Aibu to complain to brownies leader

[Mummytoonlychild]

My daughter is back to brownies next week and I've just been informed that she is not allowed to have a drink or go the toilet when she is there. It's a 90 mins session aibu to say she's a child and should be able to drink her own drink or go the loo when she needs to or am I being ott

Our Brownies have been told that they must clean everything touched by the kids at the end of the session. The volunteers don't want to stay behind cleaning toilets and kitchens, but also don't want to cancel the sessions, so are asking parents to support them in asking girls to access the toilet and have a drink before arriving. I guess you do have the option of keeping her at home if you wish.

Explain to her that she won't be able to go until she's older and can wait till the end of the session to go to the toilet. Or volunteer to clean the toilets before and/or after.

You would be very, very unreasonable to jump right in to complaining. Your daughter's leader is a volunteer and is doing the best she can in difficult circumstances. It may be that the rule has come from the church and not from the brownie leaders themselves.

A polite enquiry about the reasons for this rule and how they intend to manage it if a child does need the toilet, on the other hand, would be fine.

No water is fine. Have a wee b4 leaving. Then learn to wait. No different to being in a car in traffic and having to wait.
Some. Schools don't allow loo breaks during lessons. They get use to it.

I went to girls brigade , late 60s pretty sure we paid our subs which included a small cup of squash and a biscuit. Maybe half way through proceedings. Toilets just outside the door to the hall
Can't recoĺlect needing the toilet while there but pretty sure we were trusted enough to go there and back without any dramas

As a Cub Scout Leader (so similar age and mixed so dealing with girls too), it is difficult at the moment.

Your Leaders need to sanitise the hall and equipment before and after each meeting and put in place lots of additional
Policies and thought around how to run each session to minimise covid spread.

If your group is able to meet indoors again, you are really lucky. We are one of the very few groups locally that kept meeting from April 2020 to 3 weeks ago, with no break due to the virus. We were online summer term 2020 and again all of spring 2021. We had boating in Autumn 2020 and both summer and autumn 2021. We managed a camp in June '21 and a hostel trip in Nov 21 due to a heck of a lot of planning ahead, contingencies, and paperwork.

But we have only been able to meet outdoors or indoors in pods of 6 where we have sufficient room to move around and ventilate. And our Den is not big enough to do that. So we have met in our local park for both winter 2020 and winter 2021.

Where there are no toilets.

But the kids all know to go before they come to Cubs and that they won't be able to go until they get home.

If we DID go to the Den, the current rules are no access to the toilets for youth members, as they need to be sanitised by a Leader in between each use. And most sections (2 Cub packs, 2 Scout/Venture sections and a Rover section) do not have enough Leaders to ensure this is done and also run the meeting. So the rule is, no loos.

If someone was desperate, I'm sure it would be facilitated, but ALL youth members know the rules and are happy to go before they come to meetings - and we have been having record turnout for meetings since we had to stop in early March 2020 and got organised with zoom in April 2020.

There is a limit to what is feasible and it definitely will not be that Leaders are trying to be awkward or have an easier life - because the easier life for all Leaders (who are all unpaid VOLUNTEERS coming out to run it, and doing a lot more than just turning up for the meetings each week in order to run them) would be to just not bother and not hold Brownies meetings until this is all over.

In our area, of 8 Scout Groups, 5 were only restarting in October 2021 after stopping in March 2020. There were 2 who managed to keep mostly going somehow (us and the very large one with a very strong leader group including the County Commissioner) and 1 had managed to restart in Sept 2020 and operate on a very limited stop/start basis since then.

So give DD a drink before she goes, and make sure she has been to the loo, have a water bottle in the car for when she gets out again. And be thankful the Leaders are managing to keep it going.

Leaders may also be operating to rules of the church as much as their own policies too. So the church may have dictated no toilets.

Last term we had to clean toilets in our hut every time they were used. This often meant one leader cleaning it 3-4 times in an hours meeting. We discouraged toilet use as a result although if a girl was desperate, then obviously fine. Luckily someone saw sense and we now only have to clean at the end of a meeting

Id ask if that is comibg from the church or from them and what the reasoning is. If its cleaning could you volunteer to clean the loos after the meeting?

Unless they are using an actual Guide hall, it could be the rules of the organisation the unit is renting the hall from.

Volunteer to go to the meetings and clean the toilet after each use?

They are volunteering to run brownies, your daughter doesn't have to attend.

They may try it and it may work, or they may reconsider.

It not unreasonable for you to insist your child goes for a wee before going in to the hall. If she refuses, you take her home.
Same for having a drink, she can have a small drink before you leave the house. You can bring a drink with you at collection time.

The children will NOT be harmed by this at all ffs !

The leaders are volunteers, and they MUST follow safeguarding rules etc, whereas your DC is benefitting socially, emotionally and educationally from being able to attend the club.

So the choices are

1. Allow your child's leaders to run the club to the best of their abilities within the necessary guidelines by abiding by their 'rules', thereby allowing her to continue to benefit from the club.

1. Refuse to abide by the 'rules', and run the very high risk of the club leaders deciding to quit, simply because you think your DC could not survive for 90 mins without having a drink or needing the toilet.

All it takes to make volunteers (who are sacrificing time, energy and often money) decide to give up, because selfish parents can't see the 'bigger picture'.

I agree with @Seeline. Volunteer to be on toilet patrol during Covid regs. You can disinfect, sanitise loos in between visits from individual Brownies

I'd agree this is probably something to do with Covid risk assessment and toilet cleaning.

Perhaps you could volunteer as a parent helper and do the jobs of making drinks mid session, washing up and cleaning loos between each girl? That would be a massive help to the leaders.

Girlguiding leader here.
Don't complain, just query why.
If it is a Girlguiding property it may be down to their own Covid Risk assessment to minimize trips to the toilets.

Or it could be the hall they use telling them they can't use the toilets.

Ask if you can help in any way to make it easier for the volunteers to manage the risk. I am pretty sure they are not sat in the planning meetings going "I know, we won't let anyone go to the loo, that will make life easier. "

I ran Rainbows outdoors in a Church hall garden with no access to the toilet for the Summer term in 2021. It was ..... challenging. We are now fortunate to be back in our hall, I ask them to go to the loo before they are dropped off and let them bring their own water bottle (with reminders they are not to share) . I no longer offer a drink
and snacks as I did pre-Covid but will refill a bottle if they are very thirsty) . I would let them go to the toilet though, with reminders to wash and santize on the way in and out.

Maybe offer to volunteer, get vetted, etc. Or take child to toilet before going? Complain FFS this is an optional activity. Dont like it, dont go

That’s disgusting please complain water and using the toilets and human rights.

It's Brownies for 90 minutes not Guantanamo.

Refusing to allow girls (or any child) to go to the toilet is ridiculous. At Brownies the age range means that it is possible that some of the older girls will have started their periods.

@iklboo

That’s disgusting please complain water and using the toilets and human rights.

It's Brownies for 90 minutes not Guantanamo.

😂 😂

Brilliant comment!

What else is going on at the church hall at the same time?

That might have a bearing upon why they wouldn't be allowed to leave the room - strangers likely to be using the toilets or just in the area at the same time; anything from a choral society to an AA (or SAA) meeting.

if this is covid-related, you can point out that covid is airborne and cleaning surfaces does not stop the spread.

you could also check in with the leader - surely the child could use the toilet if it was a real emergency, but i can see why they don't want kids disrupting the session for lots of trips.

Also an ex brownie helper. I was staggered by how often some of the girls would ask to go to the loo and used to run continence workshops in school nursing so know once toilet trained children should easily be able to wait at least two hours minimum between toilet visits and this should be encouraged for a healthy bladder with good bladder capacity. Going to the toilet really frequently is a bit of a vicious circle and the more frequently you wee the more you reduce the bladders capacity.
So long story short it should be fine at this age for this amount of time. Just give her a drink and a wee before she goes

My DD is a Beaver leader and works her tripe out for these children for no reward.

If this leader has made this rule it will be because the venue or the national association have told her to.

Please don't complain - grovel before her for her kindness and hard work.

Yabu to consider complaining to a volunteer when you could just ask about the policy and explain your worry that your dd will need a wee.

Maybe there’s something you can do to help, like offer to clean the toilets after brownies has finished so that the volunteers already working for brownies or the church don’t have to.

They would probably really appreciate you volunteering to do toilet cleaning. Or organising a parent rota to clean toilets?

So long as you aren’t in the toilets when a child is you don’t need to be dbs checked.