Child development Resources

With a quarter of children now starting school not toilet trained, ERIC, The Children’s Bowel and Bladder Charity is launching an intervention to help reverse the trend, and is inviting families and healthcare professionals to hop aboard the Toilet Train.

Over the last century, the average age that children are being potty trained in the UK has risen from 12–18 months, to an average of around three or even four years today (Blum et al, 2004).

ERIC, The Children’s Bowel & Bladder Charity, carried out research with the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in 2016 and the National Day Nursery Association in 2018. Both surveys showed that parents are toilet training their children later. Furthermore, research by Kindred Squared (2024) showed that one in four children in England and Wales are now starting school still wearing nappies.

The concept of child development is constantly evolving; the evidence base is taken from the sometimes disparate disciplines of philosophy, biology, psychology and sociology. The theoretical debates consider the processes of human uniqueness, human similarity, change, universality, context, ecology culture and anthropology. This article explores some of these concepts and how they have developed in relation to the historical understanding of the child

Marcella Kelly Lecturer, National University of Ireland, Galway, PhD student (Child and Youth Research) Child and Family Research Centre, NUI, Galway, MSc (Nurse Education), BSc (Community Health Studies, RGN, RM, RPHN, RNT

Article accepted for publication: January 2012

Brendan McMahon gives a brief overview on the basics of psychoanalytical theories of child development.