School wants 3 years old to wear regular underwear?

Trust me, they all say that and trust me more that all their kids aren’t potty-trained. I’d say your kid is doing quite well and you should just let them know he is potty trained and if pees or poops, just tell them he’s having an adjustment issue…it’s not like they’ll force you to take him back.

View it as a guideline instead of as a rule. Talk to them about it if you have to. Tell them that you are doing everything you can to teach him before school starts as well (if you do this). You might not have to warn them of anything, though. It sounds like he’s almost ready to meet the requirements from what you’re saying.

You have eight months, which is a tremendously long time at 2½ years. He should be fine by September.

Yes, a lot of kids at 3 will mess, but the school probably knows that if a kid is in regular underwear that they will learn to use the potty instead of relying on the safety of pull-ups.

If you are still worried in September, take some back up clothes to the school. They may even have a stash of old clothes there for “accident days”. That’s what my kids’ school had, We just had to wash them before taking them back.

I can tell you some of the rules in our area. (NY)
Kids are split into two groups: Potty trained or not. Depending upon which class your child is in, the teachers and assistants have different roles and responsibilities. If your child is potty trained the teacher is not permitted to be alone in the room, or take off clothes or wiping butts. If your child is in the not potty trained class there are extra staff around to “handle” these issues.
If you say your child is in the potty trained class and he/she is not, you should not expect the teachers to change your child. They are not permitted to do so.
Depending upon the school it’s 2 or 3 strikes an you’re out.

There are more rules than you can imagine including background checks, and finger printing. They are there to protect your child. The teachers hold up their part of the bargain. You should hold up yours and not try to cheat the system.

Consider it a goal that you and your son are working toward. He will change so much in the next eight months.

My grandson went from being partially trained to fully trained in just one month, after a year of trying. He is sick this week and still manages to make it to the bathroom most of the time.

He’s about a year older than your child, but his younger brother is already starting to train himself at age two.

Potty training is something that is quite variable, depending on the parents and children. In some countries, all the kids are trained by age 2. Sometimes earlier. In other countries, the age of training is getting older and older. My son didn’t get trained until it was time to enter kindergarten and that was a pretty close thing. His preschool didn’t require kids to be trained.

But there are methods out there for training at earlier ages.

My daughter was toilet trained by 2, which was mine and her choice, I started her with the potty but she chose to use the toilet herslef rather than the potty. Her nusery wouldn’t take her unless she was toilet trained (I think she had a couple of accidents but not enough to be worried) It must be hard. I agree with @zenvelo some children become as relient on pull ups as they do nappies. ie- I am busy playing here with my toys, but I need the toilet…oh it doesnt matter becauser I have pull ups on. They never got to feel/experience wetting themselves and the discomfort it can cause and how it feels when it happens.
(This may seem harsh but true)
Put it this way…
If you were 2/ 3 and had the choice of carrying on playing with some fabulous toy and soiling a pull up or potentially loosing said toy to another child to go to the toilet which would you choose?
Keep going, your child will get it eventually, there are not many adults that go to work in a nappy!

My son was very verbal and not very potty trained. He wanted to go to a nursery school which had a requirement that he be trained. All summer long I would try him in underpants and then give up when he had accidents. When we talked to him about it, he would say, “When I am 3, I will be potty trained.” And dang it – Labor Day weekend he trained himself!

I agree with those who say your son sounds like he is on the right track and will be trained in 8 months from now.

Why are people potty training their children later? It is an observation and it really seems contradictory to my generation and my parents’ generation of child rearing and potty training. Am I correct in seeing children potty trained later and later?

^^ It may be because working has become so important in order to make ends meet (it is quite normal these days for people to believe that both parents should be working), so parents might not have as much time to spend with their children. Single-parent homes are very common these days as well.

Because of the cost of disposable diapers, I would think that parents would want their children potty trained earlier and earlier. IMHO and knowing how wrong it is to judge people on their child rearing, I cautiously say that by waiting until children are reaching that independent and contrary age between, say, 14 months and 24 months, it really is much, much more difficult. I know it is difficult.

A child should be potty trained by the time they are 3.

by the time they are 2½ in my opinion

It’s not as much of a problem to not potty train early. You have all the disposables and the pullups and they all make it so easy. Plus if you are both working and the daycare takes care of the changes all day long, it’s easier. Not to mention that by the time you get home, the last thing you want is to have fights with your kid or to sit in the bathroom for an hour with them waiting for something to happen.

It happens on its own. I suppose if you were going to be judgmental, you could say the parents are lazy. They shouldn’t both work. They should be better somehow. I have to wonder why it matters so much when it actually happens. It seems to me that what makes it easiest for all involved is what matters.

I was all set to do potty training duty with my son, but my wife was exhausted and just couldn’t face it. What the heck, I thought. So we waited. He got it done when he had to. And we really didn’t worry, and I neither of us bothered pressuring ourselves with excess pressure we surely didn’t need, given what our marriage was going through at the time.

I say be pragmatic. Do it when you have to do it. Take the easiest route. If you want to raise your anxiety level, then put a deadline on it. Your choice. I’m not sure why you’d want to do that, but a lot of people think it’s important to do it by a certain time. You can be “bad mom” or “bad dad” for a lot of things. I’m not sure this is one that’s important to keep the pressure on for.

It sounds like your son is doing very well, and shouldn’t have any trouble meeting the criteria by the time he enters school! Good Job!

@wundayatta Great answer. I agree.