Toilet training and high anxiety - how schools are changing

[DeedlessIndeed]

Apologies if there is another thread on this, but I read this BBC article at the weekend and it's really stuck with me.

What on earth is happening to a percentage of young children that the schools are having to step in on such a large scale?

In the article it states that 8 out of 27 children starting school in September weren't toilet trained. Some didn't have adequate communication skills such as being able to ask for a drink.

SEN aside, does anyone know what is contributing to this delay in development? What can parents of very young children do to ensure that their child is meeting their developmental milestones?

And also, what resource does this take away from actual teaching in the old fashioned sense. What impact does this have on other children in these classes?

For context, my first baby is due in a couple of weeks so I've no idea on the realities of raising a child to school age.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1ddegp8zvo

Have you asked to be referred to continence nurse team? We found this was a stepping stone to then seeing paediatric urology at our nearest children's dept/hospital. The nurses ruled out any common or garden reasons and helped us a lot. Urology knew that there was a real issue by the time we got to them.

Don't give up, ask why, keep going. It's not good enough. Ask them what evidence is required to get a referral. Keep charts - how many, how much how often urgency etc Lots of fluids - in out charts, how many poos in a week. impact on the child and family e.g. going to shops, school etc I'm sure you've done a lot of this.

What struck me about that article was in the statistics - what they say is that there are two groups when it comes to attendance - one main group (the majority) who are not absent, and one group that are chronically absent. Essentially those stats show that those who were absent a lot before Covid, are even more absent now.

I can’t believe they are meeting kids in the car park as they are too anxious to come in. Also the forest school learning bushcraft skills.. what on earth is the world coming to!! They will need bushcraft schools when they have nowhere to live because they have no education and no career options. Tragic for all involved.

When people mention 'not children with sen, obviously '.... Consider that a LOT of children are not diagnosed until they're much older and some not at all.

I'd say it's not at all obvious for kids with autism that would have been called aspergic before the term went out of fashion. My son was 10 nearly 11 when we got a diagnosis and we did well to get it.

We have been told that any referrals have to be made by community Paeds so we can’t see anyone about it unless they agree they keep saying we need to follow advice from ERIC (which we have) they just don’t seem interested. I’ll see if there’s any way to bypass them but so far they seem to be gate keeping everything

Sadly the same with many NHS services for children.

Keep being a squeaky wheel. SEN forum in education is often useful to get advice on how to deal with gatekeepers and have needs recognised. We have centuries of experience in this field. Maybe there's a medical board on here too where people can advise. Sometimes its knowing the right words or button to press to get things moving and see the paediatric community team. Suspect they are snowed under but keep digging.

Ask them what evidence is needed from you or anyone else for a referral to be successful. You can include school/nursery if they can also see impact.

Honestly, for that situation and so many others, I have never had a manager I respected as much as that one.

Exactly this!!

I'm quite mortified by all the comments calling us lazy parents. I worked like mad trying to potty train my child as described up the thread, and was very lucky that our nursery and preschool were very supportive in putting up with millions of accidents. I thought it couldn't be that strange since lots of kids also struggled and there were some in reception still having accidents. Parents were definitely not lazy - it was to do with how the children developed. We saw lots of differences between siblings too.

My DD also has severe constipation issues, which may have reduced her ability to feel her bladder somewhat.

I would love to have dry nights now and not be constantly washing bedsheets 😭

Thanks so much for posting this! On a similar journey with my 3.5 year old at the moment and have had sooo much contradictory advice my head is spinning - at this point I have absolutely no faith or confidence in our abilities as parents to solve this or in kind of professionals. Even dealing with constipation and withholding comes with a whole range of conflicting solutions and medications and have no idea what’s for the best!

It’s much more complex than I ever understood it could be but this journey has led me to fully appreciate why some children are not toilet trained by school start. Why that number is increasing so much though is definitely concerning and agree with a lot of the explanations put forward.

Passive parenting when it comes to potty training

And too much iPad/YouTube in their pushchairs is responsible for communication issues.

dd was toilet trained at 2 years and 4 months. We did it on holiday in Spain where there were no carpets, took 2 or 3 days. Ds is autistic and has a learning delay. He only came out of pull ups at age 9 years and 2 months. He still is not dry through the night. This delay was not through lack of trying, he would probably have been wee continent years ago but was constantly leaking poo throughout the day and night. Finally at 9 years old he got diagnosed with a lower bowel issue- slow mobility, basically inability to squeeze poo out. Sadly I’d been going on about this for YEARS (since he was 2) and wasn’t listened too, kept being told he was impacted and prescribed which did f all and made the poo leakage even worse. Covid didn’t help with the support. He now has suppositories every other night to poo. Once we started on these, he went straight into pants and got the hang of wee’ing on the toilet within a day. It’s not always straight forward with every child.

It's really hard isn't it? We just can't do right for wrong.

We ended up just stepping back.

Every professional had come to the conclusion that DS is "self directed" and "can't follow instructions from adults" and SALT are now only just trained on gestalt language processing in our area whereas we've had to self educate on that too but because DS is between different levels of gestalt language processing and not consistently above level 3 or 4, although he can talk and he can talk quite fluently now when he chooses, he's still not developmentally ready to have discussions and understand why we do things like poo in the toilet because it's easier than pooing in pants, but to passers by they wouldn't think anything was wrong at a glance.

He's 5 now, and does a lot of wees in the toilet of his own volition and not because we ask him to, so we are getting there, but it's not because of our doing or schools doing, it's just because he is ready now, so when ERIC told me they don't have to be showing signs of readiness, I laughed because they absolutely do have to be ready in a lot of cases.

Because the word anxiety has been medicalised. My DC doesn't 'have anxiety'. She does not need counselling or medication. She has a perfectly normal short term state of worry/nerves which she needs to recognise so she learns how to cope with situations that aren't completely comfortable.

I fully understand that people do have anxiety and it's very important to recognise that and support them. But that's why it's even more important not to conflate a normal response to a situation with a serious mental health issue because it does everyone a disservice.

This, I'm afraid.

There are obviously better parents around now than when I grew up in the 80s (less harsh discipline, more understanding and attentive), but there are a huge numbers who are borderline neglectful and just lack personal responsibility.

Rightly or wrongly, parents used to be ashamed about lack of development in their children, including with potty training (and actually, my youngest wasn't trained until about 3 years 3 months - about three years ago - and I was a bit embarrassed), but now many don't even care.

I think a lot of people are just putting it off and off and then missing the window of opportunity.. the kids are then 3.5/4 and then much too aware and get anxious about it and then it develops into a phobia... And then the parents have that as an excuse not to push it.

My DC2 was borderline with this as he did develop a bit of a potty phobia, but with a bit of tough love I persevered and within two days we had no problems.

My DC1 was about the right age I think, about 2 years 9 months, and literally got it within a day - didn't even have to do the stay in the house for a week thing. She was developmentally well and truly ready, but still young enough not to develop any hang-ups about it.

During 2020 and 2021 these children were under the age of two years. They had lockdown restrictions and activities with others were stopped.

This had a dramatic effect on anyone's confidence to interact with strangers. Particularly as most people were masked up and speaking to children.

Let's not blame the children. The root cause to their strong bonds with mums and dad's but not potty trained or interacting with strangers lies with the systems that were put on hold.

Allowances and support is what is needed.

Before it closed I did used to see a wide variety of people getting support at our local Sure Start centre. I was there because of PND and it was such a friendly and not judgmental space but I saw the playworkers gently encouraging someone to read with a baby, do things like smell a herb planter with toddlers, do some
messy play with a mud kitchen or paint, dance around with streamers to some music or just be around to chat with people who were struggling. No mobile phones were allowed to be used (presumably because of cameras and safeguarding) but that did have the effect of making everyone there interact with their child.

I don't think a lot of those people would have been using nursery care. No school nurseries in that area and the private ones were expensive. Our nursery was very supportive - had bags of resources to loan out to support potty training, starting solids, having a baby sibling etc.

But a kid at home with parents all day who don't know they're meant to interact and who just leave the tv on all the time, or hand them over to grandparents who'll do the same so they can work, would have a big effect, especially once the Sure Start closed.

I remember being surprised when DD started Reception and the first half term was about learning to recognise a book, how to turn pages type stuff. But presumably a certain percent of the class had never held a book before.

And I'd never really thought about it before experiencing it at toddler group and Sure Start, but the repetition of traditional nursery rhymes teaches sounds, rhythm, colours, numbers, shapes.

My DC1 was in nursery from pretty much bang on 12 months (albeit part-time as I only worked three days a week then) and it did (and still does) feel way too young to be away from the primary care-giver.

She however was speaking in sentences before two and was potty-trained a few months before she was three.

Because parents are too busy staring at their phones and so are babies and toddlers. They have them in buggies in restaurants in cars. How are they taking In the world around them when they are staring at a screen and how are they communicating. Honestly is so sad. It's lazy parenting. Toilet training is too much bother so they say they're not ready. Kids starting In reception can't use a knife and fork at lunch time can't dress and undress can't do the most basic of tasks that they could years ago before phones and laptops took over.

That's complete rubbish. The only teacher a child needs is its parents. Parents model everything to a child. Parents are not speaking to children enough they just arnt teaching them enough full stop. It's not up to others to raise a child the buck stops with parents. And if parents can't be bothered they shouldn't have them.

In defence of the lockdown parents many of us found our mental health went to shit. Maybe the child only needs their parents but this set up can badly affect how the parent is coping and that will negatively impact the child.

It did make staying in to potty train very easy though.

Parents need to take the lead here. I reliably potty trained my DS by 1 and added cleaning self by 1.5. Then he was toilet trained by 2 and there have been no issues after that. It didn’t take long but I come from a culture where even 1 is considered late for potty training and most parents do it as soon as a baby is able to sit up.

Parents that don’t have that cultural back up will just blindly follow the ‘train by school’ rule and at that point it gets harder because they often can’t use a potty and teachers expect them to clean themselves too and going straight from nappies to a toilet AND tissues is hard.

A lot of this could be fixed with basic parenting tbh. Speak to your kids face to face, play some games with them, read a few books, take a week to get them started on potty training (I understand this doesn’t work for everyone, despite best efforts) , no phones while eating, use cutlery.

I get it, it’s hard, I had extreme PND during lockdown. Still DD could count to 20 by 18 months, knew numerous nursery rhymes, knew her shapes and colours. I messed up by not looking at her directly when speaking to her (that PND) so her speech was behind her understanding, but when nursery pointed it out I course corrected immediately and within a few weeks the change was noticeable. What I didn’t do is say “fuck it, it’s your problem”. I felt deeply ashamed that a) I hadn’t noticed b) that I let her down.

It is hard, we have smaller family units, parents have less opportunity to share the load. I’m not talking about childcare, just simple things like family talking to a baby.

The one thing that stopped my PND from completely overwhelming me was the idea that not teaching her the things she should know or not talking to her would amount to neglect.

I think people neglect their children tbh. I know it’s not a nice thing to say but if a 4yr old cannot speak properly despite no sign of ND or disability it’s neglect.

My daughter is now 28 and the criteria for starting nursery school was that they were potty trained, if not they couldn’t attend.

I honestly don’t understand what is happening? It is a pain in the arse potty training, with lots of accidents, but it ain’t rocket science and A.I can’t do this one for you.

Parents need to put down their phones, iPads and laptops and engage with their kiddies to sort it out. Don’t dump this onto the teachers, this isn’t there job!

I have to admit I'm at a bit of a loss with potty training as in one hand the logic of saying a child isn't ready makes complete sense but on the other hand where I live (not UK) full time school is compulsory from age 3 and it is expected that children will be toilet trained when they start.

Because they do it based on calendar year not school year, my September born DD started on the day of her 3rd birthday and the December kids in her class were not even 3 yet. While it is tolerated that there might be the odd accident in the first year, by and large all children are toilet trained by the time they start school. And kids here are no different to kids in the UK. I'm not sure about rates of working mums vs SAHM but maternity leave here is short at 4 months so I know lots of parents have their kids in full time childcare fairly early on. So I'm at a bit of a loss as to why there is a difference.

Thankfully we don't discriminate against kids who are delayed in their development anymore
Posters can keep banging on about what used to happen but discrimination was never a good thing .

There are some children for whom potty training comes very hard, often it turns out that there are issues. Parents of these children are often tearing their hair out and seeking help that, due to the current state of the NHS, isn’t actually available. The parents are clearly interested and trying, but struggling.

There are also parents who can’t be bothered. I have worked with children entering school
who can’t hold cutlery, eat with their hands, can’t speak clearly, can’t dress /undress themselves and as a result can’t toilet themselves. Experts at using an iPad, but can’t hold a pencil. Parents can’t be bothered, treat every aspect of their kids life as if it’s something someone else has to sort out. That is, of course, assuming you can get the parent into the school to actually communicate with school staff - I have seen staff desperately trying to raise an issue with a parent who wouldn’t put down their phone long enough to be spoken to.

it was a bad day when sure start centres were cut back.