Mayflower primary school - nappy changing facilities for school aged children

[2011j]

AIBU to think this shouldn't be necessary?

Not including those with sen, children should be potty trained before starting school - AIBU?

Exactly.

If a 7-11 year old isn't changing themselves then they probably can't.

Mine is unable to.

I honestly thought this was the norm in the UK. I live in London and the pre-school my DC attended had the exact same rule for NT children. They are 9 and 11 now. I’m not sure if things changed in more recent years.

I think if schools in this country implemented the same rule then the gentle parents who don’t want to subject their kids to the potty and the lazy ones who just can’t be fecked would change tack pretty quickly. There is no reason for a NT 4 year old to be in a nappy.

My son was potty trained at just past 2, dry and clean day and night. He is asn. My sister's boy is 5 weeks younger, autistic and trained a few months before starting P1 and still has accidents multiple times a week (thankfully a close, older relative lives walking distance from the school and she can take changes of clothes down if needed) but by severely disabled ik assuming you're imagining severe physical disabilities or complete inability to communicate? A lot of disabilities that aren't immediately apparent affect toiletinh capabilities.

They are surprised because until the child appeared on their class list they wouldn't have considered it being a necessity.

There are no 7-11 year olds, with no SEND, in nappies because they have lazy parents. There are DEFINITELY no children that age allowing a teacher to give them intimate care with no SEND needs.

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.

Yea, but 'With the right support' is the sticking point though here.

Expecting individual teachers to facilitate high levels of attainment for each child in a class of 30, whilst simultaneously supporting pupils with complex needs and toilet training/changing others without additional support is what is increasingly happening. The 'right support' just isn't happening due to lack of funding
and that is not the fault of teachers.

We have more children with SEND than ever in my school this year and we are facing mass redundancies as we can't afford to pay the raised NI contributions, pay rises and increased COL costs. Meanwhile the building is literally falling down around us.

My son was potty trained before starting school but suddenly became disabled at 8 and is now bowel incontinent. No amount of training will ever make his bowel work correctly again.

Sorry to hear that. I don’t think that the OP is referring to children like your son tbh. I am assuming she means that there are otherwise capable children who aren’t being taught how to use a toilet. I would imagine that your son’s situation is quite rare. A primary school can likely facilitate one disabled student in the classroom. But when there are 5-6 in a classroom who need changing it would be chaos. I imagine your son has 1-1 TA. Some of us are commenting more on the fact that it seems to be prevalent amongst non SEN or disabled children.

@Barnbrack
I think you are confusing two different issues here.
There have always been severely disabled children who were unable to toilet train. They might have been in seen less or almost never in mainstream schools up until a relatively short time ago, but there hasn’t been an increase in severe disability.
The rise in diagnosis of neurodiversity and SEN, doesn’t mean that the proportion of those children who are incapable of toilet training before school age has risen. Why would it?

I have already posted about this but in countries where toilet training is socially expected by 3, this is what happens, even if these children receive diagnosis further along the line, that doesn’t stop them from being toilet trained before starting nursery.

I know this because I have had 20+ years working in a county where there is free nursery school from 3-6 and there are no separate schools for children with disabilities.
In an intake of say 50 3 year olds there may be 1 or 2 who come with nappies because they have a clear disability which, even if not diagnosed officially is on the pathway and has been already monitored by a paediatrician. There will be other children who receive a diagnosis of SEN during their time at nursery, but they still start out of nappies at 3!

I say this knowing all too well about severe disability and how for some children this will never be possible. It however has nothing to do with the increase in children coming to school in nappies.

In the schools here there are wet rooms fitted with baths and shower and spaces to change mainly children with disabilities, but there are official roles within the school system where bathing and cleaning is required, the same as when children are physically sick etc.

He has 2-1. He has other physical needs too.

Yes the Health Visitors had a clinic in our town and you could drop in any time up until starting school. Same with Surestart. They didn't 'get involved' with toilet training but Surestart in particular ran toddler groups and preschool sessions several times a week. There was always a health visitor or early years practitioner there who you could ask any questions of. They ran drop in sessions on weaning, healthy eating and toilet training etc...often picked up or advised on issues and worries you may have. They also had a sensory room which you could book free of charge too. Living a long way from my own family at the time they were invaluable. A really great support and well used by everyone. Also served as a base for newborn check up and feeding support / drop ins (breastfeeding and bottle feeding). Absolutely brilliant resource.

There are children who due to early intervention a d better socialisation and education WOULD have been severely disabled due to institutionalisation who now aren't. They are SEN instead. They function more effectively. The proportion of kids with disabilities hasn't changed, if anything the type of disability and accepted lives of children has changed. There are statistics to back this up, I'll have a look for them. And both my children were dry and clean day and night shortly after turning 2, my eldest has SEN but that 1 aspect worked out (wiping is a different matter but we manage that)

Children who would have been 'written off ' and institutionalised in the 80s now have early intervention and attend mainstream school. My aunt who had short stature, hypermobility, what would now be diagnosed as autism and brittle asthma was never in mainstream school, she attended a specialist unit and a day centre after that until she died of a cardiac arrest at 37. Yet she was able to communicate, could walk by herself the half mile from my granny's house to ours, could take us kids out to the garden and supervise us playing etc and would definitely have been mainstream schooled now, and not considered severely disabled

Do you think this is unique to the UK and US? Why aren't other countries in Europe seeing the same things?

Where are you getting your data? Because I have friends in a few different countries. Interestingly 1 in Germany whose son grew up her until he was 4, and is now in a specialist school for P1, despite not starting until 6 over there because he wasn't deemed school ready. He is toilet trained but that's 1 of the reasons a child would be sent to a specialist school for their first year or 2. He would DEFINITELY be mainstreamed Here and would have stared school at 5 at the latest.

That's the other thing, we have the earliest school starting age in Europe with most children starting at 6 or 7. So imagine not starting 4 yr olds in formal school probably reduces a lot of toileting issues as while a fair few 4 yr olds aren't toilet trained many fewer 6/7 yr olds are in that category

What’s changed is both parents have to work full time or nearly full time, making a task like potty training which can take months for some children, much more difficult and lengthy.

This is really not a viable answer. At that point you take a week off, do what you can that week, your partner takes the following week fof if needed then you send to nursery in underwear and you all work together.

There isn’t pride in your child not being toilet trained like there was.
I teach reception and we’ve had nursery children come in nappies with parents saying they aren’t ready, we start the process (child doesn’t like it) and before long they’re trained.

@Barnbrack
Unless you think that the changes in outcome for children who in the past may have grown into adults with higher needs is unique to English speaking countries, and this improvement isn’t seen in general in the Western world, then this isn’t relevant.

I’ll try to make it clear. I am in no way saying that there aren’t children for whom toilet training is nigh on impossible. I am saying that in countries where free state education starts at 3 and that all children have the right to go, almost all children, are potty trained before they start. Full stop.

Parents and caregivers start at the most convenient time after turning 2 - 2 and a half and that’s it.
They don’t wait and observe whether they believe the individual child is ready. They don’t angst over whether it’s the right decision or in the child’s best interests, they get on with it because if you are being provided with free full time care, and being toilet trained is the expectation , then you train your child.

I am not debating over whether this is the best choice for each individual child.
I am not saying that it’s necessarily a “better” way of doing things, I ‘m saying that this is what happens here and I believe in other countries mentioned up thread, France and Belgium.

I wonder how the DCs feel if their friends are toilet trained, go off to the toilet when necessary - kids don’t usually like being g different.

Children in most European countries don't start school until 6 or 7. You don't think that makes a difference? Our reception and P1 aged children are in pre school settings in other countries

I think there's less support now. When my then 3 year old refused to potty train, I was able to contact my Health Visitor for advice. She advised on signs of readiness and different methods to encourage her to try. (All the standard advice, books. Rewards weren't working for us). We got there by thinking outside of the box, and she was dry day and night within days.

I'm lead to believe that a lot of support services have been cut now. Without her support DD would have most likely taken longer to train.

That's nonsense when my now 18 year old was a toddler both me and my dh,worked full time in undesirable shift work
My son was fully toiled trained at just over three maybe that's slightly older, than average but he started nursery fully toilet trained
My youngest is severely disabled,and it took years to.toilet train him but he's always gone to.a special school so it was never an issue
There are a lot more children with complex disabilities.

It’s not a new thing where I live at all.

My MIL worked as a school nurse in the area I live now for 30 years, she was always talking about the children who started school in nappies, and other issues (unable to hold a conversation, use cutlery, etc). She wasn’t talking about children with SEN.

I was a school welfare officer in another part of the country and I didn’t see it at all. I thought she was exaggerating.

Then we moved here. It’s a very, very deprived area. The sort of area where parents are smoking weed on the school run and starting fights with each other and the staff in the playground.

I saw what she meant when my children started school here. The children are dragged up and the parents don’t give a shit, they only care about arguing amongst themselves about who is shagging who.

So here, it’s not about hard working parents with no time, the area I worked in schools with was full of those and we didn’t have issues, it’s about scum where dragged up themselves and who are now doing the same to their children.

My youngest has just started reception and they are still, in May, putting on workshops for potty training.

I’ve heard parents blaming lockdown (they like to shout a lot in the playground at pick up; you don’t have to eavesdrop, it’s like Jeremy Kyle live on the school run) - I also overheard one exasperated teacher comment to a TA, “lockdown, what a joke, what was the excuse when she couldn’t be bothered with the older two either.”

People don’t like to hear it when I talk about where I live though, so please, call me a snob, I’m glad you didn’t have to move to such a dump to experience it yourselves.

@Barnbrack
I’m not sure how to explain it any better.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s classed as obligatory school age or not. In Italy nearly all children go to the free, state nursery from 3-6.
They aren’t required to go, but they almost all do. I am saying that they potty train before starting at 3 because up until very recently they weren’t allowed to go if still in nappies so parents were used to training them before starting.
It has nothing to do with what age compulsory school starts.

At present there is precisely 1 child in nappies out of the roughly 65/70 children enrolled at the preschool where I work. This child is Autistic and came at 3 with a 1-2-1 already in place.
NONE of the other 25 3 year olds were in nappies when they started!

I don't really buy the "bad parenting" argument for kids being in nappies at school no neurotypical child is going to want to be pooing in a nappy in front of their classmates.
They will quickly learn to go to the toilet themselves. I've known the children of heroin addicts, alcoholics and parents with really low iqs and the kids were all toilet trained before school, it's not hard to toilet train a 4 year old unless they have other issues.

I say this as someone who's kids were toilet trained at 2 so no "excuses" here before you come at me

I.agree most typical kids regardless of their background would be embarrassed to be in nappies at that age and other kids will point it out
And as the parent of a disabled child who wasn't toilet trained untill.9/10
It really isn't easier to change the nappy of an older child rather than toilet training them.