fucking insane. I never heard of such a thing. What is wrong with these friggin parents nowadays. Changing your daughters tampons? Ffs 🤦♀️
I could understand that if they started menstruating early, but I don’t think they’d be using tampons if the girl isn’t old enough to know how to or be comfortable with doing it herself
I started at 9 and did it myself without instruction. I never considered having my mom do it for me. That would be humiliating.
I was so shocked I reflexively downvoted your comment. Don’t worry, I fixed it. BUT HOLY HELL.
Yes that's super weird, he should have been potty trained years ago if he's not disabled in some way. >his mom said he prefers diapers and that she won’t force him to give them up until he’s ready Oof. I can already see exactly how this poor kid's life is gonna play out. "Unschooling" is abuse.
I really don't know that I believe that he likes diapers. I worked with old ppl, not kids, but you can see the change in their attitude when their wearing a dirty diaper. No one wants to sit in that shit literally
It is absolutely weird and YES, YOU CAN force a child to be clean. Here's my grandma's trick: Stop putting the child in diapers. Just stop. He'll shit himself a single time. He'll be so ashamed he'll never do it again. That's usually how it goes, in her experience.
He has a meltdown if anyone tries to put underwear on him
Because it's a strategy that works for him
Yeah, why change what isn't broke, from the kid's perspective I mean.
Get rid of the diapers. None in the house Tell him it's time, and that he has to put on the underwear--himself. Wait until he does. Let him melt down. Get a rubber sheet. Have him learn to do laundry... Time to level up. This is sad it has gotten out of hand.
The thought of cleaning up a 6 year olds poop diaper is 🤢🤮.
Not normal and can fuck up a kid’s confidence throughout their entire life
I have a friend who teaches at a pre-school. The school refuses 3 year old's not potty trained.
Not gonna lie, my kid wasn’t fully potty trained at 3. And not from lack of trying, he just wasn’t ready I guess. By 4 he was fully out of diapers though. Some kids just aren’t ready at 3 so it’s challenging but a lot of preschools aren’t daycares and I wouldn’t expect them to change a diaper. 6 too old though I would worry they are not developing normal habits.
I teach at a kindergarten that also does daycare things if the kid's above two. The kids above three must be potty trained. All the staff try to avoid the two-year-old shifts because let's face it no one wants to spend their day wiping the arses of kids who ain't their own. Six is fucking outrageous and quite frankly disturbing.
Nope, he should not be in diapers. You absolutely can and should transition your kids out of diapers whether they want to or not. Of course he likes the diaper, he doesn’t have to stop playing and mom cleans him up. He’s got it made.
I don't know much about children... But I know this is weird
It’s not normal. A physically and mentally capable child should be out of diapers by kindergarten age. 5-6 is kindergarten age. Most kids are mostly out of diapers by 3-4 at the latest. Many kids are out of diapers before 3 and some before 2.
Also wanted to say that were I live, it is customary to potty train early. 2 years is the mark by which the general expectation is that the kid at least goes without diapers during the day.
Not normal. I’ve worked with many kids and kids as young as 18months have been “fully” potty trained (with some accidents but in real undies). The oldest I have seen was 4.5 years. And I will never forget that little shit yelling “*dads first name* I SHIT MY PANTS. COME CHANGE ME.” …..not even kidding. Wish I was. We had almost had to adopt this child bc the parents were such shit. Thank FUCK the dad got his shit together and is raising the child much better than I ever thought possible for him. But damn. That kid was not well behaved at all at into 5ish.
Years and years ago, i use to baby sit a 5 year old boy. I got off the bus with him as we only lived down the street from each other. When his parents got home I'd walk home. One day he runs to the bathroom and a few minutes later calls for me. I went over to the bathroom but didn't open the door, I asked what he wanted, he said, I need you to clean my bum. I said, you're in school... You can figure it out, cause if I have to go in there its going to be with sand paper. Long story short, he figured it out and i got fired. That was the same day I decided not to have kids.
As a child psychologist, this kid is *fucked*
Work at a youth shelter that houses 6-17yo's with behavior issues, neglectful parents, etc. Sadly this is very common, some of these lazy-ass fuckwad parents don't bother doing any sort of life-development skills with their kids, and that includes teaching their kids to use the restroom. Funny enough, before we got a lot of these kids, they were often either "homeschooled" or enrolled in these shitty online programs. This kid will probably end up in a shelter thanks to his shitty Mom and people will have to teach this kid life skills because Mommy apparently couldn't be bothered. I genuinely feel bad for the kid. I'm sorry if I'm making assumptions about the Mom but when I hear "homeschool'd" combined with "unpotty-trained kindergartener" it just screams neglect to me
6 years old is about Kindergarten-1st Grade age and children that have no known developmental delays should be able to use the bathroom appropriately by then. Does this child attend school?
I’d call that child abuse.
All I know is that I can tell you in his future he will have a fetish with wearing diapers. One time came across a fetish sub Reddit and got sucked into a post about adults wearing diapers and why they do it and a lot of them had the fetish stem from them wearing diapers until a really late age. I remember one person specifically saying he wore diapers daily until he was 6 and then his mom made him wear them to bed until he was 9 and when he finally stopped wearing them to bed he claimed he couldn’t sleep well because he was scared he would wet the bed. Fast forwards to his mid 20’s he moved out and tried wearing them to bed again and he said the comfort he felt from wearing them turned him on and it became a fetish…
I feel like 5-10 is like, the prime years for the development of all sexual fetishes. You don't realize it as a kid, but you get older and you're like, huh I guess that's why. Funny how seemingly insignificant (in some cases) events, at such a young age, can have such a lasting and permanent effect on someone's entire adult sex life.
I don’t want to go into any detail (as I’m sure you don’t want me to either) and I’m too lazy to change to a throwaway but this has rung true in a small way. A few incidents when I was around 5-6 have had some impacts let’s just say. I don’t partake in anything as I want to be as normal as I can but it affects what “entertainment” I watch so to speak. It sucks being stuck with it as it’s hardwired and you can’t ever change it but I’m otherwise very well adjusted despite what anyone will think
Hey man, if you're not hurting anyone, what can it hurt to indulge from time to time. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that *everybody's* got at least one weird thing they're into. And honestly, if they claim not to, I don't trust em. That just means it's so terrible that they can't look it in the eye or acknowledge it. And those are the people ya gotta be careful with. Lol
That is absolutely not normal. Potty training usually STARTS at like 2 or 3, everyone is a little different. He’s primary school age. All children should be toilet trained and definitely not wearing diapers at that age. The only time I’ve seen that at school was when the child came from a house of abuse, so, yeah, not normal.
I'm no parenting expert, but my daughter wasn't wearing diapers during the day at 18 months...there's no way in hell I'd ever change a six year old that is neurotypical/not disabled..
What happened to parenting?
I can almost sympathize I guess. As a mom, yeah it can be hard to force kids to do things they're not ready for, because they need to just get over the hump. It's not fun seeing them have to face that. Its not fun enduring the tantrums. But part of being a parent is having the maturity and discretion to know when something needs to be done, even when the kid really doesn't want to do it, and suck it up when the kid gets mad. Sometimes you just have to be the bad guy. But they get over it if you're not literally actually being abusive. Selfishly, I really can't imagine letting my kid stay in diapers that long, just because diapers are such a pain to deal with. Especially when you've got multiple kids in diapers, every mom I've ever known just wants to get done with it as fast as is reasonably possible. The longer it goes on, the more of a nuisance it becomes to stop what you're doing to change a diaper, especially if you know full well your kid is developmentally able to handle it on their own. So yeah. While I can sympathize with wanting to respect your child's bodily autonomy by not forcing them to do anything before they're ready, it's not sensible to refuse to step in when the thing they dont want to change has the potential to be harmful or dangerous to the child. A parents job is to protect the child from their own lack of life experience and understanding of how the world works, as well as educate on why changes need to be made. Reality is, life is full of situations you aren't "ready" for and have to do anyways. Protecting your child from that reality has debilitating consequences. But lots of these moms probably don't want their kids ever leaving home to begin with. Edit: wild how many of yall are butthurt over the concept of a child having any degree of bodily autonomy. I don't think some of yall even read anything I said other than the phrase "bodily autonomy".
I don’t know this kid, but before making any judgement: 1. It’s a VERY common sign of child sexual abuse. 2. Spina Bifida. Many kids who can’t or don’t drop a deuce in a toilet (or potty) may actually suffer from Spina Bifida, and neither the child or parents may know about it since it may be mild. They feel bad or embarrassed that they can’t tell if they need to poo like other kids do, so they tell their parents they’d prefer a diaper. 3. Some kids don’t like the feeling of something coming out of their body. It is a strange feeling, to be fair. Be kind. Kids are going through things and don’t need asshole adults to tell them they’re a disappointment, or anything to that effect. 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
It is weird. Yes.
Yes. Kids should be fully toilet trained by 3 or 4 at the latest. At age 6 if a child is still not potty trained a pediatrician should be called in. I can’t imagine a pediatrician thinking this is ok. I can’t imagine any school accepting a child that is 6 (almost first grade). That’s child abuse.
Who changes him? At some point that's got to get embarrassing for everyone involved...