Mayflower primary school - nappy changing facilities for school aged children

@MissTRENDINGI am in Italy

This is a school local to me. It is a huge issue in this area. This school does have quite a few SEN children however most schools in the area have a big proportion of children who are not toilet trained. I am a childminder and we make sure that the children leaving our setting are fully toilet trained and independent. All the teachers who visit are very appreciative of the fact that this is something they do not have to do. This is a very deprived area so there is a great number of families who live below the poverty line who do not have the resources and skills to feel they can successfully toilet train so leave it to preschools, childcare providers or schools. More help is needed to get these parents the skills and confidence necessary to help their children achieve this.

When I worked in a playschool, children couldn't start (at age 3) unless they were in pants. Children certainly couldn't start mainstream school in nappies. My children, and the child I minded, were out of nappies at 21 months. No great scientific or psychological approach, just put them in pants and talk about how their tummy felt before they wee'd. They had got the hang of it in days, although of course there were accidents for a while. My great niece watched my granddaughter using the potty at the same age and instantly got it. One big problem now is that nappies are so good that children don't know they've urinated - they need to run around with a bare bum and experience wee running down their leg to realise. Warm weather is perfect, get the nappy off and let them experience the feeling of doing a wee.

I've had friends whose child was in a nursery they expected the child to be potty trained in a weekend moaned endlessly if the child had an accident and were generally unsupportive not every child gets it instantly even in cloth nappies

Surely a 9 year old can change their own nappy. Obviously unless there are sever disabilities as stated in OP's first post.

What a cheek

couldn’t you say no I think this is your job not the schools

Can you imagine the outrage form parents who can't cope with visitors? Their human rights are breached when a HV knocks on their door, apparently.

The clinics always operated during working hours as far as I can remember

Hmm not sure about that My DS was in nursery when I was potty training. I informed them of this and they also took him to the toilet while he was there. So can't see the link

Where I was, there were weekly or fortnightly clinics that anyone could drop in to whenever they wanted. Just to get baby weighed if you wanted, or to ask questions if you were worried about something.
I mean, if you didn't have issues, you didn't go, so perhaps that was the case for you ?

Presumably children with undiagnosed special needs were every bit as (if not more) common 20/30/40 years ago? So why is there an issue now?

I personally think that one of the main factors is a change in parenting advice and culture. Parents used to be told to potty train from 18 months (sometimes earlier). Now parents are told to look for signs of "readiness" and that it's not uncommon for a child not to be potty trained at 3/4+ years. Parents look around them and see other older children still in nappies and have no expectations that a child could be toilet trained at 2 or younger. It has just become the norm to wait until they're older now and not to "rush". Also disposable nappies make it harder to connect weeing with the sensation of feeling wet.

As others have alluded to, being in nappies is also no longer a barrier to going to preschool, so there is less incentive too.

My children are older and 3 out of 4 were out of daytime nappies by 2 1/2. The oldest (likely SN) was a bit over 3. That was completely standard and normal at the time.

The excuses about two working parents is just rubbish.

I worked full time, my DM worked full time. Our children were all toilet trained between the ages of two and three. (additional needs excepted).

It is just an excuse.

Out of interest, would you say which country this is?

We dealt with it before by children being changed in inappropriate places - bathroom floors, the staff room etc. Unsafe for them, unsafe for staff. Some schools insist parents come in and change the children, including in those unsuitable places.

The need has always been there, I was at primary school in the 80s and there were 2 children in my class in nappies (twins, born prematurely and with developmental delay and CP).

As schools get bigger and specialist schools close down in the name of integration, the issue will become more common. All schools are going is meeting existing needs in a more appropriate way.

Schools should be inclusive of diasabled children. Plenty of children with physcial disabilities don't have learning difficulties or cognitive impairment and can do just fine in mainstream school with the right support. In the past such children might have been sent to special school along with childs with other types of SEN and not recieved a proper education.

Whatever the reasons, this has happened over the last 20 years. Are we going to see the age creep up closer to secondary school in another 20 years?

More funding is definitely needed. It should be the same everywhere too and not so school dependent.

I'm just glad after everything he's been through that he didn't have to change schools as well.

My son is in Year 4 and I've never known any of his classes to not have any TA's so far.

This used to be the case in schools round here as well. It absolutely isn't now. Our EYFS classes have a TA, but beyond that-we have TA support allocated only to individual high need pupils with an EHCP.

I think you are SO right here. Whilst there are a small number of children would would benefit from pull-ups, incontinence at an older age has been normalised.

In an earlier post I suggested people could make some policy suggestions in the vain hope that Kier or one of his little people were reading and interested. So here is mine:

"Advertising of children's continence aids should, subject to consultation with parenting groups, be restricted to those products suitable for the first 18 months of life" *

*unless specifically targeted to children with special needs.

Potty training should be done early - it wasn’t hard . But I was at home full time and they sat on the potty after meals.
Once they are older it can become a battle - sitting in the potty at 18 months playing with toys is much easier than getting a 4 year old to sit for a while on the loo.

@EverythingElseIsTaken you don’t know they have no SEN though? All that can be known of Reception kids is no dx. Who knows which ones will later be diagnosed. Mine wasn’t diagnosed until age 10.

We have plenty of children with no SEN coming to us for their reception year in nappies, unable to dress themselves, not knowing how to use a knife and fork. Hand them a tablet and they know how to use that though!

One of our mums actually told us she isn’t going to even start potty training her toddler because the school did such a good job of it with her older ones!

I live in a European country where there are no SEN schools and all children go to mainstream.
Nearly all children start nursery school at 3 and practically all children are out of nappies, aside from the children who already have 1 2 1 support in place and maybe the odd one who was born late in the year and was still 2 in September.

All children here have a paediatrician and will have had routine checks every 6 months up until 2/3 years old.
The children who are diagnosed later on in their childhood, and therefore do have SEN are still almost all potty trained by the time they start school at 3.

This is a social and cultural issue in the UK because otherwise it would be happening everywhere, and it isn’t. The fact that we are diagnosing more children with SEN doesn’t mean that there are more children with disabilities, just that we are acknowledging them more. The amount of children with severe enough SEN that doesn’t enable potty training hasn’t increased.

Really unpleasant for them

not on

I think it's a mix of lack of time and also that nappies are so much more comfortable now, so you don't have the constant whining from uncomfortable children to encourage you to get it sorted.

My kids are both in their forties now. When they were small there were no kids starting mainstream school without being potty trained. However it was easier then to do potty training as we had more time as it was rare for mothers to work full time outside the home.