Blow up over nappies: Are Swiss children drying too late?

There are no figures to prove this for Switzerland. There are already signs. In mid-June, the “SonntagsZeitung” reported on an information event in Aargau. As part of this, parents of prospective primary school students are given advice that their children should be dry when starting school, which is not something that is explicitly given. This situation worries not only the teachers but also the affected families.

The fact that baby diapers are increasingly coming to the market in more comfortable and larger models may also play a role in this. In 1998, the first size 6 Pampers were released; It was the largest disposable diaper on the market at the time. The scale now goes to 8. But in the eyes of many experts, the main culprit for children’s late sobriety is parents who do not encourage their daughters and sons to use the potty at an early age. Pediatrician Oskar Jenni (56) sees this critically. “Children usually give signs on their own that they are ready to use the potty in the 2nd or 3rd year of life,” Blick, head of the department of developmental pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Zurich, told Blick.

The majority of experts on the subject assume that drying can only be accelerated from the moment children begin to show interest in the toilet and want to use the potty. This does not happen until the age of 12 months at the earliest, according to the Zurich Longitudinal Studies conducted between 1954 and 2002 by pediatrician and author Remo Largo (1943-2020). Around the time when children first show their own initiative, the period in which they can control their bowels and bladder also begins. For this, their nervous systems must be sufficiently developed and other physical requirements must be met. This usually happens in the following order:

1. Children can wait to pee during the day until they sit on the potty or toilet.
2. Children can resist the urge to defecate.
3. Children can control their bladder at night. Urine flows only when they wake up and sit on the potty or toilet.

According to longitudinal studies conducted in Zurich, most children become dry and clean in their third and fourth years of life. By the age of five, 3 to 5 percent are still wet during the day, and 20 percent are not yet dry at night when kindergarten starts.

Jenni says that as soon as a child shows initiative, parents should support them in this maturation process. “I can definitely imagine that parents are missing this more often today than they used to, and so they continue to rely on their children’s diapers.” Children can be supported by praising them when they go to the potty or – if the child is older – by purchasing an apparatus for the adult toilet and placing a stool in front of the child so that he can climb onto the toilet. Or you can set a good example and let your daughter or son follow when necessary. Another option is toilet training; This method is primarily propagated by people who believe that initiative does not come on its own, but must instead be provoked as early as possible.

A common variant is to have the child wear panties instead of diapers for several hours at home. During this time you put him on the potty every 20 minutes where he can look at a picture book, for example, regardless of whether something comes up. The aim is for the underwear to remain dry within twenty minutes.

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As part of longitudinal studies, Remo Largo compared families who started potty training early with families who started potty training late or not at all. He concluded that children who trained early did not dry out faster than children who trained later or did not train at all. Toilet training can at most teach the child to sit until something comes. The imitation effect may work if more than one child is involved (for example, in a nursery). Jenni rules out the possibility that potty training has an impact on bladder and bowel control. Education is a relic of a time when education largely consisted of adapting children as quickly as possible to the rules of the adult world. “This no longer fits the way many parents want to raise their children today.”