Is It Normal for Daycare to Make a 3-Year-Old Wait Over 2 Hours Between Restroom Breaks?

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Recently my son got transferred from PK2 (2–3-year-olds) to PK3 (3–4-year-olds) last month. A challenge that has come up is potty training.

My son is potty trained at home, he does not use a diaper at home. He knows when to give notice to go to the bathroom, albeit will have accidents every once in a while. And mostly those accidents are that a little pee or poo seeped out in the process of letting us know.

NO completely peeing his pants or floor in months.

At his old daycare class, the teacher he had was very attentive and trained him to make requests when he had to use the restroom. The training process for that class was that he would arrive at school with a trainer, in which the teacher would let him know it was time to take off and notify him. He did not have accidents in the last month he was there, so much so she said he was ready to graduate to his age group class.

Now in his PK3 class been a completely different story. They told us to keep bringing him with his trainer, ok. Except they don’t take it off, but rather keep him with a trainer all day and change it when/if he goes. We were not aware of this until last week when he came home with the same trainer he had on from the morning completely full and soaking through his pants. Obviously, we were pissed, we didn’t know they were not following the same process as the previous class.

We had a meeting with admin staff literally yesterday about it. We were clear that our son does not use trainers at home. Admin agreed that he should not be wearing diapers and that starting the next day (today), to come without diapers. We asked what the potty time schedules was, and she assured us that they would have multiple opportunities in the morning (he’s only half day right now).

Cut to today, I get to the preschool and take him to the bathroom there at 8:40 am before dropping him off in class. He goes, a decent amount. Then at 10:55 am, we get a message via the daycares app from the teacher that he ended up peeing his pants and wetting the carpet.

I acknowledged that it was his first day back without any diaper and might have forgotten and that later at home we would discuss and reinforce telling the teacher to hold before getting to the toilet. But, I followed up by asking if he was given an opportunity before to go potty. Because he has soiled pants in a while at home unless he was made to wait passed a certain time. I reminded him that we were told that there would be many opportunities for a potty break to avoid this kind of situation. We know our son, peeing himself meant he held it to the brink and couldn’t anymore.

I didn’t get a reply until much later from staff through the general school account (identity of writer anonymous), which pretty much went:

“that ONLY 2 Hours and 15 minutes had elapsed from when he went last to the bathroom at 8:40 am, that we should consider consulting our PEDIATRICIAN about his urine retention…”

To be completely transparent, my wife and I feel very upset about that response on a lot of levels. But, is waiting more than two hours a reasonable time frame for 3 year old kids? That shit sounds wildly unreasonable and borderline unethical.

But he’s our first kid and I just want to check if we’re off base and the daycare has a point about waiting that long.