Year 3 Visits to the Toilet

[TrojaninTroy]

DS has just gone into Year 3. It's an independent, so he has a long school day. The children have been told that they can only visit the toilet at break times. However, the afternoon is very long (3 hours) with no break following lunch. Today he had an after school club at school (taken by another teacher) which finished an hour after the end of the school day and was given no opportunity to use the toilet before the club started. Because the after school club was some away from the main school building and toilets, he couldn't go then either. He struggled to get through the afternoon because he needed to go.

I have told him that he must try to go at break times. Clearly it is disruptive if a child has to go out during the lesson and miss teaching input, but 3 hours (4 hours when he has the club) seems a long time to go without using the toilet. What is a reasonable length of time to expect a seven year old to go before needing the toilet?

My daughter has just left primary and this has been a constant battle the whole way through. She would come out of school busting for a wee, saying they won't let her go after school because they have to leave. She also could only go at break or lunch but the morning break was short and they were quite often ushered outside and not encouraged to go to the toilet and lunch time they are eating and then get distracted by playing.

I don't know why or how they expect kids to go through the school day with so few chances to go to the toilet, while also telling them that they need to bring a water bottle into school and encouraging them to drink...

Luckily in secondary there is time to quickly pop to the loo between lessons so it's less of a problem but I never failed to be astounded at why they were so restrictive on toilet visits at primary.

I work in a school and no matter the school, I cannot believe that any teacher would flat out refuse a child to go to the toilet. When you gotta go, you gotta go! We encourage that they go at break times as to not disturb their learning but sometimes it happens. As long as they're not asking multiple times in an hour.

When my dd was in year 2 they had a massive push about not using the toilet except for breaks. They also didn’t want children interrupting the lesson with questions. The outcome of that was my 6yr old having an accident. She had been trying to ask to go since the morning and they had been taken out at lunch and not allowed back into school.
Apparently they didn’t respond to her repeatedly because urging her hand up because they were working on her ‘listening skills’.

I was furious! It didn’t happen again.

Putting her hand up

@ZZGirl

I work in a school and no matter the school, I cannot believe that any teacher would flat out refuse a child to go to the toilet. When you gotta go, you gotta go! We encourage that they go at break times as to not disturb their learning but sometimes it happens. As long as they're not asking multiple times in an hour.

Respectfully, that is exactly what's happening. Maybe not in your school, but in the ones I have experienced.

You may find the ERIC website helpful if you discuss this with school...
www.eric.org.uk/healthy-bladders-and-bowels-at-school

Best practise is to allow children to use the toilet when they need to, as restricting access can have negative health implications, as well as making school uncomfortable or embarrassing for pupils. 3 or 4 hours with no opportunity to go is unreasonable.

As a secondary teacher I would often refuse a child asking to go to the toilet. They only have to last an hour between lessons or two lessons until break/lunch at most. All children with a particular health concern (such as IBS, a UTI, difficult periods for example) got a toilet pass which allowed them out of lessons if needed.
It's a safeguarding issue and really impacts lessons. If you let every child out every time, there are plenty of kids who arrange to meet up with friends from other classes or go and disturb other lessons by being noisy, pulling faces through windows etc and there just aren't staff available to manage that.
Generally it's a judgement call - you can tell if someone is clearly uncomfortable and asks reasonably if they can pop to the loo. Others have been disruptive all lesson and now it's time to hand homework in or start the test (any undesirable activity), they suddenly need the toilet and loudly interrupt you to tell you so, normally rudely and repeatedly.

In your son's case it surprises me that there's no chance to go in three hours. Certainly I would expect him to have a chance to go before after school club. Maybe mention to the teacher that he's struggling and ask for an arrangement eg some teachers have kids use a hand signal of raised hands with crossed fingers to go to toilet without needing time to ask and disrupt the flow of the lesson. Most would prefer he waits until after an explanation and goes quickly while the others are getting on with work as he won't need to be caught up or miss important info.

@iloverunningslow

Yes it's much less time to wait in secondary and the safeguarding etc makes much more sense. It just seems so illogical that small children are routinely being asked to not go to the toilet for several hours, or encouraged to in breaks, especially when they're little.

@iloverunningslow

As a secondary teacher I would often refuse a child asking to go to the toilet. They only have to last an hour between lessons or two lessons until break/lunch at most. All children with a particular health concern (such as IBS, a UTI, difficult periods for example) got a toilet pass which allowed them out of lessons if needed. It's a safeguarding issue and really impacts lessons. If you let every child out every time, there are plenty of kids who arrange to meet up with friends from other classes or go and disturb other lessons by being noisy, pulling faces through windows etc and there just aren't staff available to manage that. Generally it's a judgement call - you can tell if someone is clearly uncomfortable and asks reasonably if they can pop to the loo. Others have been disruptive all lesson and now it's time to hand homework in or start the test (any undesirable activity), they suddenly need the toilet and loudly interrupt you to tell you so, normally rudely and repeatedly.

In your son's case it surprises me that there's no chance to go in three hours. Certainly I would expect him to have a chance to go before after school club. Maybe mention to the teacher that he's struggling and ask for an arrangement eg some teachers have kids use a hand signal of raised hands with crossed fingers to go to toilet without needing time to ask and disrupt the flow of the lesson. Most would prefer he waits until after an explanation and goes quickly while the others are getting on with work as he won't need to be caught up or miss important info.

Sorry, but I find this shocking. When I was at school, I had terribly heavy periods (soaking an all night pad in under an hour). We didn’t discuss such things at home and so I would never have been able to tell my mum about it, plus I didn’t actually know how abnormal that was. So there’s no way my parents could have told the school as they didn’t know (and I’d have been mortified if they had!). Thank goodness my teachers trusted me to go to the loo!