Still in nappies at school

[ivehearditallthistime]

As the title says some children at 4-5 and 6 years old are going to school in nappies and are still not potty toilet trained.
I understand that some will and still have accidents at night and during the day.

But to have a child at that age still in nappies is just laziness.
It is not a teachers job to change nappies is it.
Ive just got back from my sisters whos son has a 4&5 year old still in nappies the school said he or the mum will have to come in school to change them as the teachers will not.

They now think this is all wrong and it is the teachers job.
And are removing both kids from school one does half day and going to home school.
I said no its your job stop being so f=ing lazy if home schooling is anything like your potty training good luck.

My eldest sister a teacher agrees with it and said this is happing more and more now.
A mum in her school has taken her child out of school because teachers will not change her childs nappy hes almost 6.
Said mum had a rant at the school because the school reported it to SS.

Dose anyone agree this is just lazy parenting now.

Yes I have, many times. And I said, SEN aside. As for why NT children might be happy in a nappy until they are 6, It's what they are used to, its normal in their family, lots of reasons.

My eldest 2 were fully dry day and night by 2 and a half. Youngest is 4 and a half and can't stay dry more than an hour despite lots and lots of effort since he was 18 months old. It's not always lazy parenting. My child is autistic but if I hadn't already known a lot about autism and child development, he may not have been identified as having additional needs.

Have they tried to train him? If not then that does sound bizarre and I can’t comment on the reasoning, but to me if a parent is choosing to defer it sounds like they have tried and are trying to train him but haven’t succeeded yet.

If you can’t face changing his nappy then sole charge was probably never going to be a good fit for you at any age! Best to stick to visits with parental presence.

To be clear not every child who has problems training is a clear case of special needs. They may in other respects be very typical, or at least appear so.

Not doing anything differently was probably your problem. No one is saying it’s really easy and all children just get it immediately, some find it more difficult and require their parents to put in extra time and effort.

I also doubt it is laziness with many parents. A child who uses the toilet requires much less effort than an older child needing nappy changes. Toilet training is easier.

I find it quite shocking, it seems very poor parenting!

I don’t blame you

i think I would have done the same

@menopausalmare I agree. Towelling nappies must have been very uncomfortable once wet, so young children were glad to be rid of them and into pants or knickers. Disposable nappies, pull ups etc., ensure that the baby/child remains dry and comfortable however much they wee. There’s no incentive for some children to leave nappies behind.

I agree.

I change my 9 year old due to disability, as do his TA's at school and it is far from the lazy option. Changing an older child is hard work.

I know ‘they are not’. I have a senior role in education.

No, my DGS has no additional needs, plain to see and with many years of working with young children I have a vast background in observing, assessing and supporting children’s development.

tBH unless there were special needs, it was almost unheard of for even a 3 year old to still be in nappies when my two were little. Bone idle parenting, coupled with so easily available nappies and pull-ups.

I think it’s because washing the nappies, maybe no tumble dryer, would have been an incentive for me to get my DD out of her nappies asap!!

I am an older mumsnetter and I still remember worrying about my nearly 3 year old being still in nappies. My health visitor reassured me by saying Well you've never heard of a child starting school in nappies he will be fine. Times have certainly changed and as another poster said if mum's had to wash terry nappies they would soon get on with training

Really strange take on your own grandchild. If you really think the parents can 'just get him trained' you are saying they are neglectful. Are you taking any action to protect your grandchild from neglect?

Mine wasn’t even walking until 2.5 years and at almost 3 still doesn’t have the motor skills to manage clothing. I don’t want to be the parent sending my child to school in nappies but am worried we won’t have cracked it by age 4 (summer born) after a few disastrous attempts already. Obviously I will have another go over summer.

I suspect one of the reasons it wasn’t common to have kids in school or even preschool in nappies in the past is that these kids were excluded from mainstream education and kept at home or at special schools. If it was a requirement for pre-school I wouldn’t be able to work at the moment. My child is not cognitively delayed so a special school wouldn’t be the right place for her.

The original example given by the OP does sound like lazy parenting but there could be something else going on that hasn’t been diagnosed yet.

It's patently clear that it's much easier to have a toilet trained child thsn one you have to change and clean up after to me
So why posters keep banging on about laziness makes no sense.

Holy shit - who is still wanting to pay for nappies and butt wipes at SIX?! Here I was idly daydreaming about elimination communication and trying to potty train from birth (don’t worry, I know I’m definitely not equipped to do that with my hideously poor attention span). And there are people who want to continue changing dirty nappies for years and years when they don’t need to?!

My flabber is ghasted.

All that experience and you don't want to support the development of your own grandchild?

My son is 4.5 and still wears nappies at night. I have tried going without but inevitably more often than not he wets the bed. He is potty trained though and it was a requirement to be potty trained at the age of 3 when he started preschool. He wasn't quite there then and it probably took a good 6 weeks after his 3rd birthday. That said, he does have a diagnosis of autism and we find that partly due to his extremely fussy diet and maybe his autism that he has issues with constipation, leaking, holding it in etc - never been an issue for the school though. Only at home.

I agree with this, potty training takes time and consistency for a lot of children. Something which two working parents can’t provide easily. Rather than lazy parenting I actually think it’s overworked parents some of the time.

If I have a quid for every educational professional who said my kids didn't have send needs (they did) I'd be rich.

I think as others have said and as his parents have reflected, it is more difficult now than if he had been two. Now he just refuses and can't be coaxed to the toilet, lifted into a potty etc. Very much knows his own mind and does not want to go to the toilet.

I have a long background in education, including as an EY teacher. There are no additional needs only a commitment to gentle parenting.

How is his size relevant to potty training and what actual age is he? (In some areas children start school quite a lot younger than others).

When mine were this age playgroups/schools would not take children in nappies unless there was some special need. In those days I remember people blaming “modern” nappies for slow or late training (due to the better absorbency not giving children the discomfort factor when nappies were wet). That always made some sense to me.

We grew up in the era of cloth nappies and no washing machines as the norm - our parents had us all potty trained remarkably early!

I feel like social services need to be involved if children are not able to feed / sit / toilet themselves by the age of 6.
(sen excluded of course)

My kids grew up in Central Europe. The nursery would take children from 18 months as long as they were toilet trained. All the local kids (non SEN) managed this. It was the whiny anglophone expats who couldn’t.