School not noticing poo on child's clothes

[ThisTiredMum]

Hi, I would welcome some opinions as i'm not sure if how far to take this?!

My 5 year old child, who does have SEN, came home from school last week with poo on their clothes and the smell was noticeable the minute I collected them. It was dried on down their legs and on the clothes so it had been done a little while earlier. I have raised it with school and they have said some conflicting information in my view

• The mark wasn't there 30 minutes before the end of the day as they did floor activities and the wasn't a visible mark - it was completely dried on and very difficult to clean off so I don't believe it was done as recently as 10-15 minutes before the end of the school day as they have said
• They asked my child and they said it was mud and they had no reason to question this - it hadn't been raining for 2 days and they didn't go outside in the last 30 minutes of the day so I'm not sure where the mud came from
• They said they couldn't smell anything
• They said my child doesn't have any issues telling them if they have had an accident. My child is SEN and both they and us have repeatedly told school that they are scared to talk to the teachers. They might tell them sometimes if they have had an accident but they regularly come home from school wet

I'm not overly happy with their response but I'm not sure if I'm over-reacting by wanting to discuss it further with them?

Your child is 5, accidents like this happen. Children this age are grotty and covered in all sorts of mess and stains daily, teachers can’t spend their days sniffing and inspecting each mark or stain.

I assume your child’s teacher has 25-30 plus children to look after and teach. It’s not a huge deal that this was missed. It’s not as if your child came out of school with a huge bleeding gash on their leg that was missed.

You’re over reacting.

Sorry op but it's not the schools job to sniff or inspect the inside of children's clothes for poo

What do you expect them to do?

If this is a frequent problem, you need to do something about it. Speak to your GP about referral to a specialist and put him in poo-pants in the meantime.

You can't reasonably expect teachers to poo-check him or change his pants. It's not fair on them or the other children.

Why are you not happy with their response? I think their response is fine.

I have been in a classroom on more than one occasion when a child has had a poo in their pants and I haven’t smelled it. Then when someone else walks in the room they can smell it immediately. You get acclimatised.

I don’t really understand your assessment/assumptions on the timeline. If you ask a child what is on their legs, they say it’s mud, then you take them at their word. Do you want the staff to tell your child they don’t believe what they say and that they would like to gather more evidence before believing them?

I can’t see how you know for certainty they there is no mud? Is there no mud kitchen? Is there no access to any water during their exploration/independent learning time? No water butt or hose pipe or anything for the children to use.

I completely understand your points, maybe I wasn't fully clear in my original post. The mark was on the outside of the clothing, not inside and was quite large. My child has a Individual Education Plan as a result of SEN, they have a toileting plan as this is a big issue for them and they have access the spare clothes that I send into school daily. I'm not expecting school to sniff or inspect clothing, but I do expect them to be aware of my child's additional needs, take the plans put in place by professionals seriously and also to not give conflicting information as that to me feels like they aren't being completely truthful about the situation that took place.

I don’t think it’s in any way unreasonable to talk to them and try and ensure it doesn’t happen again.

It’s not ok that they had dried poo on them for a whole host of reasons and the school should work with you and your child to avoid it happening again.

I wouldn't see it as a teacher's job to inspect my child for poo. They're there to teach. Its not nursery.
Sorry, it must be really unpleasant and I'd hate to see my child like this too.

Small kids can be stinky. I bet the teachers are nose blind most of the time. If mud is possible on a wet day then sounds like the playground isn’t 100% tarmac so if there bushes, flowers beds etc. then you could easily get soil stains even on a dry day and that would be encompassed by ‘mud’ as a general explanation. I’m sure they didn’t realise and purposefully ignore it as that would be neglectful. Your bigger issue is that this seems to be happening repeatedly- even if it was the first time it was poo it sounds like it’s happened lots before with wee so rather than questioning their account of this incident, I think you should be asking for a review of the current plan as it doesn’t sound like it’s working very well at present.

So, what’s actually happened is your child had poo on their clothes.

Somebody asked him what was on his clothes and he said mud.

Somebody said it wasn’t on their clothes twenty minutes before home time but you don’t believe this. And you suspect that his toileting plan is not being followed. And if it is being followed it is not working.

Somebody said they could not smell poo and you don’t believe this.

I think I’d ask for a chat about the toileting plan and how the plan can be improved/changed. But not with a focus on the clothes not being changed. I do think that this is just something that happens though, to all children when they are five.

Does your child have any extra time assigned to them, i.e. a teaching assistant.
They may have a statement of extra needs but without the resources to back it up the teacher is still very stretched.

If he is able enough to be in mainstream you can only expect that he will be treated like all the others when it comes to toilet training. This isn't nursery - the teachers aren't going to inspect each child to see if they have poo on them. You are making a massive deal out of this.

I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all tbh, it happens. If my child of that age had an accident I know for a fact she wouldn’t have told a teacher because she would have been embarrassed & they may not have noticed with 30 kids in class. If it was a regular thing I’d maybe speak to the sen team not the teacher, it’s not their job.

My child actually did have a poo accident at school once and the teacher noticed, because she was crying. The school nurse cleaned her up then called me, I was equal amounts grateful and mortified that she’d had to do that. If she had called and said you need to come and clean/collect her I would have been totally ok with that too.

You're not at all unreasonable as it's part of his IEP so accommodations should be made; but why not an EHCP if there are care needs??

OK its not a magic wand but might givyobetter grounds to raise a formal complaint if the situation arises again.

Rubbish. It's one of the things that can be covered in and EHCP (the C part is Care) in a mainstream school.

25 years ago I was a newly qualified teacher. The children came in after afternoon break and there was a very strong smell of poo. It was obvious one of the children had had an accident. It's a very difficult situation actually. I first of all tried to wander around the class and see if I could locate the source, or at least narrow it down to a few children. Unfortunately the smell was so strong the whole room smelt of poo.
I had very little experience at that point so I asked for one of the nursery nurses to come and help. She had a chat with the children and said that if any of the children thought they had had an accident they should come to her and she would help. About 6 children went out to the nursery nurse who (with another member of staff) checked. None of those children had had an accident. So she came back in and asked again if anyone thought they'd had an accident we could check and get it sorted. No one else came forward. So that meant a child was sitting there in soiled clothing, there were no stains on anyone's clothing and we couldn't check all the children because that would have been inappropriate.
We then got a senior teacher involved who said we'd done everything we could and we'd have to let the children go home at the end of the day....

10 minutes after school ended the mother of the child who had had the accident rang up and the senior teacher (who was very unpleasant to me all the time) put me on the phone to this mother. The mother screamed and yelled at me and I got upset, tried to defend myself and ended up crying. (While the senior teacher smirked in the background). Eventually another teacher came and took the phone off me and spoke to the mother. I can absolutely understand how upset she was but there was really nothing else I could have done.

The incident still plays on my mind a bit 25 years later!!
BUT, once everyone had cooled down, I asked the mother to come in and we talked about it calmly and we also talked to the boy too about coming to me to tell me if it happened again, asking to go to the toilet if needed, which staff members to ask and so on. It never happened again.

I've written quite a lot but I wanted to give you an example of how things can go wrong sometimes.

Accidents do happen unfortunately and things can get missed, especially among the general smells among the classroom (some particular school dinner dishes in my school led to the whole classroom smelling unpleasant due to farts in the afternoons).
Please arrange to go into the school to discuss your child's needs. Don't go in complaining about this incident in particular, rather what can we do better going forward, especially has he has SEN.

Has the school applied for an EHCP? ,As an IEP doesn't really mean very much whereas and EHCP is a legal document and self care can be part of this .

An IEP is not the same as an Echp.

I know from bitter experience that there are plenty of children forced into unsuitable mainstream school (by the LEA). I also know parents who have been forced down this route by the bullying attitude of various ‘professional’. Your assumption that a child must be quite able just because they attend a mainstream school is shallow and ill-informed.

For me the issue is not them not noticing but their attitude afterwards.
My daughter is in reception and has issues expressing her needs to school and one of the ways this manifests is toileting accidents as there are only 2 of the 5+ adults in her classroom she's comfortable asking for the toilet.
We had one incident where she wet and soiled herself in forest school and didn't tell anyone until we picked her up from after-school club about 4h after forest school.
The school were apologetic and that they didn't notice and spoke to my daughter about her talking to them and saying it's o to ask for the toilet at forest school.

There's been a bit of a miscommunication here between staff and my daughter with the message of "there's no toilet at forest school" being registered by my daughter as "you are not allowed to go to the toilet at forest school"

We are trying hard to work with them on improving my daughters communication but it's slow going and it's been hard to get them to separate the issue of her having accidents and her not communicating with them. She can communicate on a superficial level but with more vulnerable aspects she won't. So she can ask do I need to wear a coat but can't say I feel poorly. Getting them to see that there's gaps in her communication has been like banging my head against a brick wall but with persistence we are start to get somewhere (I hope). They have introduced this week some non verbal ways the children can express their needs so I'm hoping that will be helpful.

I know. Which is why I already mentioned an ehcp in an earlier post.