“Big boy” and “big girl” toilet language can harm because it makes maturity, approval and belonging conditional on abandoning nappies. A practical choice is turned into a judgement about the child.
Key points
- The praise sounds positive, but it creates a matching negative category: the child who needs or wants a nappy is little, disappointing or outside the group.
- Gendered maturity language can make accidents and returns especially humiliating because the child appears to lose a valued identity.
- The message also follows disabled and incontinent people into later life.
What is really happening
The praise sounds positive, but it creates a matching negative category: the child who needs or wants a nappy is little, disappointing or outside the group.
Gendered maturity language can make accidents and returns especially humiliating because the child appears to lose a valued identity.
Why pressure is not required
Whale, Cramer and Joinson found that young people with continence problems faced secrecy, fear of bullying, restricted access and interrupted learning at school. Research on dignity-protective continence care locates dignity in autonomy, privacy, respect, trust and control over care rather than in toilet use alone.
A calmer plan
The message also follows disabled and incontinent people into later life. Protection becomes associated with failed adulthood rather than with ordinary care.
Neutral language can still recognise learning: 'You used the toilet' says what happened without ranking the child's personhood.
Toilet use is learned rather than biologically compulsory. If continuing nappies protects the child’s health, trust, comfort and participation, non-training is not a failure. It is a positive care decision.
What this means in practice
- Describe actions rather than identity.
- Avoid comparisons with siblings or peers.
- Call nappies a tool, not baby equipment.
- Ask nurseries and relatives to use the same language.
The wider principle
The wider case is set out in Beyond the Toilet: Toilet Use, Non-Toilet Use and Bodily Freedom. Its central point is that toilet use is a learned body-management system, not a biological or moral requirement.
A closely related explanation is available in What Happens If You Never Potty Train a Child?.
Conclusion
A child does not owe society toilet use on a timetable. Keep them healthy, listen to them and make both toilets and protection available without shame. Where nappies give the child the calmer and better life, continuing them is the right outcome.
Sources and further reading
- Beyond the Toilet: Toilet Use, Non-Toilet Use and Bodily Freedom
- Whale, Cramer and Joinson, Left Behind and Left Out
- Ostaszkiewicz et al., Dignity-protective continence care