Teachers toilet training

And the ones whose parents werent coping or who were well just not very good parents, those children werent picked up in the way they would have been had society been normal. One of the first ways of safeguarding vulnerable children is to make sure they access playgroups/nurseries at an early age so there is a form of regular monitoring. Its another role of early years that no one really acknowledges.

This is sadly true

Somehow I can’t get past this thread title without mentally inserted an apostrophe!

Lol!

I can see a parallel between these children and me when I started school. My parents were quite anti social so I hardly met any children before I went to school. A bit like the children who were isolated during lockdown. I was at home all the time with my mother while my father was at work. Being suddenly thrown into a classroom full of strangers was awful. I was so traumatised that I used to regularly wet myself without even knowing I was doing it. I don't know if it was ever discussed with my parents, but I suspect I was just left to grow out of it. Because I only had my parents to talk to it was ages before I could make myself understood in school. My parents thought it was quite amusing that I had my own language. Obviously in the 50s you just got on with it, but it took all my years at primary school to really get acclimatised to school.

OK I’m appalled! So what are parents for? What do those parents who leave it up to teachers to toilet train their children do?
Come on ! Really ? There are roles for parents! And just accept your responsibilities : get off your phones and interact with your children: 1) toilet training! 2) teach your children how to sit at the table to eat using a knife and fork!
3) teach your children to say please & thank you!
4) teach your children to dress themselves
5) read a bedtime story!
Sorry maybe I’m too ‘old school’
And parents must take responsibility - awful

Totally agree with you and most schools with reception ages have regular ‘toilet’ breaks !

Sadly there is a number of children who are not parented. They have never sat to a table or handled cutlery, their mothers are always on the phone - just watch them with their prams, no singing nursery rhymes or looking at the birds, at home, mother on line, children in front of the TV watching news etc no wonder becoming anxious and no one speaks to them.
I was on the tram last week when a girl about 6 climbed on the handles and was swinging on the straps. The mother just sat there. Parents take children to school wearing their nightclothes and potty training doesn’t exist.
This obviously is not about children with special needs or disabilities.

It is the parents DUTY to have their little ones out of nappies before they go to school at age 3. Back in the day we had terry nappies that needed washing and trying, it was an incentive to get your child out of nappies. It is so easy these days with disposable nappies and for me that's one reason why children are not toilet trained. It is definitely not a teacher's job to change nappies.

Don't blame covid, my friend was an infant class teacher, many moons ago, and often complained that several children were starting school not toilet trained. She often said that teaching toilet training was not a part of her job description!!

Unfortunately the issue of teachers dealing with toilet training came as no surprise to me. As a teacher for over 30 years this was just one of many expectations from parents in a number of schools I worked in. Once commenting to a professional couple (both doctors) that their son wasn't coping with staying for school lunches because he couldn't use any cutlery, (not even a spoon) I was told 'well it's your job to teach him'.

As an old school English teacher I used to teach letter writing and how to address an envelope. About twenty years ago I found pupils arriving in year seven who did not know their own address.☹️

I was a primary school teacher for over forty years and it is awful that this is happening.Unfortunately some parents are lazy and prefer to be on their phones than interact with their kids. Things were better when the SureStart scheme was implemented by Labour.Forty years ago when I started teaching most children were toilet trained in Reception unless there was a medical problem.. Parenting classes and intervention are a priority, but like everything else the parents who should be attending these classes don’t bother.

My daughter was out of nappies before the age of 2 by her own request but she wasn't dry until she was about 16! She had a stretchy bladder which didn't give her the signal that her bladder was full so when she moved, she leaked; sometimes it would just empty. Schools would have rules about when she could use the toilet which didn't fit her requirements so she often came home wet through. I wonder what they were saying in the staff room about my ability to train her!
Now my daughter is having the same problem with her daughter. She is coming up for 5 and when my daughter collects her from school, she is soaked. As it happens around 3 o'clock when the bladder has reached tipping point and school finishes at 3.10, the teachers aren't really bothered as they don't have to deal with it. My daughter often complains to me and whilst I sympathise with her, I also understand that with 30 other children in the class getting ready to go home, they don't have time to stand in the toilet until her bladder empties. However, I do wonder whether the school thinks it is bad parenting on my daughter's part even though there is a genuine medical problem. Once she's 7 the medical profession will investigate further and no doubt she will be medicated.

I think there are many reasons why some children aren’t toilet trained before they start school.
Yes it could be that some parents are ‘lazy’ and can’t be bothered to train their infant.
Parents are told today toilet training should be ‘child led’.
As people have said nappies are much more comfortable than the old terry nappies and are relatively cheap these days when you take into account the cost of laundering etc. They were much more expensive when they first came out - now you can get a large pack for around £3 from Aldi.
Children start school so much younger these days in reception class some only just turning 4 years old.
Both parents in most families are working full time and it must be difficult to find the couple of free weeks or so to concentrate on potty train their child when they’re not at day nursery all week..
My son is autistic and was out of nappies at just over two but every child is different - my DIL has been trying for nearly two years but my four year old grandson who is also on the autistic spectrum although not in nappies is still ‘holding on to poos’ resulting in him pooing in his pants at school.
Thankfully his school are very supportive and don’t make a fuss about this problem.

Quoting covid as a reason for children arriving in school not potty trained is beyond ridiculous. My granddaughter was potty trained at just turned two during covid. My son and daughter in law found it the perfect opportunity with both of them at home. She was potty trained in about a week. I understand the effect of covid and the isolation has had a negative effect on some children but an excuse for children not being potty trained, absolute nonsense and indicative of lazy parents imo.

I suppose it was War Time so conditions were difficult for my mother. She looked after 2 ailing parents, my father was away doing his stuff and I had a younger brother to be cared for

Her solution came some time before my 3rd birthday when we noticed a crocodile of small girls in a brown school uniform walking along the pavement to take the next left turn.

Further enquiries led to her identifying a local 'dame' school' run by 2 elderly sisters. I was speedily enrolled with a sigh of relief and shortly afterwards was tucked into the same crocodile behind the leader who protested indignantly that she was ' nearly 6' and so, perfectly competent to head the column andwe set off around the corner..... and the next one to the school

I had never thought about my potty training at all but remember being followed up the stairs by one of the sisters to their private lavatory

She appeared indignantly in the classrom. THAT child ( me) was so ill brought up (at 2) that I had left the loo without cleaning up 3 drops of urine on the seat. Yes, she had counted them too

My punishment was not the stick which was sometimes used on such toddlers but the dunces' cap which I had to wear and stand in the corner

Thinking about it now to see someone wearing the cap was a very rare occurrence (It seemed to have been used for urine droplets and also spilling the contents of the boxes of shells, (by which we learned to count),on the floor

Being determined that my son would not be punished thus I decided to train him by attaching him to his potty at the age of 2 with an old scarf

It did not take him long to proclaim that he was now a 'big boy' and able to use the bathroom instead of walking around crouched like a snail with a plastic potty shell still attached

I think we're ignoring something important here. Until quite recently children did not start "school" at age 3! My little grandson is 3 years 2 months and about to have his school intro days which I find rather disconcerting - he's tiny still and struggling with potty training, not clean or dry yet. I personally don't think he's quite ready for the toilet, and if there wasn't this pressure of a school like environment looming he could be left for a few more months and then probably get the idea quite quickly. That's what I did with my son who was slow on the uptake - but then got the whole thing easily when he was near 4. But then, he didn't go anywhere near a school until he was 5......

I had 3 daughters and always started potty training soon after their first birthday. They were all completely dry day and night by the age of 18 months. Who do these parents think will train their children? By the time they are 5, they’ve had 3 1/2 years to toilet train them. The longer you leave a child in nappies, the more you confirm to them that this is normal behaviour. If the parents are working full time, the responsibility for toilet training lies with whoever is caring for them whether that’s a nursery or a childminder. I was appalled that my own granddaughter was not taking any steps whatsoever to toilet train my great grandson even at the age of 2 and when she became pregnant again. So-called ‘Child-led’ decisions are just a fancy name for lazy parenting. Toilet training your child is not ‘forcing’ them to be dry. It is absolutely normal parenting, as is teaching them to speak, to dress themselves, to feed themselves etc. how on earth these parents manage to do anything at all with their phones glued to their hand is beyond me. Government support has nothing whatsoever to do with toilet training. Again, this is another excuse to absolve themselves of any responsibility. If schools insisted on parents coming into school to change their child’s nappy, they’d soon get their child trained. Maybe someone should develop an app for their phone that tells them ‘take your child to the toilet’ every 30 minutes or so! These parents need to receive teaching themselves - Life is what happens when you don’t have your head stuck in a phone! I feel so sorry for the children. They’re actually neglected.

Whilst in some cases Covid lockdowns did have an effect on toilet training school age children, sadly this was & still is an issue before & after and in many cases down to lazy parenting

I think its more than that. We seem to be gradually allowing parents to take less responsibility and putting more and more on the State. Yes, there are of course families where they need a lot of support, but I feel that there are many families who just take advantage when they could be looking after and training their children themselves. I'm not just talking nappies, but behaviour, etc.
You only have to read these terrible reports of 12 years old committing murder, and the number of underage children who have possession of lethal knives, to ask where are their parents and what are they doing? And of course the internet has made things a thousand times worse; but parents should be controlling their children's access.
I feel quite despairing and sad. And yes, I'll risk it - if Labour win the election, it will escalate far more, as their policy seems to be that the State should be the provider whilst all us poor adults can relax and let them get on with it.

Now I know that may make some hackles rise - just save your breath - I am not trying to start a political debate.

widgeon3

I suppose it was War Time so conditions were difficult for my mother. She looked after 2 ailing parents, my father was away doing his stuff and I had a younger brother to be cared for

Her solution came some time before my 3rd birthday when we noticed a crocodile of small girls in a brown school uniform walking along the pavement to take the next left turn.

Further enquiries led to her identifying a local 'dame' school' run by 2 elderly sisters. I was speedily enrolled with a sigh of relief and shortly afterwards was tucked into the same crocodile behind the leader who protested indignantly that she was ' nearly 6' and so, perfectly competent to head the column andwe set off around the corner..... and the next one to the school

I had never thought about my potty training at all but remember being followed up the stairs by one of the sisters to their private lavatory

She appeared indignantly in the classrom. THAT child ( me) was so ill brought up (at 2) that I had left the loo without cleaning up 3 drops of urine on the seat. Yes, she had counted them too

My punishment was not the stick which was sometimes used on such toddlers but the dunces' cap which I had to wear and stand in the corner

Thinking about it now to see someone wearing the cap was a very rare occurrence (It seemed to have been used for urine droplets and also spilling the contents of the boxes of shells, (by which we learned to count),on the floor

Being determined that my son would not be punished thus I decided to train him by attaching him to his potty at the age of 2 with an old scarf

It did not take him long to proclaim that he was now a 'big boy' and able to use the bathroom instead of walking around crouched like a snail with a plastic potty shell still attached

Gosh , a very interesting set of memories there. I've been thinking about my mothers life in the war. Black outs, fear, bombing.

( sorry for wandering off topic)

I was talking to my daughter about how my grandson (2 years old) is not potty trained yet, and she told me the advice now is to wait until your child asked for the potty. There's no such thing as "training" anymore. You have to wait until they are ready.

I have the solution don't let them attend school until they are out of nappies and toilet trained, simple. When my children attended nursery a couple of mornings a week they had to be toilet trained and out of nappies and none of the mums questioned this but just made sure they were.

I remember kids had to also be able to tie their own shoelaces before they went to school. Not so relevant now I suppose. We used to toilet train babies a lot earlier than they seem to now - probably because we had to wash the nappies rather than put them in the bin! All mine were well trained by about 18 months old, I didn’t really have to do much. Soggy cloth nappies were uncomfortable!