Toilet training before school

[jackass232]

I saw a piece on the news last night about how there's been a big rise in the number of children starting school not fully toilet trained. I think the figures were something like 13% of kids in any reception class are not fully trained and that teachers are on average spending 2.5 hours per day dealing with toileting accidents and issues.

Obviously this is quite shocking (I expected to see a MN post about it actually, sorry if I missed one) but I can sympathise as my ds started reception with issues surrounding pooing - mostly holding onto it, becoming constipated and having leaks. I remember always packing spare pants for him and I know the TA had to help him change a lot. This wasn't anything to do with laziness on my part. He was just hard to toilet train and continued with these issues for quite some years. The school was always lovey about it but I felt very embarrassed and upset on behalf of my son.

I feel the general narrative behind this story is that parents just can't be arsed to toilet train their kids and are happily sending them in and letting teachers deal with them. But that's not always the case. I know it's a big drain on schools but what's the answer? And why has there been such a rise?

Maybe we need to start segregating children, I don't see why mine should be disadvantaged by lazy parents

Now we can just add changing nappies to the job description of poor teachers who spend most of their time doing anything but actual teaching

Another thing in the 1960s was that a lot of people still had an outside toilet. My parents house (I don't remember this one) you had to cross a yard and go down some steps.

This meant a lot of people still had chamber pots for the night and I'm fairly sure if it was snowing probably not just at night so children would see adults using what is virtually a potty.

Most children like to do what mum and dad are doing hence children's play kitchens / cars / shops.

IMO wet nights may be down to children who sleep very deeply. A dd who did could be almost impossible to wake even at 8 or 9 - on the odd occasion it was necessary. Until she was at least 5 or 6 we used to ‘lift’ her before going to bed ourselves. We’d sit her on the loo and she’d wee without so much as stirring.

No-one said it was always easy. But parents need to realise it is their responsibility. It may well take the use of one week's holiday at home, consolidated afterwards, and mainly CONSISTENCY ..No point taking a week's holiday to do this, and then sticking child in nappies because you fancy going out shopping or whatever. CONSISTENCY is the key.

Mum of 8 here and none of mine were ready at 18 months-2 years, I have met very few children who are. My kids all trained somewhere between 2.5 and 3 yrs 4 months. I found that parents who tried to push their kids to train were more likely to be the ones cleaning up accidents for ages, whereas mine were dry in a fortnight mostly because I waited until they had the language skills and understanding .

'99% off the time it's lazy parenting"

For children starting school in nappies, 90% of the time it will not be lazy parenting.
People who say it is, have never had the experience of changing an older child's nappy or pad or the cost of buying nappies for older children.

Believe me some days there is very little teaching done.

Too high and mighty are they ? Whilst i agree Teachers should be teaching and not changing nappies but being a teacher doesn't mean it is unacceptable for you to change a child.

What a nasty post.
It's just not their job. If they wanted to be wiping shitty bums they would have been working in a nursery.

Teachers should not have to do this

Unless dc is SN

I think it's a shame they can't request the parent come in and deal with changing their dc and then perhaps it would stop occurring and incentivise the dp to make sure their dc is not in nappies

Imo majority of these cases of delayed potty training mentioned in the original article are due to lazy parenting. BUT there is absolutely a smaller percentage of parents who aren't lazy, are trying their best, and whether due to autism, SEND, physical issues, whatever, its going to take longer to potty train their kid. Unfortunately, the majority of lazy can't be arsed parents mean that the not lazy parents of kids with additional needs get lumped in with them and judged, when they absolutely shouldn't be judged - they're doing the best they can with the situation they're in!

High and mighty?

How about busy trying to teach the other 29 members of the class, often with no additional adult in the room.

I’m not surprised.

A family member told me her subject teacher, after a term and a half, has given up trying to get the children to engage with the lessons; and is effectively teaching 3 children. As long as the others are not disruptive, she just leaves them to get on with themselves.

Absolutely!

My 15 yr old told me recently that when she looks around at the list of ‘failures’ - potty training/eating/socialising/reading/ behaviour etc, she feels like our generation has let theirs down.

I felt a bit slighted, but she may have a valid point.

Actually there are many neurotypical children who still have issues.

It's not just autism either. Dc had a language disorder and couldn't express their needs properly. Some kids with dyspraxia, Adhd, OCD, SPD and interoception issues will experience problems.

Science has moved on and we now know there is little point in forcing this before the individual child is ready.

Yep yep and yep!

some children physically cannot tell the need to go to the toilet. Some children cannot physically undress or coordinate wiping.

everyone is very “I would never do X with my child” until their child comes along and nevers like they never nevered before 🤣

"I think it's a shame they can't request the parent come in and deal with changing their dc "

I don't think it is a shame that children aren't made to sit in soiled nappies until a parent turns up.

And then mothers (because let’s face it, it’s always the mothers) lose their jobs or chances or promotion because they have to come and wipe a bum if they have an accident.

i work 90 minutes away from DD school so that’s basically never going to happen.

Hopefully your dc is not still in nappies though?

Not fair on teachers though

I agree 99% of the time it's special needs. Why in the hell would someone lazy want to be changing nappies of a four year old??? I'm self admittedly lazy and potty trained my kids at 2.
I also used to work in a school and the small number of kids starting in nappies were obviously special ed.

I'm sure posters here probably feel very smug with themselves that they were lucky enough to give birth to kids with no special needs so potty training was easy

It's difficult to have a discussion when people feel personally insulted on an individual level, when talking about what is happening on a macro scale.

Your individual circumstances are important to you but only by looking at it on a larger scale can we see what is truly happening, and whether we consider it a positive negative or neutral change in society.

Many cultures toilet train their children at an earlier age, as did we in the past.
The posters who continue to state that the difficulty is all to do with SEN are not understanding that they are, by logic, stating that somehow the UK has a much higher proportion of children with SEN, compared to other countries and also compared to the UK in the past.

Therefore, if they are actually saying that SEN is much more prevalent in the UK in 2024, and that is why so many children are being toilet trained later, then fine, however this would be in disagreement with the idea that discrepancies in numbers of SEN is to do with diagnostic rates.

Even less fair on vulnerable children to.be made to sit in their own urine or faeces for an length of time
If I sent my child to.school wet and soiled
School.would soon be phoning me with concerns I was neglecting him
I'm lucky my son has always gone to a special so assistance with personal care is just seen as part of the job
But that's not he case for all children.

I think what you and other posters are failing to understand is that if a child is still in nappies by school age it is A Developmental delay therefore an additional need regardless of the reason for the delay