LACK OF POTTY TRAINING BEFORE STARTING SCHOOL.

[DARNLY]

I think he is just trying to make a general point that many children (not specific children with various health issues such as prematurity, of course they should have extra support and help). are turning up to school at the ages of 4/5 not potty trained at all. Parents surely must take some responsibility for this. 1 teacher, 30 plus children with what appears to be levels of up to half the classes not potty trained. This is an impossible situation for the teacher, disruptive for education and difficult to time manage and not good for the child. Along with issues of an increasing lack of discipline in some very young children, teachers are leaving in their droves, we are in crisis. They are teachers not parents and do a fine job caring for our little ones in exceptional difficult circumstances these days. I was a working midwife and mother of 3 children. It was expected among parents of reception classes to try to ensure children were potty trained Potty training surely is a parents responsibility not a teachers. I don't remember any child in any class not being potty trained or virtually there. A busy state school with 30 plus in the class.

My son has 1:2 TA support and needs to be changed often at school. He is one of the obvious ones where it would be easy to get medical evidence that he is incontinent but that isn't always the case, especially when they are only 4.

That's why I don't agree with fining parents of children who aren't potty trained.

No matter what level of toilet training and school readiness teaching you think a nursery should provide - it's a fighting battle. Children come back from the weekend or holidays: back in nappies, ramming food in with their fingers, crying when you suggest they do their own coat...

I wondered the same we get maybe 2 or 3. I do wonder if it's including wiping own bums as we certainly have a big chunk that can't do that.

I'm going to give it one more go as my front room carpet is getting cleaned in a week. I'll stick him in pants. If no success will speak to hv. Got 3 under 4 single parent. So finding the time hasn't been easy.

Lack of potty training is not area specific…..😆🤦🏼‍♀️ Just because YOU haven’t seen it (how would you see it unless you know every parent of a toddler in your area?!) doesn’t mean it’s not happening!

No pants, pants and trousers free for at least 2 full days or until you see any amount of tiny progress. Then baggy trousers, then pants when more trained.
Pants feel like nappies which isnt at all helpful.

I don't think parents should be fined either. My point was that the mother of this child had not tried at all because of his CP but there was no actual reason why not. That wouldn't be the case for every child with CP obviously.

I had three children in my last Reception class before retirement who were in nappies and I only had a part-time TA. They may have turned out to have had SEN but the parents hadn't even started a process of diagnosis. They were eventually allocated TA support.

Thank you for this. My LO is toilet trained but still has some accidents (there are additional needs at play). Luckily he has a 1:1 TA who is amazing but I'm so worried about him being teased.

I think there are likely lots of reasons for delayed toilet training. Better nappies being one (nursery advised us to put something in my son's nappy to help him associate weeing in a nappy with feeling wet after our 100th failed potty training attempt-it did seem to help. Children are less inclined to care about potty training in modern nappies that are fantastic at keeping them dry and comfortable).

Less time is also a factor. I was lucky to be able to spend days at a time working with my son. That was only possible because I'm at home a lot with him anyway. If both parents work full time then a lot of potty training success is going to come down to the child themselves or how supportive childcare is (absolutely fine if you have a child that only needs you to take one week of annual leave to get them dry, or is able to do it in a weekend. Not great for reluctant children who need more time and/or go to providers that don't offer much support in potty training).

Not all SEN is diagnosed by school age. Some of the children starring school without being potty trained likely have undiagnosed needs. Many are absolutely able to attend a mainstream school, they may just need additional help and support to do so.

Lack of support is probably also an issue. The people who used to be able to access things like sure start still need support. There just doesn't seem to be much support available now.

I don't think pure laziness is the issue much of the time (surely you'd want your child out of nappies as quickly as possible if you're lazy? Life is much easier once they can take themselves to the toilet!).

Don't want to derail but go completely naked! It's called the 'oh crap' method. Mine was confused by pants at first and so did naked then very loose trousers for a few weeks before pants.

Okie doke. Thank you.

Parenting is hard for workings families I do understand that I am one.
However, if there is no Sen or likely to be Sen there is no excuse for working two parent families to potty train their children by pre school.

Take a few days leave tag onto a bank holiday or weekend take a weeks leave.
We took a portable potty in the car, yes stopped many many times but so worth it. This was twins we were training.
Keep at it don’t say oh it’s too early not ready nonsense just patients taking the easy option IMO.

I know a few single working full times mums and they have managed it albeit more work for a single parent on there own but she wanted them to be potty trained for nursery.

Thank you. Will defo keep him naked

Life is easier once they are trained but the first few days of training are hard work, completely boring and draining. People give up.
Just like quitting smoking.

No need to be naked, t shirts/jumpers are fine

I agree reception is not really set up for children who are not potty trained. However, I think there can be undiagnosed additonal needs. Also depends on the age of the child. It is trickier for summer babies. When I was a child we started school the term before you turned 5, so all children starting were at least 4.5. Now some children start a few days after they have turned 4, which is different. I think some are possibly just too young for reception. If I had a summer baby I would seriously have considered delaying them to the next year, just so they were a tiny bit older, but obviously there are disadvantages of doing this too.

Yep! I won't give up. Got a week before carpet gets deep cleaned.

The thing is, people actively tell you that it's better to wait and will all be much easier and quicker if you do - so people don't think they're shoving the problem down the line, they think they're avoiding the problem. I potty trained both mine at around 2.5 and lots of well-meaning people told me that if I just left it later, to around 3, maybe even 4, you could do it in a day with zero accidents. I'm very glad I didn't take that advice, but I can see why someone would.

Where women's labour is free and unappreciated and where if you are born female pretty much all you are allowed to do is wash nappies and serve others. Or if you are rich you get other women to do it for you.
It's not the good thing you think it is.

Stop blaming women.

The privileges you get are because of educated, working women.

Okie doke. I'll just leave him completely naked as he'll just strip it off anyway 😅

I do agree that unless there's a reason it isn't possible, even with SEN or a disability, parents should at least try.

We just booked a week off work to do the bare bottom method. Sorry but a lot of parents just cba. DD’s nursery were really good about being supportive but they were also very clear that by 3 they shouldn’t be in nappies, so there was a lot of push on the lagging parents to get sorted. Where I am schools simply won’t accept a child of they are in pull ups. It’s tough shit.

You can do it!!

You'll need the will of steel, my experience was thus:

Day 1 - few accidents. Obviously to be expected, excited about the wins etc
Day 2 & 3 - feel like going backwards. A lot more accidents, feel so bored and trapped at home. Tired of constantly having to supervise. Feeling so anxious that no progress seems to be happening. The days feel like never ending.
Days 4 onwards - almost miraculous change. Progress made at last. Thanking the gods we didn't just bail at the end of disastrous day 3.

This was for both of my sons.

We used nappies at night until the nappies were dry in the mornings for a week.

It would be interesting to know if these are children who have been through pre school / nursery or who have literally just gone straight in to school without any prior experience of being in a school like setting. Both mine went to nursery and pre school and I think then it is so much more on parents radar about the need to get their child school ready. What would be helpful would be for research to be done around why kids aren't ready for school rather than just every September people tutting and accusing patents of being lazy.

I work in preschool, I think you are being fed lies about how many children are actually not potty trained by reception, in every setting I've been in there's been maybe 1 or 2 children out of a class of 30 who are later starting potty training (normally the parent saying they will crack it over the summer hols, so by start of school year they may well have been trained too) and more often than not there were other issues there as well. Everyone is making it sound like there is half the class in nappies at reception! It's just not true!!

The ridiculousness of it all. The advise is in the developed world is wait till they are ready which is of course correct as we don't want to bribe them or destroy their mental health. Once they are ready, usually around age 3 and only when they are interested, for most it should be done in days, not in years.
It's rightly so no longer done at 1 because women aren't slaves available to be on hand ready to catch it for thr next three years. And we value mental health and people as individuals so no need to force a child before they are ready.
Some that don't read much or value child development do it by pushing the kid earlier and end up mopping up for the next 5 years.