To expect my 11 year old to be able to use the toilet during the school day?

[bendy75]

Is this the norm? My 11 year old started in at secondary school last month and has had two warnings (or stage 2 - Low level disruptions) for asking to use the toilet.

I told him to try and go at break times but he tells me they are locked, confirmed today by staff when I asked, children who have a medical need can apply for a toilet pass but he does not, so has to try and go from 8.00 am until returning home around 3.00pm without using the toilet.

AIBU to be shocked by this?

We were polite enough not to ask during class unless it was genuinely urgent, e.g. period starting. But then we were also allowed some leeway with skirt lengths and shoe styles. It's almost like we acted like adults because we were treated like adults.

If the people with power over me treat me like a miscreant, it rather makes me want to act like one. I feel the anger rising when someone treats me like trouble from day one.

Yes it's completely normal. It's safeguarding and to prevent bullying and other misdemeanours.

We also used to get an hour for lunch. Some seniors only get 20-30 minutes now.. it’s not long enough to queue for food eat and use the loo.

The fact you list a symptom of serious mental illness alongside poor conduct behaviours as if it was just another example of poor conduct tells me everything I need to know about what you think of the children in your "care".

I don't understand your reply @VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia - I think schools in the past were far more authoritarian, teachers today in anywhere I've worked can and do let pupils out when they clearly really need to go - I'm just not going to let people out for some of the reasons listed in my earlier post.

This as well. A full hour is needed otherwise kids will have to choose between eating and toileting.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia no they are listing reasons why unrestricted access to toilets is not a good idea

But nor does the school I work in now..?
Well, except when they are deliberately flooded by teenagers in which case they have to be locked until they are fixed.

If my school could ban personal stereos, yours can ban cellphones.

We didn't have cellphones when I was at school, not widely used then, and we managed to get to school and back without getting lost.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia parents will complain if their little darlings aren’t allowed phones.

So let them complain?

Phones aren't a human right, toilets are.

How do you police this though? Sure if a teacher sees them with a phone it can be confiscated or whatever BUT if they’re only got out in the loo, who police’s it?

FFS THIS IS CALLED RAPE not "having sex". Children cannot consent to sex.

If you have boys raping in your loos, start by sex-segregating your loos properly as is required by law (except in Scotland, because the Scots Govt hate women). That means a hall of loos and sinks for the girls and another for the boys. None of this "girls in one side, boys in the other, sinks the middle" illegal bullshit.

I chose a single-sex school after being sexually assaulted in a "girls in one side, boys in another" mixed changing room whilst the supervising teacher was facing the other way. A teacher being present is not a safeguard in a mixed space. I'll repeat that for the slow of thinking: a teacher's presence is not a safeguard in a mixed space.

Funnily enough he is, perhaps that is why he needed to use a toilet.

Two fifteen year olds who choose to have sex - no court would call that rape. I'm sorry about your assault by the way.
Parents who complain to schools about toilets would absolutely also complain about phones.

Rubbish.
having to hold your bladder for 6 hours justifies a complaint and I’d complain… phones…. Nah wouldn’t bother me

Things we can actually do.

Long game: Land value tax. Use the money to build bag scanners at the school entrance, checking for knives and phones. That's a long-term goal, but it would prevent stabbings as well as rapes being filmed, so worth pushing for.

Immediately, you roll out true single-sex loos. It's impossible to film a rape that doesn't happen. Most sexual assailants are male and most victims female. Keep the perpetrator sex away from the majority of their preferred victims when said victims need to be naked from the waist down. To protect the boys, target supervisory staffing to the boys' loos.

Band loos by age range, even if you can only manage 7-9 and 10-U6. That stops the near-adults from bashing up the kids who were at primary last year.

Stop putting kids in isolation for having wrong colour socks and stupid shit like that. Enforce strictly the rules about violent and abusive behaviour but repeal the rules that are basically cosmetic.

Two 15 year olds aren't "choosing" to have sex in a school loo. Only one of them is doing the "choosing". Why would a girl choose to have a kneetrembler in a school loo where all her mates can hear her, she gets no chance to have foreplay to get wet and so will be in pain, and won't orgasm? She's being forced or coerced. Stop erasing rape victims.

My daughter's school bans phones. If they are caught with it in their hand at all from the moment they enter the gate it is confiscated and won't be given back until a parent goes to the office to get it. They also don't lock the toilets ever. Very large secondary school in a deprived area, it absolutely can be done.

The contempt you have for parents who care about their daughters being able to apply sanpro and use the loo is striking. And you wonder why the public is suspicious of and critical of teachers?

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia sorry to disappoint you some girls are happy to have sex in a toilet

At my school, jewelry was confiscated until end of term. No exclusion, no sending home, no detention, no isolation, just watching the teacher put it in a brown envelope with your name on it and knowing that you would have to request it from the office safe after school on your last day. I only forgot to take my earrings out once.

It was explained to us that this was because jewelry was a safety risk and theft risk, so we knew why the rule was there.

It's not that nineties schools lacked discipline, it's that the punishment was proportionate and the "why" of the rules was explained.

It’s quite common for schools to lock the toilets during lesson time and only those with a toilet pass are able to go. However, they will be open before registration, at break, lunch and end of day

£50 says that every single girl who says that has experienced sexual or emotional abuse and has either learned to buy attention with her body or else has had her boundaries annihilated so that she no longer understands that "no" is an acceptable answer to "have sex with me".

Not that you'd understand that, given that you regard self-harm as a conduct issue and not a sign of mental health crisis.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia why are you saying that we see self harm as a conduct issue?