Nappies staying on children longer says Robin Barker

PARENTS fearful of toilet-training are keeping their kids in nappies longer with all major brands now offering sizes up to 25kg.

GO into any supermarket and you'll find boxes of nappies reaching up to the roof like towers of giant Lego bricks.

Besides the usual items of necessity, such as nappies for newborns, you'll find a range of sanitary products for toddlers and children.

Nappies for kids weighing more than 18kg (the weight of a typical five-year-old) are now commonplace. There are also nappy pants available in all major brands for children weighing up to 25kg (the weight of a typical 12-year-old).

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Are modern kids emerging out of nappies much later than children several decades ago?

Childhood nurse and author Robin Barker says in the cloth-nappy era, toddlers were much more likely to be toilet-trained soon after their second birthday.

Today "nappy time seems to be getting longer and longer'', she writes in her updated edition of Baby Love, Australia's best-selling babycare book.

Toilet-training taking longer ... Two-year-old Ned Foley showing off a Bumble Bee nappy.

According to a United States study, in the 1950s more than 90 per cent of children were toilet-trained by the age of two. Fast forward to 2013 and at least a third of American children are still in nappies at three or older - a figure closely matched in Australia.

Huggies' Australian website says 80 per cent of boys and girls are fully toilet-trained by three and a half years of age. Looked at another way, that means 20 per cent are still in nappies when they're approaching the age of four.

University of NSW researcher Anna Christie believes starting toilet-training early rather than later is better for the environment, the family budget, community health and for the child.

In one of the few studies on the subject, Christie blamed disposable nappies for parents delaying the training age of children. Her report, Toilet Training of Infants and Children in Australia, was released by UNSW in 2010.

In the report, Christie said parents were losing their toilet-training techniques.

"What we observe is that not only has toilet-training been lost to children, possibly the more serious problem is that the knowledge of how to train has been lost to parents and carers,'' she said.

One of the major problems with single-use nappies is environmental - the manufacturing process consumes raw materials and nappies sit untreated in landfill and take years to decompose.

Nappies are also a drain on the hip pocket for parents - in 2013-14, Australians will spend $984 million on nappies, according to market research IBISWorld.

Disposable ... Charlie Thomson's daughter Poppy's belongings.

Disposable nappies cost from 30 cents to 60 cents each. With the average baby being changed six to eight times a day, the impact on the family budget could range from $54 to $144 a month.

So when is the right time to train the modern child to use the toilet?

These days ``let the child decide'' is the common advice given by health professionals to parents on the topic of toilet training.

Unless there's illness or a domestic disruption (such as a new baby), the government-sponsored Raising Children Network says signs that children are ready for toilet-training generally appear from about two years on, although some children show signs of being ready at 18 months.

Night-time training can occur as late as eight years, although most children stop wetting the bed by the time they're five, the website says.

Understandably no parent wants want to go back to the often harsh potty training techniques of the pre-war years - but if children show signs of being ready to be trained it makes sense to grab the opportunity sooner rather than later.

The financial savings alone should be inspiration enough.