Teacher wouldn't let DS go to the toilet

[Louise1178]

What are the standard rules for toilet breaks in year 1?

I'm livid with the teacher as yesterday ds 5, wet himself at school. He says when he came in from lunchtime he needed a wee, but the teacher wouldn't let him go, he said he asked again after the first lesson and said he really needed to go, but she refused again. He held on until the end of the day but wet himself on the way to the toilet.
The afternoon runs for 2 and half hours with no afternoon playtime.

Would it be unreasonable to complain?

I'm fascinated by all these teachers that can just pop out of their classes when they feel the need and eagerly await the next MN thread ...my child isn't being taught because the teacher keeps leaving the room

Well @mrz, just like the children it doesn't happen all the time!
It isn't disruptive to let a child who needs the toilet pop out in the middle of down by their work. It is also not 'missing their teaching' if in an emergency I have to pop out quickly while they are doing their writing and someone keeps an eye out. They do some of the work themselves you know. I'm not a lecturer.

zoemaguire Theresnonamesleft
I only asked about the rides and other situations. Personally, I'd let young ones go as long as it wasn't a common work avoidance thing.

I appreciate some 6 year olds have accidents and think in KS1 there should be a different approach you say KS3.

At secondary we get the odd person who will say that a teenager can't wait 20 mins until lesson changeover. There's never more than an hour they go between (and if you needed it before the lesson you should have gone before lesson). But these kids are out with friends playing footie for hours on an evening etc. They can manage in other situations.

As I've said, I'll always have my 'default is no but exercise discretion' approach.

Bathroom policies should be appropriate to the age of the children. ks2 and above I'm not up for go whenever you like. Simple fact of life is that you don't just go whenever you like.

DDN unfortunately most young children don't work by themselves. It's very teacher intensive and expecting most 5 year olds to be able to write/read/calculate independently is unrealistic.

So pleased to see this subject. I am going into complain about my 8 year old dds teacher as she would not let her go to the toilet yesterday. She asked 3 times and even asked if she could nip in as they passed the toilets on the way to assembly and was refused. Feel sorry for the op son, must have been awful actually weeing himself. My dd luckily managed to hang on. Miss Peters I think your policy is disgraceful, cannot believe teachers are still refusing children the right to wee. It was the same when I was at school/

starsmumamyd

Your dd should have used the loo at during break. The teacher was right to say no during lesson. This is my year group and they handle it.

As a student teacher, there's something about "Ms. Jay, can I go to the toilet" that makes me REALLY uncomfortable. I checked, and it's not EXPLICITLY covered under the Geneva Convention, but I have to imagine that it falls under "humane treatment of prisoners". So if it's good enough for POWs, who the hell am I to tell a kid it's not good enough for them?

It just makes me really uncomfortable to know that these children can't even use the washroom without my say-so. And I mean it makes no physiological sense:

1. You can't control when you have to pee, not with that kind of precision anyway, without restricting liquid intake which is a hugely dangerous precedent to set.

1. We are sending these children out and telling them "now is the time to eat and drink". How can we expect them to do that, and work up a pee/poo in that same interval? Biologically, those functions take more time than that to "come to fruition", so to speak. So penalizing them for not going when they legitimately cannot physically have needed to go, and penalizing them for asking to go when their bodies are responding in a timely fashion to what we ASKED them to do, just seems monkeypants to me.

Of course there, will always be kids who take the mick, but as a teacher you have a good idea who those kids are. Why should the rest suffer a draconian blanket policy because a couple act the goat?

My ds' reception teacher was very strict. When he was in KS1, I once asked who is the most strict/scariest teacher in school, and my ds said MRS X, the reception teacher. But when I asked him who is your most favorite teacher, he also said MRS X.
Teachers can be strict and caring.
I wonder if miss peter's pupils feel the same.

Terrible policy - my son would definitely have wet himself in this situation

'Going mad' at the school rarely helps deliver positive outcomes. Approaching with a query to establish clearly what happened, what the school approach to the issue is and looking to move forward positively with the situation into the future is always better.

With these kind of things, as email that simply says DS mentioned X had happened yesterday and you would like to establish the details, school approach to issue should be enough to start a conversation. Say you are happy to come in and discuss or to receive a reply by email. After that initial email, it might all be sorted and if you need to ask further questions then you can.

Calm rather than knee jerk reaction - almost always better.

I'm wondering if she's actually a teacher at all, because it seems to me as though she just on a wind up. Her spelling/grammar isn't at normal teacher level and I'm finding it very hard to understand how someone like that could actually be employed by a school. I'm thinking troll.

Yeah I agree. No engagement with the issue, just repeating the same thing and popping back in this morning to stoke the fire.

Her spelling/grammar isn't at normal teacher level

Apparently, there is no such thing on MN. It's all regional dialect, don't you know, and you'll get rinsed for suggesting otherwise.

Teachers can be strict and caring.
That's the feedback I get from student voice. That's what I want. I want students to feel safe, challenged to learn and they know that even if I have to say no or tell them off its because I genuinely care about them.
Apparently, there is no such thing on MN. It's all regional dialect, don't you know, and you'll get rinsed for suggesting otherwise.
It's about context. Online forums, like texting do not require standard English.

2 separate issues (conflating the 2 just highlights a lack of understanding about language):

1. Mistakes online
2. Regional dialect use

1. Misuse of there/their/they're annoys me. They arent to do with regional dialect (because dialect is grammatcial and vocabulary differences by region) and I pick kids up for it in their work but wouldn't dream of picking people up for it on an Internet forum.Equally, research shows that people use punctuation differently in electronic chat so it better resembles speech. I find going after people for SPAG online to just be irritating.

1. When I'm writing formal letters and teaching I use standard English but when I'm talking out of school I speak in regional dialect phrases. To go around saying anything other than standard English in a received pronunciation accent is just wrong and a load of mistakes is quite simply snobby.

Resorting to SPAG arguing online as a way of trying to rubbish another poster always strikes me as a last ditch attempt of "well at least I'm best because I type on a forum better than you". At that point I just decide they're the type of person not worth discussing with because they are more interested in feeling superior than they are having a discussion.

I think it depends on whether you're debating in a professional context actually - I'm not the first person to point out on this thread that a lack of Standard English from teachers weakens your stance in the view of some posters and adds fuel to the opinion that they aren't actually any good.

And that opinion is as entitled as yours. I'm not sure anyone has actually picked you up on your grammar though, have they? You seem to be wandering about the primary forum trying to pick an argument. Bit odd.

We teach children to consider audience and purpose when writing. I suppose it depends whether you want to be taken seriously or not.

You seem to be wandering about the primary forum trying to pick an argument. Bit odd.
What? Someone in education sees active education threads and comments. Not odd at all. Or are only certain people not allowed to comment on threads?
Not picking arguments either. Only replied to this thing on language use on here because someone was being jumped on for their language use & then somebody else suggested regional dialects aren't dialects they're just mistakes.

I didn't agree with that posters decision on toilets but felt people were harsh to her

We teach children to consider audience and purpose when writing. I suppose it depends whether you want to be taken seriously or not.
Me too. Though as we study at A level English, online language use is not held to the same standards as formal writing.

I find it odd that some people went from discussing an issue with someone (who I actually disagreed with in the first place) to just saying 'well i dont like your grammar on a forum' as a way to point score.

I was including all teachers in the "we"

If I'm open about being a teacher on here (and I am), I need to be hyper aware of my language use.
The mistakes referred to upthread were not dialect related they were wrong. I have seen teachers on other threads write 'could of' and similar. That is just wrong. I have taught students who have been taught inaccurately how to use the apostrophe. This stuff does still matter. In fact, in the current testing regime, it matters more than it did.

online language use not held to the same standard as formal writing
What do you mean by held to the same standard?
When you read a post written by a teacher where she talks about the register having been took, you don't think oh well, it's only a talk forum, no need for formal language, you just think she doesn't know any better and will use the same expressions in the classroom .

A that point I just decide they're the type of person not worth discussing with because they are more interested in feeling superior than they are having a discussion.

Yes, you keep saying that - and yet here you are. Still arguing.

I find it odd that some people went from discussing an issue with someone (who I actually disagreed with in the first place) to just saying 'well i dont like your grammar on a forum' as a way to point score

No, not all to point score; purely to say how, as a teacher, can your grammar be that bad? Genuinely shocked.

I wasn't trying to point score. I was pointing out that she doesn't seem like a teacher to me and that was one of the things I picked up on. I know that teachers tend to get penalised on the Internet for using incorrect spelling or grammar, so most of us try not to.

Has op been back? She was obviously upset about it and hopefully would have gone into school and asked questions.

I love the fact people genuinely think a 5/6yo can tell how long is left of lunch hour (I'm sure hardly any wear a watch) and can work out to go to the loo.

I teach yr 10/11. These children have SLD so function around this age. After every lunch I kindly suggest they may want to use some of the 5 minutes before register to use the loo.

I find that setting a timer for 5 minutes from coming in and needing to be sat on carpet or wherever gives them a chance to go to loo if needed.
If they know there is a consequence to not meeting the time they generally don't go to the loo and muck around. If they genuinely use the loo and are late back I just say "come and sit down"