Anyone else utterly depressed at all the children in nappy stories.

[Voidka]

I know I shouldnt let it get to me, but I have and it does.

Ds is 5 next week, he is still in nappies, absolutely nowhere near ready to train. He cant dress himself, feed himself or even hold a pencil and I am sat here in tears because I have tried my hardest to get him to be able to do these things and it hurts that I havent been able to.

Sorry for the pity me post. I am feeling a little off today.

Voidka big hugs to you for feeling a little down. I know what you mean, though it isnt anything youve done and not your fault so dont be so hard on yourself. My ds is 11 should be going to secondary school in August and he is still in nappies (even faecal smears given half a chance, and eats it.... so nowhere near training, doesnt have any idea), he cant talk, hold a pencil would just put it in his mouth, cant dress himself and can barely use cutlery always finger feeds. I do get down days too, however one little look at his gorgeous wee face and his smile makes it all worth it, he is happy in his own little world and one day i will get in too

What children in nappies stories?

My DS is 7 and is still in nappies, I do find it upsetting and it's one thing I feel I am judged on te most as a parent, above his behaviour issues for example.

boredandrestless, ignore anyone that judges you because they are not worth it, at end of day probably anyone given an hour in our lives would run a mile and probably wouldnt be able to cope.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16906442

There was this awful one recently - going on about not letting 'them' in in the good old days !

Have got really today watching This Morning they had a piece on it basically saying if your child is in nappies you are a lazy crap parent who sits on your ass all day doing bugger all as you think it's the teacher's job to toilet train your child!!!! I could have thrown things at the tv!!!
Way to go this morning!!! It's half term so let's do a piece on something that will really piss a lot of parents with SN kids off whilst making all the ones with NT kids feel smug, superior and re-inforce their false impression that we all need parenting classes. and breathe!!!!!

I watched that too Holy - that 'parenting guru' woman was so horrid. At one point she said 'its not a teachers job to wipe a childs bum' :(

Blame modern parents is such modern meeja thing.

I haven't actually MET a parent who thinks it's a good idea to send a packed lunch of just Mars Bars and crisps and my kid's attended 3 different primaries in the sort of inner city area that gets the DF readers gripping the edges of their seats. Yet the urban myths abound & parents are no longer trusted by the state to feed their own kids.

All the Mum's I've met have nursery grant starting age (3) as their "goal" for potty training to be complete. That's exactly the same as it was when I were a nipper back in the 70's. 99.9% of parents do their best for their kids - where they are let down is when there IS a genuine problem, (medical or otherwise) and the very professionals they ASK for support fob them off and let them down, time and time again.

I went through this when my son regressed on starting school - a kid that had been potty trained at 2 (verified by his nursery where he spent 3 days a week from 8-6),suddenly started wetting himself 3-4 times a day (and never in school holidays) yet somehow the imlpication was that I was a crap Mum? It wasn't until I pulled him out and home edd'd for a few months that it stopped. Took another 3 years/tribunal and all that jazz for the blame game to stop and the authorities to acknowledge and support his SEN.

My son is at the milder end of the SEN scale - how much worse for those more severely affected? My Mum has always said she doesn't know what she'd had done if my sis had been the eldest rather than the youngest, as she doesn't think her concerns would have been taken seriously despite her profession being that of an sen teacher.

I don't give a stuff when some darn fool journalist spouts a load of ignorance, when the professionals do it it scares me. My LEA Ed Pysch said my DS was too intelligent to have autistic traits - ffs it's her bloody job to identify how to help these kids yet she's that useless?

Always remember my Gran's fave saying:-

"Them as mind don't matter and them as matter don't mind".

Oh and if you want a giggle our local "parenting adviser" lasted 15 minutes with my son before she had to bring him back saying she didn't know how I coped lol!

That's really upsetting hearing about 'This Morning' - I'm so glad I didn't see it - I feel quite upset even just hearing about it! The stuff in the press last week (BBC) made me quite upset, like the OP.
Why when they do these stories is there not a simple statement to indicate that for some children, esp those with SN, it will be or may be different? It's so hurtful.

I've been to 3 pre-school/nurseries recently, trying to find a place for my DD next year: all of them said 'oh! we don't do nappies! we're here to teach, not to change nappies'. Yet they are all taking Govt funding as part of the Nursery year so I'm told they are not meant to say this, but they do.
Sorry for the rant.
My DD is only coming up 3, but I don't anticipate her being trained for a very long time yet. I think when your children are older but in nappies, and you are coping with that, you should be commended for your good parenting, not condemned as if you 'hadn't bothered'. Much admiration to all of you.

Dd2 (5) is still in nappies all the time & I have learned to not give a f%k what other people think.Sure at the swimming baths I get 'looks',but shazian* summed it up best.Let them walk a mile in our shoes!!!

I know. My two were around the 6 yr old mark when the nappies came off (although my eldest still has soiling issues and he's now 12)

I thought though, that these stories are about children without sn - and it is that fact that is making it 'newsworthy'. Here are children with no disabilities and they lack X, Y, Z skill/ability / are still in nappies / etc.

Not the same thing as a child who has a disability, I thought. Or are there stories about children with disabilities still being in nappies beyond usual toilet training years?

I think what the world hasn't grasped is how many more children have SEN today than did 20 years ago.

It's not just more being diagnosed, and less being hidden away as shameful secrets (although both of those things are also true) - there really are a significant amount more kids with SEN than there was.

So of course there are more kids in nappies.

There are? I didn't know that. I always assumed that there appeared to be, because they are no longer locked in institutions their whole lives - much as some people would wish otherwise

I don't suppose you have any links about that do you? I'd be fascinated to read about it. Do any of the reports speculate why this is?

I'm avoiding most news and try to avoid places/media that I know are full of scorn and judgement - I'm feeling a lot more bad feeling towards those with disabilities in general lately, from people chatting to the media, everyone seems full of bad feeling. It makes me feel rather on edge and shitty so I stick to safe zones. Good friends, special needs section of MN, etc.

Anyone who's in the same boat as me on this thread - I use these swimming shorts for DS, and find them fab. He's in second size pair now (due to size) and although they're a bit to lay out to begin with they wash and wear well and aren't as 'obvious' as some of the other swim nappies on the market.

www.splashabout.com/en/our-products/special-needs/swim-shorts/childrens-swim-shorts/

I decided in my wisdom to potty train last summer before DS3 started school. I was very proud that he was pretty much dry during the day when we started mainstream. DS3 is autistic and deaf. A month after starting school I was getting him home in different clothes as he was having accidents once or twice a day. A month after that he was screaming and refusing to go in to school. We had to make changes to his routine for school. Then his TA was off sick for a week and we had someone else. The accidents and screaming were increasing by the day. I decided to put him back into pull ups, and the accidents and screaming stopped. So my moral is, do one thing only. School and only then when he is settled, work on the nappies. Or potty train now. It's bloody hard work and I wish tbh that I could have kept him at nursery for another year, but he's 5 in March and the LA wouldn't consider holding him back a year. So we are back in nappies with wees on the loo, and that's fine.

boredandrestless many thanks for the link re swimshorts, my poor ds has been wearing huggies swimpants under his trunks he is 11 and they are for toddlers, so these swimshorts are fab. I see your ds is 7 what size do you buy when i clicked the size guide it just says small etc doesnt give an age or size guide.

Why would anyone judge a parent struggling to toilet train a child?? (whether NT or SN)???

Just something else for other parents to feel smug about I guess.

I try v v hard not to get into conversations about milestones like potty training as there will always be some deranged bint going on about how her dc were "trained at 12 months". Yeah.....right.

Both my dc (nt and sen) are potty trained now but both were later than others thought they "should be"...I was put under a lot of pressure to potty train ds1 (sn) but didnt listen....some mums I know put their kids (and themselves) through hell potty training before the child was ready/capable... It really bemuses me tbh.

So glad I dont watch This Morning....

I remember children having toileting accidents in infants school (and I am old so talking 4 decades ago). It was part of life. Teachers just dealt with it. My SN child I had to go into school to change ( until he got a statement).
I am glad I did not see THis Morning. I have a thicker skin now (ds is 12) but when he first started school with obvious but undefined SN, I felt very much blamed for all the developmental delays.
A separate issue but I feel annoyed at the policy of not allowing NHS night time pads to under 18s without physical disabilty- what junior or secondary age childs primary continance issues are due to lazy parenting? It feels like a predudice against children with LD or ASD.

it's from an article in the Daily Mail (where else?)

there's a thread in AIBU (I think) about it.

I do think that a significant proportion of the children talked about in the article will have some form of undx'd SN - we all know how hard it is to get a dx, and it is getting harder and harder to even see someone before school age, let alone get a dx.

it is depressing that the standard recourse is 'of course we are not talking about anyone with SN' (which they probably are, at least in some cases) and 'the rise in dx is down to over-medicalisation' - really? that's akin to saying it is piss easy to get a dx, tbh, and gets a big fat from me.

agree marvin. the references to SN are always so lipservice - a brief one liner that never takes into account children who slip the net until primary school. so you get an article talking about children aged 4 or 5 who can't use a pencil, can't speak in sentences and aren't toilet trained, with the insinuation that of course none of these children have SN - erm yeah right .

My ds is 7 and still has toilet problems and wears pull ups at night (although so does his 90 year year old great gran as my ds pointed out one day!)

my DS didn't see a paed at all until he was 4, if he had been a July/August birthday, he wouldn't have been seen before starting school. Despite me first raising concerns at 2.3

my ds2 is five and is in nappys pt ,he goes on the loo at school

Lightpassenger - my lad is a summer birthday and that's EXACTLY what happened lol!

Some poor kids still aren't diagnosed till their teens or later for even for serious diagnoses such as ASD. Too many professionals make a habit of kicking the can down the road till it becomes someone elses problem - any Adult social care professional can tell you that.

Common sense tells me a "lazy" Mum would want the nappy part of child rearing out the way asap so would intuitively potty train her NT offspring at the earliest opportunity rather than leaving it till school starts. The quicker they are "independant" the quicker they are "out from under your feet" for the bone idle.

Have now linked this morning with the Jeremy Kyle vile pile..................

Seriously is toilet training the highlight for major daytime TV?? Very rarely watch it. Only time is if I am ill to I suffer daytime TV because I dont have the strength to turn it off lol

DS is trained by day but it wasnt until he was 4 but sadly he is trained himself to withhold ALL day at school rather than used the toilet and so he is in nappies at night and waits for it to go on before he soils at least 3 times during the night. Am I bothered? yes but it will sort itself out one day.

The whole nappy thing is depressing, as DS3 is in Huggies size 6. Thankfully he is a skinny thing, but I wonder for how long he will be a nappy wearer?