School Readiness

[MissLead]

So on the news this morning it was reported that 37% of kids going to school in UK are not deemed ‘ready’ often lacking basic speech and not being toilet trained.

Assuming these kids have no medical conditions - there must be some bloody lazy parents out there!!

Mine has ripped off the doors of my kitchen cupboards. I am guessing DLA can pay for damage etc that happens with SEN children.

I agree.

Plenty don't though, especially when talking about spending money on SEND children.

Some people also complain about disruptive SEND children in mainstream but then also don't want money going towards specialist provision either.

The last bit about rude and disrespectful. Most of these are three year olds. These children won't understand that they are being rude so maybe bear that in mind. Might just be copying parents.

There's absolutely no need for any of that and if you start at a sensible age, they don't even have a concept of humiliation or anxiety. Once they can tell when they need to go, they can be trained to do it in a potty. You are presumably aware that there is no scientific or medical basis for "readiness" and it was made up by Pampers executives? Why is it, do you think, that children in modern Britain find using a toilet so much more stressful that children in any other era or country?

The specialists said old come from the mainstream schooling set up. My kids mainstream school has so many extra staff to deal with the kids that just shouldn’t be there, the ones endlessly messing around, and attacking other kids art break. School should be a safe, calm place of learning, not a social services hub.

He is also probably level two autistic whereas your children sound less severe.

Good example.

The only reason I have a dryer is due to my son's incontinence as I'm constantly washing so some of his DLA was spent on that.

Yeah. I imagine that costs a lot! Mine has thrown his tablet down the stairs and cracked it. Luckily it is still working!

Ah, it is the fault of Pampers, makes a change from parents I suppose.

A child can be ready in a physical sense and not a psychological one. If that’s the case, you can bully them into it, sure. I’d rather not.

I do think if we banned disposable nappies people would get on with toilet training a lot more quickly. All of that washing!

Parents are at fault entirely. So many people have children but are totally disinterested in actually parenting them and raising them into being fully functioning adults.

A 5yo in nappies is going to suffer a lot more psychologically than an 18 mth old who never gets used to the feeling of sitting in their own faeces.

I hope we haven’t crossed our wires and are agreeing that better HV services are needed?

If not, I apologise if I wasn’t clear enough in my original post. I know there will be a certain number of children whose SEND will affect toileting and that should continue to be supported, but the vastness of the term SEND means plenty of children with SEND will be well toilet trained. It seemed to me some posters were suggesting all SEND would make up the numbers of the non-toilet trained children.

Oh, he wasn’t in nappies, just soiling himself daily. And he wasn’t five either. He was five when he was reliably trained.

If I had held off pushing him and waited six months it would have been done in a week. As it was, two years of misery ensued. But hey, at least it wasn’t as disgusting as a three year old in nappies, was it?

The hardest part of toilet training is watching them like a hawk and making sure that you, as the parent, take them straight to the potty when you can see they are about to go. At the start there will be the odd day where you don't catch them in time but it shouldn't be daily.

Do you consider teaching children to do anything they don’t want to do automatically to be bullying?

Is it bullying to teach them that they have to brush their teeth when they don’t want to, or when you force them to be restrained in a car seat against their will?

Of course I understand that, I’m commenting on the parenting. We are finding that we are having to parent children more and more. Teaching them things that their parents should be doing but don’t.

That is nonsense.

I worked ft or 4 days a week when mine were small and my husband worked 6 sometimes 7 days.

I took a weeks annual leave and potty trained then. It was a pain and not a great way to spend a week but that’s parenting - you put the work in.

I’m glad you had that ladies support, but had you not taken the time to train your son that would have been on you.

Unless the child has additional needs there is no reason excuse not to toilet train.

My DM was a single mother of 3 and we were all trained at 2

Come on - people have to take some personal responsibility.

Having children is now an active choice, and if you do so you have to be prepared to at least do the basics. Poverty can grind you down and make good parenting difficult, but it never stopped anyone potty training.

My mother was always dying to get us all off bottles and out of nappies because of formula and nappy costs.

Back when early years childcare wasn't common, kids starting school un-trained was unheard of.

Somewhere along the line, some parents seem to have decided that raising their kids is someone else's problem.

Some of the excuses being made here are ridiculous. Children aren't unaware of how to open a book because of poverty - libraries are free. And there are no parents who lack the "headspace" to take their child to a library before the age of four! It's smartphone addiction. People are dancing around the obvious.

We should lean on nurseries, they cost more than rent/mortgage, and some children are there up to 10hrs a day.

At mine, they’re happy to take the lead as long as the parent follows through at home (otherwise it’s a complete waste of time).

A lot of libraries have closed or are only open very, very reduced hours. They are only free if you live walking distance to one that is open reasonable hours.

I used to be on the board of a Sure Start centre. They were closed because the yummy mummies made full use of them and the hard to reach mummies they were intended for wouldn't go near them. So they weren't a good use of money.

Maybe the yummy mummies would also have welcomed some support.