Article in the Telegraph about kids starting school and not being potty trained.

[wintera]

I read this in the paper this morning and thought it was an interesting article.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/primaryeducation/5956231/Pupils-start-school-still-in-nappies.html

I know a LOT of people who say their children are toilet trained when they're still having loads of accidents.

Moral of this story is you get smug idiots everywhere who think that their superior parenting skills are the reason their child isn't a fussy eater/toilet trained early/sleeps well - they are just smug idiots and ought not to be listened to by anybody sensible.

Hunker, I agree, there is such a thing as goodparenting, obviously, but a lot of good parents don't realise that it's a combination of good parenting+pot luck that has turned their precious Arthur/Hambel into such a toilet-trained green olive-eating protege..

I parented two children the same, with very different outcomes.

what age are we talking about? 3 or 5?

It is absolutely pathetic that schools refuse to do anything about a child who wets themself.

As someone else said, lots of kids who have been toilet trained have accidents. Are school staff really so incompetent/ paranoid that they need to call parents, disrupting work, to deal with that? I bet they always call the mother first as well, not the father.

FGS.

are there scholls that refuse to do anything when a child wets him/herself?

Was referring to Florenceandthewashingmachine's post re the 2 schools who seemed incapable of dealing with a normal childhood incident. Pathetic, pathetic. Can't get over how pathetic that is, tbh.

This is a huge problem with inclusion. I know that's not the point of the article but it is a common problem discussed on sn boards. Special schools get shut then suddenly the mainstream schools start making a fuss about nappies etc

The government line is basically that schools should be able to cope with nappy changing.

The schools that can't cope with an accidently wee are usually the ones who won't dress a child's grazed knee because they'd have to take their tights off or something.

I'm one of the ones who had to battle the system.

DS3 started school aged JUST 4 (late July birthday), in nappies. He is also ASD and was unable to talk. Note that the older two, despite one also having ASD, started totally dry with not one accident ever.

The school refused to change nappies or provide suitable places to do it: I would be called in and expected to change in a tiny corner of the room on the floor with no washing facillity and expected to take nappy home; bear iun mind I was heavily pregnancy and also suffering SPD at that time.

Luckily SaintlyDame gave me info and after yelling about the DDA very loudly in a corridor we managed to get his 1-1 to be allowed to change the nappies until he was dry, but it was ridiculous. had I been in work i'd have been foreced out just to go in for ten minutes a day on call to change a bum.

luckily ds3 is now in a SNU- we also had battles with him being allowed a drink (won't- in an ASD won't way- touch water, reacts badly to milk, had to get LEA statement rewritt4en at goodness knows what cost before teacher would stop confiscating his soya milk and other drinks as being against school health rules)- and frankly the loikelihood that he will have to go MS after Juniors due to a lack of SNU palces scares me shitless.

BTW GPs here refer kids with wetting issues after the age of 8, so a kid with a potential bladder issue wouldn't be picked up by 7.

Oh and PMSL at the dressing a childs knee- as many know, ds3's speech issues were permannetly worssened after the school failed to rinse a nasty cut on ds3'smouth or call us for an hour despite it needing a dozen internal stitches and therefore (in opinion of surgeon) leaving eprmanent scarring.

Ds2 also was denied an attendance cert this year=- becuase he had time off after a H&S breech by school left him on crutches needing hospital attention (skin 'glued' itself to gym floor and tore off his foot)

grrrrrr

It is noticeable that people leave toilet training until later, and there is this "not ready" phrase trotted out so often.

For me, the key is in the words - training. It is not necessarily something that happens overnight, it is a process of training. And since the bladder is a muscle, it makes even more sense that training is a relevant word

We just seem to have it all a bit messed up at the moment - quite honestly, I blame Freud who put this idea into people's heads and into narrative that toilet training was such a key issue to be screwed up and will effect children's development. Whereas if we just lookat it as just another thing we need to train our children to do, it will be done. And there will be less of this nappies at 7 when they have perfectly healthy bladders and bowels.

I do despair that children with healthy bladders are wearing nappies on starting school

But if kids with bladder problems aren't referred until 8 how do we know if a child has a healthy bladder? Some bladder problems do resolve with age after all.

now I dont dispute there are lazy parents out there, but blanket attitudes that stigmatise kids and famillies with potential issues really do anger me. Either we put in place earlier assessment to pick up those with genuine issues, or we back off.

My boys (the older two) were trained by 3.5, which IMO is fine (they wore washables btw). I fully expect the same with ds4. DSe3 however has been a three steps forwards two back kinda kid, with new issues following a family trip away. C'est la vie.

I'm genuinely surprised by the assumption that parents are getting too lazy to toilet train.

From what I see and hear, most people nowadays seem to doing everything much earlier than my parents generation. They wean and potty train them much earlier, and send them to full time school or childcare earlier. There's barely time for a child to be a child anymore.

In my (admittedly limited experience) dc are ready when they are ready and not before. This can vary between individual children - anything between 2 yrs and 4 yrs (and some are not ready even then.) For that reason, I never really understand the angst over this issue.

Oh and I distinctly remember my nursery teachers changing nappies when I first went in to school (in the mesozoic era) at 4 yrs old. Why on earth can't they do that now for the occasional child that needs it?

Oh don't get me started, when my DD started school, she like many would leave it to the last minute before raising her hand to go to the toilet, of course the teaching staff were toooooo busy to answer a child urgently raising their hand and so she ended up having little accidents (like many others), this of course was waved around in plastic bags at the end of the day for the mothers 'walk of shame'.

My solution, I told her not to wait for the teacher, raise her hand shout toilet and take off, no more little accidents, the other children also followed suit, the classroom assistant said the teacher wasn't too happy about it but at least she wasn't having to deal with wet clothes all day.

On the other note, my daughter has AS and can still have little accidents at night, she says she can't feel when she needs to go, it doesn't wake her until she's had an accident. I don't put her in pull ups though, just protect the bed and hope she grows out of it. She can also have a little accident on the trampoline. So many children are being diagnosed with an ASD and I think sensory problems go hand in hand with that.

As for the grazed knee senario ! I was disgusted by this at DD's school, not only did they not deal with cuts and grazes most of the time they didn't bother to inform you of accidents etc. Work places are expected to have a first aider for CS so why not schools?

I agree Peas.

It does seem to me that many parents are worried about potty training, they are worried about psychologically harming their child, when really, it is just another stage of development, nothing to worry about.

I know many healthy three and four year olds, who I can hold a conversation with, who are learning to read and write, and they are still in nappies. I saw a child on a park bench the other week, the parent was asking him if he needed to poo, he said yes, he sat there for a few minutes, then they changed his poo-ey nappy, right next to me.

I've seen many people on mumsnet advise not even to start potty training until age two and a half, but why on earth wait so long when many children are ready before the age of two?

The nappy companies are rubbing their hands in glee.

I'm a reception teacher and we are seeing more children arriving at school not toilet trained than we did even five years ago.
I ask parents to send their child in pants (with plenty of spares) rather than nappies. Schools aren't equipped to change nappies ... where do I put a big five year old to change a nappy? What do I do with the other 29 children in my care while I change a five year old child's nappy? and actually we find that most children are soon using the toilet with only an occasional accident (which let's face it can happen to any child when they are engrossed in what they are doing).
School staff aren't incompetent or paranoid when they need to call parents to come and clean up a child who is heavily soiled and needs a bath or shower rather than a quick wipe with a wet wipe. Schools are places of education and weren't built for such eventualities.

I think modern nappies and pull ups are part of the problem. They are so effective children don't have the sensation of being wet so it isn't a problem.

PeachyTheRiverParrettHarlot in my area of the country children are referred to the enuresis clinic long before they are 8. I had 2 four year olds in my last class who attended.

countingthegreyhairs - I recently read that the average age of potty training in Belgium fifty years ago was 15 months.

Now it is more then two years.

I also blame the fear of germs. Parents simply don't want to risk their child having accidents, especially not on carpet.

atlantis all schools must have at least one paediatric first aider. The thing with not applying plasters in some schools arises from fear of allergies and being sued .... what a sad world we live in

The thing is though MRZ that does only apply to a section of children.

As klong as schools cannot make provision to change any nappies, children with issues (I don't just mean diagnosable disability- simple neurological bladder immatuity is not uncommon, almost never diagnosed young and unavoidable) are being let down. It's hard enough for parents to work as it is, yet this dort of thing places ever more barriers in their way.

Yes if a child needs a bath / shower fine, but often they don't, often they need a wipe and a change.

mrz I am glad your local enuresis clinic accepts referrals at such a young age, the fact remains that it's not universally available, yet another postcode lottery

Before school age I don't understand why parents should be under any pressure to train whatsoever- 15 months or 3.5 years, who cares? My boys trained night and day overnight at the same time- oldest was (13 mnth age gap) 3.5. Thereare no issues there.

Peachy -
'15 months or 3.5 years, who cares'

the nappy companies care very very much. They are the ones who benefit from parents waiting to potty train.

PeachyTheRiverParrettHarlot most schools would not contact a parent for minor toileting accidents and I don't know any that would contact parents for wet pants any child can have an accident.
As a reception teacher I have had children (without medical conditions) who have soiled themselves up to 6 times a day and it does get to the point you have no alternative but to contact the parents simply because you have no clean clothes to change the child.
The other aspect that people haven't considered is how other children react to serial soilers...

Gosh well I stand corrected Belgo!! I thought they were being a bit optimistic expecting everyone in dd's pregardienne to be trained at 2.5 yrs frankly!! (Just under a third weren't.)

And it is interesting to read about the practical issues on your side of the argmument mrz - it cannot be easy. But given that every so often a child is going to be ill, or have an accident, wouldn't it be better to make the system fit that child's needs rather than the other way around (ie provision of a nursery helper to assist you + provision of proper bathroom facilities?) This is a budgetary issue (as usual!!)

Yes they do

but if a parent is Ok with that then its up to them. It's of massive in significance in the whole scheme of things. I'm aware of ythe realities of real V disposable nappies- used washables until ds4 myself (hough not now) and have a good idea of marketing tricks of people such as P&G (having worked for a company related to sunny d many years back) but life isn't about the influence of only one thing- parents have more jugling to contend with now, prioritise differently- I don't see issues with that before school starts.