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?

I'm not begrudging him care. Obviously if your child has trained staff available then that's good and you have a solution in place that works. But there are plenty of ordinary teachers and assistants who are having to perform tasks like this and I really don't think that's acceptable because it definitely isn't part of their job.

I‘m sure someone has mentioned it, but modern nappies are very absorbent and therefore not uncomfortable to wear once child‘s weed in it.

Mine changed childcare settings at 3 (not UK) and the expectation before he went up to the new setting was he‘d be toilet trained. I was convinced he could do it, but wasn’t seeing the success I‘d expect. Not an approach I‘d recommend for many kids, but I had a conversation with him and said the new setting didn’t have anyone to change his nappy like his childminder had been doing for him.

He stopped using nappies the next day and almost never had an accident. It was a week before his 3rd birthday.

Thankfully no one at his school resents the fact that he dared to get cancer and became disabled as the result of it. They have known him since he was tiny and I was taking his older brother to school and reassured me from as soon as they became aware of the fact that they absolutely still want him at school, can care for him and wouldn't want him to have to move schools after everything he's already gone through.

His school is wonderful and they have gone above and beyond to welcome him back.

I saw an advert last night for a disposable nappy that could withstand a “poonami” so you could all sleep peacefully. So weird to me. ARE there people whose babies shit in the night and they are just left to sleep in it???? Maybe if you are trained to carry on in a shitty nappy you ARE harder to potty train? This wasn’t an option twenty years ago.

This is too bad about your struggles with this and I sympathize.

But it's not a discussion about you personally, it's about why schools are seeing so much more of it. Presumably your son would have had these struggles 20 years ago, or 50, if he had been alive then. But that doesn't seem to be what is going on culturally on a larger scale, and it's something that is relevant to a lot of children, families, and schools.

Again though, what is the alternative? I think many teachers and assistants now go into it knowing that it is a possibility with how special schools work and even when a child needs special school, it is still often a fight to get them a place.

Annecdotally, as someone who works in a school, the children who are not toilet trained by reception are neurodivergent and will be diagnosed or on a pathway by the time they leave in Year 6.

And yes, I'm sure you know lots of autistic kids who were fully trained by 2, but there is a spectrum of needs. Who'd have though it!

There is definitely an increase in the numbers of neurodivergent children in mainstream schools.

80%! That can’t be right surely.

@Kirbert2 I am so sorry to hear about your ds’s cancer diagnosis and I’m so incredibly happy that your school staff are more understanding than @ThejoyofNC.

I thank my lucky stars every day that the staff who work with my own DS are kind and empathetic and actually care about him.

Maybe some pp think a special poo fairy should hover around schools and perhaps even homes to make lives easier for school staff and parents. How terrible that there isn’t one!

In situations where provisions like the ones your son receives are unavailable then I think the only option is for the parents to come in and change them. It can't just automatically fall onto teachers and assistants. Obviously in an ideal world, they'd all have trained staff like yours, but we are not in an ideal world.

Support has changed we used to have surestart we still have a homestart clinging on in our area but it can't take new referrals because we lost funding my mom worked until she was nearly 70 so all the support systems are non existent

It's not always sen either my son has sen he potty trained OK but his dad knocked his progress by putting him in nappies when he had him 🙄 he also tried stealing my potty (ds has sensory processing disorder and only liked one potty) my nursery was very supportive but some arnt! When children start nursery at two it's a given that most won't be potty trained and that the bulk of it would be done in setting but some nurseries don't like this "you have had an entire weekend they should be dry and in pants by now 😂"

It's a big combination of issues

The other is, the has been a massive increase in the number of children with special needs. Massive. None of the children I taught in special school in the 1990s would even get an EHCP, let alone get an appropriate school place if they had an EHCP. There really has been an explosion in the numbers, which it seems no-one is aware of unless you work in a Nursery or Primary school, or associated services. Where I live, all schools are expected to somehow look after multiple children with really significant needs.

This is very true! I was speaking to my secondary school teacher friend about this recently. They thought I was joking when I said give it two years and you will have children starting year 7 in nappies. We have them in Primary at the moment and are just expected to get on with it. There is not enough special provision and they WILL be in mainstream.

@Onceuponatimethen how understanding would you be if your employer expected you to deal with cleaning up poo when it wasn't part of your job? Nobody else in other jobs would do it but teachers are just meant to deal with it.

I do think benefits have a knock on effect too because back in "the day" you could stay on income support with no pressure to get a job until your child went to secondary school then it was reduced to 7 now it's 2/3 be interesting to see if there is any correlation between people putting their children in childcare before three and non potty trained children at school

And if parents work what then? Or if parents refuse? Children have a right to an education and as much as I don’t want to be changing nappies I accept it’s now part of the role. We can’t deny a child an education simply because they aren’t toilet trained for whatever reason.

By insisting parents come in we also risk alienating those families whose children who potentially need the most support.

I’m sorry, are you genuinely proposing that if this were your child, you would be happy for them to sit in their own waste until you arrived to change them??

I would have thought with that date it would be fairly obvious that the pandemic, lockdowns, social distancing and masks has had a profound affect on the development of young children.

@ThejoyofNC all teachers training since the 1990s have known that the inclusion into ms meant SEND children including those with toileting needs would be in ms classrooms. If a teacher is completely unwilling to deal with SEND needs they are probably in the wrong job. So if I was a teacher I would expect this to potentially be part of it.

As a leader of an extra curricular activity I have dealt with both wee and poo cleaning for SEND children - toileting help and accidents and tbh it doesn’t bother me.

So parents can refuse but teachers can't?

The kids with higher needs probably didn’t apply for pre-school then and had a parent at home caring for them. It’s good that nurseries And pre-schools are more accepting of SEN and disabled kids who might have missed out on the social side and activities pre-schools could have provided.

My daughter has low muscle tone which is making potty training difficult and she wasn’t even walking until 2.5 years. I wouldn’t have been able to work without nursery accepting her.

its not about refusing though its about it simply not being practical.

Would you be happy your child being left in their own mess for half an hour while a parent got the sibling into a pram and walked to school to change them? Or an hour while they left work to get there? Would you be happy your child’s teacher leaving to go to their child’s school to change them?

There are a ridiculous amount of flaws in the “just get the parents” suggestion and it doesn’t nothing to create good relationships with families.

My son needs changing multiple times in a school day. It would be unrealistic for parents to drop out of work potentially multiple times a day and would just plunge parents with disabled children into poverty.

Not to mention how inappropriate it would be to leave a child in their own waste for however long it would take the parent to get there. Disabled children deserve dignity.

I do think that teachers and assistants need to accept that it is now part of the job and I believe that most do.

I’m going to be controversial but lots of parents just sit scrolling online & also leave the kids with an iPad. So less interaction.

Also more families where both parents work long hours. So they don’t get much quality time as a family & prefer to do fun stuff with the kids rather than potty training.

DH had a student in KS2 last year who needed a nappy changing. Mum was offered a place at a special school but insisted she wanted her son in mainstream. There are lots of parents who prefer to keep their child in mainstream school but want a 1-1 TA allocated. Then get upset when school can’t meet their (high) needs. Honestly it’s hard enough teaching a class all day let alone trying to factor in a nappy change part way through the day. It needs 2 staff present & state primaries don’t generally have a load of staff around doing nothing who are also DBS checked & able to assist. A baby nappy would be less offensive in terms of smell too.

Parents are much more frazzled and have less time now as for the vast majority both parents work full time whereas in the past mothers were often homemakers and child rearers. Life is very different now even compared to pre COVID. Many are doing their best and there are so many children with additional needs that just aren’t classed bad enough where they would in the past to get a statement. I have a daughter who very clearly as many autistic traits and severe anxiety yet because she masks so well and is a pleasant, clever and bright compliant student ( who really does t want to be noticed) will not be put forward by her school for assessment. We can’t afford the private route and in our area the waiting list is up to 5 years long. They don’t see her collapse in tears or explode with emotion as soon as she gets home. They don’t see her issues with food, sleep, clothing, obsessive collecting and placement of things or her hoarding. The whole system is broken and parents are struggling. Health and education are on their knees so there’s no point judging parents because there is no help available and you can’t always tell if a child has additional needs. It is what it is and this school is doing what it has to in order to give kids access to education.

As the ERIC website clarifies:

The Equality Act 2010 *states that schools must not discriminate against or disadvantage disabled children or those with special educational needs. A delay in achieving continence - or not being toilet trained - is considered a disability. It is therefore not acceptable for a school to refuse or delay admission to children who are not yet continent