A mum has been criticised for encouraging her son to go to the toilet in bushes when they are out and about.
The woman found herself in an awkward situation, fearing she was giving her son 'mixed messages' about where he could go to the toilet.
The mum said she has been allowing her son to pee in the bushes when they are out and about in the park or somewhere outdoors to avoid accidents.
But the youngster took his love for alfresco toilets to a new level when he began doing it in the garden at nursery - leaving his teacher unhappy, writes The Mirror.
Posting on Mumsnet, the mum said: "She explained that her son is recently toilet trained, but when they're out and about and there's no toilet - like in the park - she has been encouraging him to wee in the bushes.
"I picked him up from nursery a couple of days ago, and the person who did the handover said 'just to let you know mum, we were in the garden today and he pulled his trousers and pants down and weed in the bush'.
"The obvious subtext was 'this is not allowed'. I do understand that they would prefer to avoid this, but I was privately pleased that he'd done that rather than wet himself.
"However, DH (dear husband) and I tried to explain to him that when he's at nursery he should tell someone he needs to use the toilet."
The next time the mum was in the park with her son and he needed the toilet, she tried to persuade him to go into the bush.
She said: "But he wouldn't and kept running back down the path, looking for somewhere else to go.
"I tried to stop him and get him to go in the bush but he wouldn't, and got more and more distressed until he stopped and weed in his pants.
"I just worry that he's got mixed messages now and I'm not sure whether to raise it with nursery along the lines of 'what was said to him when he did this/I'm not sure it was particularly helpful to treat this as a wrongdoing in the context of ongoing toilet training/can we agree a consistent message for him going forwards' or whether actually this is entirely on us as parents.
"Obviously if he'd done it indoors there would be no ambiguity, but isn't it fairly normal for little boys to have a wee in a bush?"
Mumsnet users disagreed with the mum and said it was "unhygienic" for her to let her son go to the toilet outside.
One said: "You can’t have children weeing in the garden, it's very unhygienic."
Another said that urinating outside should be a "last resort situation" and that she should be encouraging him to use a travel potty instead.
While another said: "I’ve never peed in someone’s garden."
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