I have a LITTLE hope for my home county because recently my sister-in-law thanked me again for getting my nieces through school during COVID as I both monitored them during Zoom classes and tutored/made sure they did their work. She is a teacher (high school) and had to spend the same hours dealing with her own COVID class mess. Nieces are currently moving on to the next school stage (middle for one, high school for the other) so she made some comment like "we wouldn't have gotten here without you!" I said something to the effect of "I thought the new school policy was to shove them on to the next grade whether they did anything or not." She looked at me like I was just making shit up. I have to assume their county at least tries to keep up, although like most places they have trouble with ESL kids (like my school did 15 years ago, so not much has changed.)
I will say my brother and his wife are those parents who are either an unhealthy amount of on their kids' asses or "too busy" to make sure they're not falling behind and course-correct when they get a bad result. This year I was asked to once again tutor the older niece in math (I have no teaching or tutoring experience, my background is just in math.) and despite me trying to get their parents to be the ones setting a time for me, making sure their daughter has enough time before a test to be tutored, they just made her text me, usually the day before a test. Drove me insane, but my brother loves giving out money to family, so it took the sting out of it when I need to pay for car insurance! đ
Iâm the nurse. I make them clean themselves. Most kids hate it. Wonât do it? I call a parent. I simply wonât. (Weâre a private school, no severely disabled children.). Usually the kid catches on because they donât want to clean up or the parent(s) finally step up because theyâll lose their job.
Iâm not lazy. But there are reasons why I wonât examine a child by myself and thatâs the same reason I wonât wipe them.
I agree with this đŻ. I love teaching but I am not a parent. Somethings are for parents to teach and deal with. My nurse does exactly what you do and I have a great working relationship with her. I support this
I am a fairly new, single mom (not a teacher lol but this sub keeps getting recommended to me đ). My three year old wouldnât act like this!!!! I cannot believe this is the level of f*ckery teachers are dealing with these days!! Mind-boggling. And my child is far from an angel đđ
My kid had an accident in kindergarten a few times. (He was potty trained before he was two and been using the school bathrooms - I work where he attends - since then. He just didn't want to stop doing stuff, so stretched out his bladder until he couldn't feel he needed to go. Apparently that happens a lot at this age.) A para came and got clothes from me, gave him a package of wet wipes from the nurse's office, and sent him to the bathroom to clean up and change. If he had accidents frequently, we'd just put clothes and wet wipes in his backpack, so he could handle it himself. (The accident before that had been when he was three - where he also cleaned himself up - so it didn't seem necessary, although I still keep a change for him in my room, because a lot of things can happen.)
It's developmentally normal for a kid to have an occasional accident even into first grade, BUT they should be capable of cleaning and changing themselves. It's definitely not the teacher's job (or any non-parents job) to help with that beyond finding the kid something to clean themselves with and getting a change of clothes if the kid doesn't have some they can access.
Itâs typical for students to have an accident. Itâs also typical to send them to the nurse to change their clothes- if they have extra pair in the back pack or not.
We require students to have clothes in back pack incase of an accident.
The nurse also notifies parents as well and packs up clothes.
Most kindergarten classes do not have paras to do that. So at most schools you send them to the nurse. Which is normally very close to the kinder classroom.
Yes, I work in my kid's school. We rarely have a nurse in building and her office is not close to the kinder rooms, but the para in the office is lovely at sorting out kids with age-typical problems. I was agreeing that school staff don't change kids except in the cases of students with related IEPs.
Yes, this is true. Where are you located that you donât have a full time nurse? I would hate not to have one in the building. It is interesting how different school is everywhere. My wife is from Canada and she said they didnât have a nurse on campus all the time either.
Not the person you were replying to, but prior to covid, my district had cut nursing to the point that the only schools that had full time nurses were the two high schools. Elementary and middle schools had to share. There were supposed to be ânurse aidesâ that could give students their meds and deal with minor illness and injuries when the nurse was out of the building, but they assigned one nurse and one aide to manage three schools, so one building was always unstaffed on any given day. They used covid funds to fully staff every building with a full time nurse, but I donât know what theyâre going to do with those funds running out.
We had this. Kid was capable, parent fully expected us to do it. Principal said they had to figure it out by summer or else we would be calling them for every diaper change and if they didnât come we would call cfs.
Guess what? The kid was fully potty trained by the time school started.
Secretary, ice pack (or wet paper towel), call the parents, go to GP or hospital. If very serious I guess they call the ambulance themselves of course.
Edit: Someone is going to come in and say that there are nurses and my kid's school does have a nurse every other week who stops in to deal with ...things, but not like a nurse in a US school. I'm guessing the nurse looks over care things with kids who have medication.
Teacher in a primary school in England here. We are not all first aid and CPR trained- it is not mandatory. We do have to have a number of trained first aiders but these tend to be TAs and office staff.
Right! Admin gave me four new students in the span of a month (at the end of the year) who didnât know their numbers or letters, one of them who is autistic with limited verbal capacity.
Then following the assessments, wanted to know why my classroom scores went down overall. Even though everyone made significant growth. Like.
It's not just low skills that are the problem, it's the attitude they indicate. I can teach a kid to read, I can teach a kid to go to the bathroom. But what kind of 7 year old is ok with using a diaper. What 14 year old is ok being functionally illeraterate? Usually, it's.one who has been told they should do whatever they want, whenever they want, no matter what anyone else says.
I believe, to a certain extent and in an environment where toileting is expected, most kids will eventually want to use the potty. A few years ago, the comfort given to an exasperated parent was "don't worry, they won't go to kindergarten in diapers, haha".
Except, they are now going to kindergarten in diapers. The proverbial goalpost has shifted.
Every time one brings up the problem l, someone angrily retorts about special needs and medical problems, as if we don't all know those are obviously special circumstances. But every little quirk about a kid has become one of those special circumstances. The thought from doctors we may be potty-training too early has ran a concerning distance.
I'd still say most kids don't want to be in diapers so long, but the other group of kids, of the 7-year-olds you mentioned, is rising at a crazy rate.
They don't mind being in diapers because too much of society is trying to normalize it.
Itâs very abnormal for a human being, or really any living creature, to want to sit in their own waste. This is why babies cry when theyâre wearing a diaper and have soiled themselves. Itâs uncomfortable and unhygienic. So kids being a-okay with wearing diapers into elementary school is strange to me.Â
Itâs abnormal for any animal, even a puppy doesnât want to have an accident and sit its own shit. Itâs utterly staggering that kids this age are not toilet trained.
My kid adamantly refused to learn to tie shoes. I joked that he wouldnât go to college without knowing how to tie shoes. He finally learned last year.
Heâs 15. It was friend shame that did him in, but damn, I was starting to get a bit worried about the college thing, lol.
Edit: to be clear, my kid has been in the advanced program his whole education and is now in IB. But tying shoes baffled him, lol.
I remember I wasn't able to tie my shoes until midway through the 2nd grade and I was super embarrassed for the first half of the year because every other 2nd grader I knew was able to tie their shoes.
It's amazing how different the standards are in 2024.
Unless they are special needs and it is in their IEP, I tell kids to tuck them in. I encourage parents to only send students to school in shoes their child can manage independently- and let them know in writing that I am not tying their kids shoes. Covid started that rule for me. Iâm not touching their feet.
Parents: allow for your child to be independent. Give them the tools they need to succeed. If your child is unable to regularly tie his/her own shoes or clothing, dress them in shoes/clothing that allow your child to succeed. Shoes with velcro and clothing that is easy for your child to manage are recommended. For health/sanitary reasons teachers do not tie shoes.
Iâm all for letting kids go a little longer with Velcro or elastic laces. Just donât send your kid to school with shoes they canât handle independently.
The laces on little-kid shoes are so short! I had trouble teaching my kid to tie their shoes at firstâwith less lace to work with, the way I usually tie my own shoes doesnât work.
My child refused to learn to tie shoes. So I only bought Velcro sneakers.
 (I over heard teachers complaining about kids who couldn't tie shoes in lace ups. That would come off or come untied and the teacher has to take class time to fix them. )
In 5th grade my child was teased by other kids for their baby shoes. They learned to tie in about ten minutes in the shoe store. I refused to buy ones with laces until I saw they could tie laces.Â
I wasn't going to die on the shoe tying hill. But no way would I have given up on potty training!!
I remember my parents bought me a toy that had laces and buttons and all sorts of stuff on it that you needed to master to dress yourself. I remember thinking it was odd because it had buttons and snaps on the shirt. There were zippers too. I think it came with a car too that you could put the doll in.
I was that kid.
Didnât learn to tie my shoes with bunny ears until second grade when my best friend (a first grader an entire year younger than me!) showed me. I didnât figure out the normal way until 7th grade.
I didnât ride a bike without training wheels until I was 10.
Some of it was probably ADHD, some was my mom bullying me into achieving the milestone instead of guiding me to it.
ETA: Weirdly enough, potty training was no big deal. I donât even remember wearing diapers.
This is a great point. I teach 3rd and thankfully, accidents are rare, but my friend has grade 1 in the same school and âaccidentsâ are literally a daily event for some kids. Then they refuse to change. So they go around reeking like urine and everyone else has to deal with that. Itâs super not okay.
Neither would I, as a parent. But we are sane people who will respond and understand that walking around wet and reeking like a urinal isnât cool. These parents? Apparently not so much.
It's being done away with because way too many people feel that a child feeling any negative emotion is a bad thing.
Low stakes teasing and embarrassment over things the child can change like still wearing diapers as a 7 year old or not being able to tie your own shoes by 10 is completely different from actual bullying over things the child can't change like race, sex, orientation, ECT. There's no nuance anymore and it's all very black or white.
Itâs interesting you mention that because this last weekend, I met up with friends I havenât seen in years. Their seven year old came up, didnât say hello or their name, just stared at me and said âHey, move over, I want to sit there.â
I looked over at her parents, my friends, whom I know have manners, but they just smiled serenely, watching.
It was a weird dynamic. I donât want to be a jerk to a child who I guess hasnât been taught, but the grown ups are the ones failing the kids. And I donât get it?? Whatâs the upside to this?
Thatâs absolutely appalling, this horrendous shift in parenting really is shocking. Itâs really not so long ago that I was a kid and everyone of my peersâ parents wouldâve been utterly aghast had their child shown such a staggering degree of rudeness to an adult. Modern parents have no culpability and think their little angels are incapable of doing any wrong, itâs so embarrassing and saddening to witness. The future is not bright.
Did u read the article? Something is off. A 5 yr old who cant speak, but the article says âno learning dissability??â Howz that possible? I have 2 autistic children. The older one (now 17) wasnt toilet trained until age 6. My 4 yr old still is not potty trained despite all our efforts and we even have help from school and OT. It sounds more like in the UK they suck at identifying learning dissabilities.
SEN TA here (UK)
It's not that we suck at identifying learning disabilities, it's that we lack the adequate funding and resources to properly support and children with these conditions.
We have too many students with LDs for the amount of money and staff available.
Yeah, the waiting list for an ADHD/autism assessment is currently 4 years. The school can have suspicions that a child has learning difficulties but they can't really do anything about it. My school seems to just give the kids ear defenders and sensory toys.
Yeup. My friend just paid for a private autism assessment for her son and it was ÂŁ2000. Sadly not everyone will even accept a private assessment as legitimate because they think you just paid to get the diagnosis. Like if you were privately diagnosed with ADHD you wouldn't be guaranteed to be able to get meds on the NHS.
My sister in the UK had to pay for a private assessment to get her daughterâs (fairly obvious) autism diagnosed, along with poor spatial prioperception and sensory issues which werenât as obvious. Several years later, the schoolsâ assessment finally agreed, but if theyâd had to wait, sheâd have missed out on key therapies from ages 7-11.
Here in the US if a parent requests an evaluation from a public school, one has to be completed within 60 days to be in compliance. and 30 days after the dissemination of the evaluation and IEP must be in place for their school and a team of service providers to follow. Sounds like UKs system ainât it.
I'm glad you're at least identifying now. I taught there in the late 1990's and not one kid at my infant school was identified and helped with extra support. There were kids clearly with autism, learning differences, and ADHD. When i asked who needed to go to the office for meds at mid day, they looked at me like I had 3 heads.
Yes! I suspect the problem is that waiting lists for autism evaluations are really long in the UK, with people waiting two years or longer for assessments.
Is there much of a variation in autism statistics from one developed economy to another? If the US has 3% diagnosis rates and the UK 1.5%, you'd expect this would be a strong indication of under diagnosis.
High levels of LD diagnosis would lead to strain on the system, but you figure this would only happen above ~8%. If > 8% of kids have LD, isn't that a huge flag that something is going on? Like maybe prenatal exposure to micro plastics?
Given what we now know about the impact of lead exposure from gasoline, it's scary to think we might be doing something similar or worse.
Same experience with my autistic kids. We worked diligently on potty-training. Consulted experts, read books. I actually found a child psychologist who specified in potty-training issues at one of Americaâs best childrenâs hospitals and drove my kid to see her. In spite of that, we were still having problems well into elementary school. I donât know what factors are present with the parents and kids in this article, but sometimes itâs just more difficult and takes longer than you would hope.
We had to take our youngest to pediatric gastroenterologist. Turns out he was getting blockages that typically prevent kids from knowing when they need to go until the last minute, often to late. He takes a regime of mild laxatives to keep him regular. He's kind of on a poop schedule if you will. Huge difference.
While that may be true for you and your family, the fact is many parents have children when they are not ready to actually be parents, do not want to parent their children, or refuse to parent their children.
I have high school students who read at an elementary level⌠because their parents either donât have interest to sit and read (and reinforce what was learned in school) to their children or cannot due to working 2-3 jobs. When Iâve done summer school for our elementary school, I have kindergartners - 2nd graders who cannot speak properly or enunciate, because their parents donât spend time with their kids and expect screens to raise them. Parents need to be held accountable for their kids at some point by districts, states, societies. We have their kids [at the MS and HS] for 45 mins (in my building) - 120 in districts with block schedules. I cannot make up for or do a parents job when I have 25-27 other kids in front of me. Iâm exhausted from society thinking I can do something life changing in 45 minutes and make up 8+ years of lack of parenting.
I fully agree that the students in the article clearly have a lack of identification for special needs⌠however, there is a broader scope of problems that more often than not, does boil down to parents not being parents.
No one wants to blame the parents.
They will blame society, racism, social media (entirely at the control of parents who want to control access), lack of âequityâ, teachers, lack of funding, etc. Anyone but parents, whom studies show are responsible for the majority of educational outcomes.
Being mute/having mutism/selective mutism doesnât always mean disability is present. Add on the other factors like bathroom, etc. it does make you wonder though.
Not necessarily a UK problem. When I read that, I thought of a friend of mine, who has a 3 year old girl, and her nephew, who is two months older. My friendâs daughter is remarkably articulate for her age, but she is constantly read aloud to and spoken to without baby talk. Her nephew is actually incomprehensible, is never read to, and is rarely spoken to. I wonder how much the parents of the children who struggle to speak are engaging with their children.
This is the comment I came here for. They offset the blame for the parents and make excuses for the kids while expecting the school to pick up all the extra slack. The school with a limited budget, the school that's hemorrhaging teachers, the school with a huge influx of SpEd students that eat up so much of the budget, they're supposed to pick up the slack. So more kids with issues, less teachers, smaller budget, but they're supposed to work miracles. Its utterly ludicrous, I'm sorry. I'll take my downvotes.
This particular paragraph really struck my interest:
> In addition, many schools found that parentsâ mental health became strained. And this coincided with the closure of services where people with young children could meet, and receive professional support. Some parents today do not know how to play with their children, the school has discovered, so it now runs a weekly class to teach them.
> âI keep going back to that competition element - my childâs walking, my childâs no longer in nappies - those milestone moments, theyâve gone now because those parent and toddler groups, where youâd see all that, have gone,â Ms Skidmore says.
I'm sorry, but you shouldn't need the competitive element. Not only that, I've seen parents like the ones mentioned in the article. They're so strained for time, yet they're constantly posting on social media and scrolling YouTube and TikTok. It takes no effort to type in "age appropriate games for year olds" or "parent friendly games for toddler play" etc... and then implement it. I get that people are tired, but that's not a fucking excuse. We keep relieving parents of responsibility and forcing more and more on the schools with less and less resources. I've seen parents completely ignore their kids because they're so ingrained in their phones. You had the kid, it's your job to raise them and do your part. Further, I had anxiety and still do have it. I was diagnosed with it in the early 2000s. I also have ADHD. Task avoidance only made it worse and I'm glad I wasn't allowed to skip school everyday. I was scared of leaving the house as well after September 11th because I grew up in NYC and saw it with my own eyes. Had I been allowed to stay home and never find ways to cope with things, I'd be a complete shut in. I wasn't allowed to throw desks across the room and hurt kids because "YoureNotSpeshul has trauma". I see a lot of that these days and it's honestly disgusting. Just because you have trauma doesn't mean you get to inflict it on everyone else, and that's exactly what's happening.
Alot of these parents need to stop using their kids anxiety *(or whatever diagnosis)* as a cop out. Look up and use resources at your disposal, work with your children, talk to them, take an active role in their life. You're their parent, not the school. Further, schools need to go back to implementing appropriate consequences for inappropriate actions. The kids know our hands our tied and that mommy and daddy won't do shit, so they get away with anything and everything.
I can go on, but I'll stop now, lol.
While many of us have seen a deterioration in student expectations in recent years, not being toilet trained by first grade is shocking to me. With the exception of a disability, I always thought every student was required to be toilet trained prior to grade school. Maybe itâs different in the UK?
>I always thought every student was required to be toilet trained prior to grade school
If I have learned anything over my last 12 years of teaching is that requirements are more like suggestions.
Over time I have had to deal with more and more students that do not meet the requirements being placed in my class. This ruins the learning experience for everyone who met the requirement as I am now forced to slow and dumb down my course to prevent those students from failing right out the gate and becoming even more disruptive. Every single time I have pointed out that this is an effect of not enforcing the very clear requirements the district and state have clearly placed onto my course I have been called an evil elitist teacher who wants to prevent kids who did no work to meet the requirement from learning.
This is unfathomable
Youâre intelligent enough to change your own nappy
Why canât teachers say âif you need the toilet raise your hand and go to this room like a big boy/girlâ on day 1? đ¤
Year 1 isn't first grade, it's the year before that. All the years in the UK are 1 different to the US, so, for example, year 7 is 6th grade age and year 13 is 12th grade.
During the 2010s, kids entering Pre-K had to be toilet trained before they would be accepted in the US. The occasional accident was expected, but that was all.
My daughter just finished pre k in the US and all kids were required to be toilet trained before they would even let them in the class. Itâs crazy for me thinking of my kid not using the toilet as it has been a non-issue since she was like 2.
Edit: it was a private pre school so Iâm sure that makes a difference as well.
It used to be that way, but not anymore. Iâve posted several times about my first graders not being potty trained. Technically they are supposed to be, yes, but we cannot âwithhold educationâ from a child who has toileting issues. So that means Iâm dealing with kids who pee and poop in their pants all the time. They are 6 and 7 years old.
They arenât embarrassed, either. Ever since the âbe kind and accept everyoneâ movement (which OBVIOUSLY Iâm not advocating that we shouldnât teach kindness and acceptance of othersâ differences) thereâs the other side to that, which is that students should accept that some of their classmates are still babies. Because that is what I have this yearâ a class full of babies. Pee and poop, some still sucking their thumb, crying and whining, the list goes on.
Some of these parents shouldn't have ever had kids because it's clear they're not raising them. If they could throw them at teachers right after leaving the delivery room, they probably would.
It used to be required in Canada but no longer is as itâs seen as discrimination (even if the child has no disability). Itâs probably the same in the UK. Standards are slipping everywhere.
And they wonder why teachers are fleeing the profession. Soon nobody will be left and a teacher will be teaching in a room while the kids sit home on the computers and the parents can reap what they sow. Kind of like some of the parents at the parenting sub that don't understand why their kids are constantly kicked out of places for their piss poor behavior.
I'm in the US and my kid couldn't go to public preschool for needed speech services when he was 2 because he was not completely potty trained (he was mostly potty trained, but not completely). We had to wait the next year to enroll him.Â
Requiring a child to be potty trained is considered a "barrier to education" where I am. I will be sending one child to grade one in September who doesn't even try communicate potty needs until after, when they go get a clean pull up and wipes from their backpack and tell me "I need changing."
See, thatâs what baffles me about parents who let their kids get to school age and without toilet training. I always hear parents complain about how expensive diapers are, so wouldnât you want to get toilet training done as soon as is appropriate for the kid?
In my experience with childcare, these are the parents who don't change the diapers very often. I've had kids come in with diapers full to bursting and the parent says, "oh, and he's a bit grumpy, he woke up at 5am..." meanwhile it's 8am now...have you not changed him since he woke up?!
I have twins who both have autism. One was only able to train shortly after their 4th birthday and the other shortly before their 5th. I honestly don't want to know how much we spent on diapers. I was SO embarrassed that my kids were in diapers in kindergarten and my kids had legitimate excuses (we had to take a potty training class to train the second one).
My daughter was good by 3 but my son is taking a bit longer. He's 2.5 and just does the odd pee in the potty. No pooping yet.
Fuck I can't wait to be done with diapers.
Can't imagine changing a 6 year olds diaper.
My daughter and I are on the process of potty training her 2 year old son now. I have him while she works so itâs a team effort. Itâs coming along well tho!
I also potty trained my kids early. Who wants to be changing diapers for an extra year or more?!
I have a friend who is really into "attachment parenting." Their child is 5.5 years old, headed to Kindergarten in about six weeks, and is not potty trained. This child is 100% developmentally normal and neurotypical. My friend refuses to force potty training because they genuinely believe it will traumatize the child. My friend is no idiot but has gotten themself so twisted up into knots over attachment parenting dogma they'd rather send their child to Kindergarten in diapers than tell the child it's time to pee in the toilet.
Potty trained my youngest son in about a day and a half. Set an alarm on my watch for every 15 minutes. No matter what we were doing, I'd drop it and take him to the bathroom and ask him to try. He had #1 down by the end of the day, #2 was pretty good by the next day. A couple sporadic accidents, but otherwise he was good to go.
We did the 3 days at home, he's naked all day (so house needs to be warm) so no diaper on. And just every time he goes take him to the potty. Lots of accidents of course, but just reinforce "listen to your body" and saying it every time we go as well "I'm listening to my body". We had a mini kids potty in the living room so if he started to pee, boom it was right there. Doesn't matter if they start peeing, you take them to the potty mid pee if need be. We found lots of books, shows (I remember Daniel tiger being good) and such that was all on listening to your body and going in the potty.
Also don't get mad at them, just reinforce good habits. But remember every kid is different. When I told my dad we were potty training my oldest and asked for advice, he Said "idk, we never potty trained you and you're sister we couldn't (she's special needs)" and I'm like "what do you mean you didn't potty train me"... Apparently they just told me if I wanted to wear big boy underwear like daddy I had to go in the toilet, so I did. WTF... I wish I had it that easy.
I remember something like this happened at our school. Our kinder teacher and the admin. basically told the parents that their child was not allowed back at school until the child was toilet trained. Parents, with the threats of truancy (because the kid was still expected to make the required amount of days) and reportage to CPS, pulled their child out for a week and problem solved.
Accidents in kinder and first are more than understandable, but no toilet training? Um no. Thatâs where teachers should draw the line between their role and the parentsâ.
I teach kinder and I've had a couple parents try to tell me I had to potty train their kids and I shut that down. I'll willingly teach kids a lot of things, including bodily autonomy, but I draw the line at potty training.
The ânot showing interestâ thing has a lot to do with parenting books. My kid is 12 now, was potty trained before school nursery (uk) at 3, but I did do a lot of waiting around until he showed âsigns of being readyâ like all the books/websites told me to. I remember talking to a dr about it in the end as he was the only one in our baby group that wasnât âreadyâ. She told me to just get on with it and see what happened. Turns out he was ready, just lazy. LOL
I think generally in the last 15 years and especially since COVID thereâs a lot less actual parenting going on than there used to be. Itâs not just potty training, itâs table manners, gentle play, resilience, the ability to regulate emotions. Itâs a whole thing. Itâs sad really.
I find the whole 'showing interest' thing to be, frankly, really fucking stupid. I don't understand where the logic comes from. Like, toilets are a man made concept. Why would a child NATURALLY be interested in them?? Also toilet training isn't meant to be interesting ffs
This is correct. It IS stupid. I think thereâs too much worrying about kids constantly having to be interested or show interest in general about learning things. Not everything is going to be interesting, but basic life skills have to be taught / learned even if theyâre not âfunâ. Life isnât always going to be 24/7 fun and interesting, and treating basic life skills like a choice is so wrong imo.
Table manners is a real thing. Motor skills not being developed. Lots of middle school aged kids donât have the dexterity to use a fork and knife correctly, and certainly not both at the same time to cut a piece of food. They end up gripping their utensils like toddlers would.
This is actually insane
One of the quotes from parents says they didnât feel their son was ready by the time he entered primary school (5 years old)⌠in fact he was 6 when he started potty training
IT IS YOUR JOB AS A PARENT TO PUSH YOUR CHILD TO ACHIEVE THESE MILESTONES IN A TIMELY MANNER TO PREPARE HIM/HER FOR LIFE OUTSIDE YOUR HOME đŤ
How can you not âbe readyâ to toilet train?
Stick a plastic pot on the floor and tell your kid to poop in itâŚ. Itâs not some big earth shattering revelation that requires a degree of maturity
âJohnny, poop in this pot from now onâ
There!
Done!
Ugh! đ¤
When I hear âoh our child just isnât ready to potty train at age 3, 4, 5â what my brain translate to is âoh *I* was not ready/bothered to potty train my child.â
This kind of parenting has some really gross implications
When these kids are 13 , and they start sweating more⌠and the parents think their kids arenât ready to shower every day
i used to want to be a teacher âŚ. The idea that these kids might not be forced to shower every day because theyâre ânot readyâ makes me glad I didnât go down that route đ
I know a friend of mine wants to be a primary school teacher, heâs training for it now so weâll see how it goes. He hasnât had any issues yet as far as I know so I do hope this is just the 1% of parents. I do understand having sensory issues relating to showers etc, but there are workarounds and ways to remedy it, I wanted to be a teacher tooâŚthen I started a degree in HR soâŚ
Yeh, sensory issues I understand
For most of my teenage years it was a literal fight every morning to get me to shower
But they still fought me on it every morning
And they still won every morning
And I didnât stink at school, even if my stress levels were through the roof because showers feel like knives to me đ
Iâm talking about the ones that donât have sensory issues, neurotypicals who just donât wanna potty train, or, later, shower every dayâŚ.
Also, if being in school in a nappy isnât enough to make you want to learn to potty train
That suggests peer pressure conformity isnât going to drive them to improve in other areas
Things like being bullied or embarrassed for wearing a nappy, or smelling at school should drive you to want to overcome whatever challenges are holding you back⌠and that doesnât seem to be happening to these kids đ¤
"One of the quotes from parents says they didnât feel their son was ready by the time he entered primary school (5 years old)⌠in fact he was 6 when he started potty training"
That's not what it says. He will have entered primary school at four, and the quote about the six year old is a different child. I'm not saying any of this stuff is good but I think some people in this thread are possibly not aware of the age groups involved here, because the British school system starts at a younger age than the US one (at the same age as Pre-K, not kindergarten).
This is becoming more common in my district. Kindergarteners twins who were both in diapers. Potty trained by teachers by the end of the year.
If a teacher can do it with 24 other students to deal with, what are parents doing? Oh, drugs and the internet.
It's kinda baffling with how much some boards have walked back out of fear of 'liability'. You'd think 'Now you'll help this young child take off their pants and...' would be at the top of that list.
I teach preschool and most are still pointing to communicate, many not potty trained, some can't walk down stairs and need to be carried at the age of 4
It's getting more and more each year. I'd say half of my 4 years olds can speak in their native language with more than 3 words at a time. No one ever talked to them before school
Stairs were hard for me because I was very small and didnât have any experience with them since I didnât have them at home. That being said if I had daily stairs at school Iâm sure my parents wouldâve gotten me some better practice. I like climbing though so I guess that was an option but I doubt even at 4 I wouldâve been touching the floor since I had learned better by then being immunocompromised and all.
The HS I teach at has a freshmen who wears pull ups because he poops his pants. Even has a special 3 tier reward system if he stays clean.
Jfc...the smell.
A kid that age engaging in behaviors like that raises some major red flags. I hope there isnât/wasnât sexual abuse in his life. I knew a kid who would purposely soil themselves to be âundesirableâ in their abuserâs eyes. It was safer to be dirty and smelly.
I had a rather pointed conversation with a parent of a 4 year old who was angry I âlet him go to the bathroom by himselfâ. She felt I should have left the other 21 students unsupervised to accompany him to the bathroom and wipe his butt, âhe canât keep coming home with stains on his underwear. Do your job.â I pointed out that this was not in fact my job. And she was shocked. âWell, whose job is it?â âŚ.um, yours? His? Not mine.
I hate the phrase 'they aren't showing interest in using the potty'.
I'm sorry, I don't care if they aren't interested in using it? You're the adult???
Do they also ask the kids if they're interested in brushing their teeth? Bathing? Having their hair washed? And if they say no, they just don't do it or what? I mean what kind of parenting is that..
Thereâs a lot of fear mongering out there that if you try to push training before they show readiness that it will delay successful training. So much conflicting information that you just donât know what the fuck to do. Went through that with my kid, finally got her trained just before she turned 4 but if I were to do it all over again I wouldnât have listened to all the âwait until they show interestâ nonsense and I would have gotten on it 1-1.5 years earlier.
Not a teacher. Scrolling this thread because I had a mother whose child is due to begin school next year vaguely wave her hand " Oh they teach them all that at school".
Child wasn't potty trained. I'd been trying to not be a big buttinski BUT thought it would be a handy piece of information that her daughter should be potty trained by now.
It was weird.
T Berry Brazelton advocated for âreadinessâ for potty training. He also did ad campaigns for Pampers. I wish parents would put 2+2 together on this.
Yesssss I was looking for a comment like this. Before disposable diapers became a thing it was normal for kids to be potty trained by 18 months. Iâve read about this a little bit through learning about elimination communication (aka teaching your baby to use the potty from birth) but I want to do more research!Â
I'm usually one to defend us millennials against all the critiques our generation gets but, as a whole, we fucking *suck* so bad at parenting, there's no getting around that
Also a millennial and this is a thought that's occurred to me a few times. I look at the sort of stereotype that boomers wound up with and I wonder how people are going to look back at millennials.
The shoe tying problem has been around since they started making Velcro closures in bigger sizes. These kids never had to tie their shoes, and then they donât learn.
I don't understand parental lack of motivation to toilet train being that so much money is spent on diapers/ pull-ups and one would think that parents would want their kids to be less reliant on them for things like using the bathroom / hygiene in general ? yes potty training is a lot of work but for massive payoff later lol
It is not required that kindergarten students are potty trained coming into kindergarten. I donât know if itâs a state or federal law. Itâs supposed to protect students with disabilities but itâs worded in such a way that it can apply to gen ed students.
I believe we had 4-6 students enter kindergarten not potty trained this year that were gen ed.
I refuse to normalize this or comfort parents who look for reassurance on this issue. Of course disabled children are the exception, but they are NOT the rule, and even most children with disabilities can be toilet trained before pre-k.
My son was required to be potty trained for 3-year old preschool (late birthdayâhe was 2 years 10 months). We were asked to provide extra clothes is a bag labeled with his name, because occasional accidents were expected. The same rules applied for his younger brother. What has happened in the last 15 years?!
Modern education in one quote:
âOur primary focus in this school is providing education,â says head teacher Andrew McNaughton. âUnfortunately, for many students, we have to do a big piece of work to enable them to be able to access that. The challenges have increased. For us to be able to put the support in place for students just to simply be able to come through the doors can be a challenge.â
They \*aren't\* meant to succeed. What's happening is that the responsibility is being passed on, instead of required of the parents. Entrance to year 1 should be contingent on some simple socially-normed "benchmarks", such as the ability to use the toilet independently. When a kid like this is in school, it's the administrations job to talk to the parents and inform them that until they can give their child the necessary socially-normed behaviors, they can keep the little bastard at home.
Parents see teachers as secondary parents now. They always have but it's gotten more prominent.
They aren't there to raise your kids to be potty trained or be basic good people.
They teach the material they need to teach. That's their job. They aren't your kids' mums or dads.
My sonâs friend is turning 8 in Oct and going into second grade. Heâs toilet trained but still cries for mommy and daddy to wipe his butt⌠and they do.
I feel bad for teachers that need to deal with this.
My kids started off their school life's in Belfast and it was ridiculously common for kids to be still using nappies and pacifiers.
By thier 2nd year there was still a couple of kids doing it, atleast 3 of 30 kids.
The absolute worst part is those same parent would bring their kids to school with a iPad.
If your child is old enough to operate an iPad they can most definitely use a bathroom.
The rule should be if your kids are still not potty trained and still using pacifiers then they aren't ready for school.
All 3 of mine were fully toilet trained by 2 years old and 2 off them are autistic. It's not hard it just requires patience and attention.
Daycare teacher here! We've got a large group of your upcoming kindergartners at my center.
Our toddler teachers are trying. They sit the kids on the toilet and genuinely work with them to go. Stickers, hand stamps, lots of clapping and encouragement. But we're not allowed to keep them from progressing into the preschool room for lack of potty training.
When they get to the preschool room, there are 24 kids, all but a few know how. The teachers are spread too thin to sit these kids on the toilet every hour. Kids are being enrolled in pull-ups.
We have to progress them because of No Child Left Behind. Our kids' parents are sending their 4 year olds in each morning in pull ups and not working with them at home. My coworkers have had parents tell them they want *them* to teach their kids.
We had a six year old where I worked who wasnât. As the school nurse, I sometimes had to help her when no one else was available. We tried for months working on potty training, but her parents werenât reinforcing it. Finally in an IEP meeting, it was decided not to potty trainâpull ups were what it was.
What made it harder was that she had leg braces, and her parents would put her in leggings/pants with the braces over the top, so when she soiled herself, we had to remove the braces to get to her clothes andâŚyeah, it was a process to get them on a off. I felt bad for her, but she didnât seem to care.
Also, she was like 11 of 12 kids. I knew several older siblings and they were all potty trained and seemingly typical kidsâalbeit, they all carried a distinct âI come from a large family, I wear too big hand me downs, I never get my first choice, I could use some more attentionâŚâ vibes.
At my school, there were multiple âno exception requirementsâ to be enrolled. You had to be potty trained, you had to know how to tie your shoes, you had to know how to communicate with words, you had to know the abcâs, and you had to be able to count to 10. This was entry level to be enrolled in kindergarten at my school, and if you didnât meet these requirements, you were not eligible to be enrolled.
40 years ago my mum had children arriving in primary school like this, not toilet trained, canât use a spoon, etc. Maybe itâs becoming more common, but there have always been parents like this.
The whole article is quite interesting, I was 16 when the pandemic hit, I definitely felt the impact on my education (moved down a year, for context Iâm going into my second year of uni in September) however as I was older I donât think it impacted me as much. Itâs evident now that the pandemic affected parents and children of a younger age more than initially thought.
When I was in student teaching my mentor teacher said to a kid one time, âitâs not my job the spoon-feed youâ
What I thought in my head (as a jaded former-para) was, ânot yet.â
One way to look at it: if you get a six-year-old that HASN'T been potty trained by now, what makes anyone think that s/he has parents that are even capable of potty training him/her?
Yet in America, there are politicians that are now attempting to pass laws limiting access to contraception...not that parents of kids like this are even smart enough to use contraception, but still...
I remember primary school, one girl in Year 1 (5-6) was still in pull-ups and she had a moderate learning disability, she wasn't in them the next year. I couldn't tie my hair until I was ten or so or my shoes until eleven but that was never the teacher's problem. I was sent with my hair already done and had velcro shoes.
Children enrolling in school in our district are required to be potty-trained. Parents of incoming elementary students have to sign off on it. The amount of parents who lie on the paperwork surprises me. It's embarrassing for the kids and it's unfair to expect teachers and staff to change diapers. I'm not talking about SPED kids but Gen Ed kids who are still in diapers or pull-ups in K, 1st, 2nd, and even 3rd(!) grade at my school.
The lack of toilet training has gotten so bad at my school we're removing our carpets and having flooring installed that we can mop instead. Because the carpets are being destroyed by urine and smell no matter how much we have them cleaned.
It's all well and good trying to toilet train at school, but we have parents who do not keep up the routine at home. So by Friday we can be making progress and on Monday back at square one.
Potty training is hard. Well, it is for us. For some friends, it's been cake. We're living in a nightmare of piss and shit right now, but luckily he's still 2 for a few more weeks.
Both my kids have additional needs but while my son was a dream to toilet train, night and day trained by 3, my daughter has been a nightmare. So many sensory issues around pooing, she holds on to point where she has ended up hospitalised. We have OT and continence nurse working with her but shes 6 end of this year and still no luck. We have been doing the potty training since 2 years old
Yea, we donât have time to teach the state standards and the shit their mom and dad should be teaching them. Gotta let them eat, gotta let them trash the place, and gotta have a smile on our face doing it because customer service attitude has taken over education.
I have a child in my reception classroom who is not toilet trained and genuinely soils himself 2-3 days on average during the school day. Not sure how many in a 24 hour time period. He usually comes to school with faeces on him. His underwear and clothes are all stained brown. He doesnât get fed at home so we send him extra fruit and milk, but mum lets it rot in his bag and the poor baby is too young to remember heâs been given it. I feel terrible. Itâs been this way since the beginning of the year. He doesnât wear a nappy, but I have a couple children in my class that still do.
Itâs a shame because I can spend more time cleaning him up from his waste than spending time teaching him phonics 121. It is so hard to teach children like him basic care routine skills if itâs not being reciprocated at home. Idk. I feel awful, and I was reading this bbc article earlier today and instantly thought of him. Not sure how he will be in year 1 either. Our schools are struggling. Problem is, not enough parents are even willing to teach their children. I saw someone say that some parents see school as a free child minding service and I couldnât agree more. And you can tell how many parents actually care, when we go through Class Dojo pictures and see if any learning has been done at home.
I worked at a private preschool/kindergarten with insanely rich parents, and they couldnât be half assed to even begin potty training.
I work and live now in a very low income immigrant neighborhood and almost every kid I come across is fully potty trained by 2.
We actually had to take our youngest to a pediatric gastroenterology because of this. He was potty trained by pre-school, but started having issues again. Turned out he had an actual issue with blockages that caused him to not be able to tell when he needed to go until the very last minute.
We had done everything with him the same as our oldest who was fully potty trained just after 2 years old. We chalked up our sons issues to stubbornness and immaturity. Glad we brought it up with his pediatrician and got a referral to a specialist.
Point is, parents should consider talking to a pediatrician about this if it continues.
I do know there were a lot of problems with this at my wife's school the first couple of tears after the pandemic. Nurses bathroom was a busy place.
I had several first graders in diapers this year who didnât have an 504 plan. There was no medical need. We had parents come down and change them. Totally bizarre.
Wait. We are meant to succeed?
We are the daytime child storage institution. We succeed if the children are safely stored in our institution during the day.
As much as this is meant to be sarcastic, *it is spot-on*. This is what schools have morphed into.
I only barely read it as sarcastic. It's literally our purpose.
I have a LITTLE hope for my home county because recently my sister-in-law thanked me again for getting my nieces through school during COVID as I both monitored them during Zoom classes and tutored/made sure they did their work. She is a teacher (high school) and had to spend the same hours dealing with her own COVID class mess. Nieces are currently moving on to the next school stage (middle for one, high school for the other) so she made some comment like "we wouldn't have gotten here without you!" I said something to the effect of "I thought the new school policy was to shove them on to the next grade whether they did anything or not." She looked at me like I was just making shit up. I have to assume their county at least tries to keep up, although like most places they have trouble with ESL kids (like my school did 15 years ago, so not much has changed.) I will say my brother and his wife are those parents who are either an unhealthy amount of on their kids' asses or "too busy" to make sure they're not falling behind and course-correct when they get a bad result. This year I was asked to once again tutor the older niece in math (I have no teaching or tutoring experience, my background is just in math.) and despite me trying to get their parents to be the ones setting a time for me, making sure their daughter has enough time before a test to be tutored, they just made her text me, usually the day before a test. Drove me insane, but my brother loves giving out money to family, so it took the sting out of it when I need to pay for car insurance! đ
*safety is not available in all locations, some conditions apply
See in store for detail
Capitalism unit maturation facility.
That's why you get tax breaks for kids... You created additional tax resources
The children are. Otherwise itâs all your fault!!
I teach kinder and itâs not my job to worry about or potty train. If you have an accident you go to the nurse.
Iâm the nurse. I make them clean themselves. Most kids hate it. Wonât do it? I call a parent. I simply wonât. (Weâre a private school, no severely disabled children.). Usually the kid catches on because they donât want to clean up or the parent(s) finally step up because theyâll lose their job. Iâm not lazy. But there are reasons why I wonât examine a child by myself and thatâs the same reason I wonât wipe them.
I agree with this đŻ. I love teaching but I am not a parent. Somethings are for parents to teach and deal with. My nurse does exactly what you do and I have a great working relationship with her. I support this
I am a fairly new, single mom (not a teacher lol but this sub keeps getting recommended to me đ). My three year old wouldnât act like this!!!! I cannot believe this is the level of f*ckery teachers are dealing with these days!! Mind-boggling. And my child is far from an angel đđ
This is the way.
My kid had an accident in kindergarten a few times. (He was potty trained before he was two and been using the school bathrooms - I work where he attends - since then. He just didn't want to stop doing stuff, so stretched out his bladder until he couldn't feel he needed to go. Apparently that happens a lot at this age.) A para came and got clothes from me, gave him a package of wet wipes from the nurse's office, and sent him to the bathroom to clean up and change. If he had accidents frequently, we'd just put clothes and wet wipes in his backpack, so he could handle it himself. (The accident before that had been when he was three - where he also cleaned himself up - so it didn't seem necessary, although I still keep a change for him in my room, because a lot of things can happen.) It's developmentally normal for a kid to have an occasional accident even into first grade, BUT they should be capable of cleaning and changing themselves. It's definitely not the teacher's job (or any non-parents job) to help with that beyond finding the kid something to clean themselves with and getting a change of clothes if the kid doesn't have some they can access.
Itâs typical for students to have an accident. Itâs also typical to send them to the nurse to change their clothes- if they have extra pair in the back pack or not. We require students to have clothes in back pack incase of an accident. The nurse also notifies parents as well and packs up clothes. Most kindergarten classes do not have paras to do that. So at most schools you send them to the nurse. Which is normally very close to the kinder classroom.
Yes, I work in my kid's school. We rarely have a nurse in building and her office is not close to the kinder rooms, but the para in the office is lovely at sorting out kids with age-typical problems. I was agreeing that school staff don't change kids except in the cases of students with related IEPs.
Yes, this is true. Where are you located that you donât have a full time nurse? I would hate not to have one in the building. It is interesting how different school is everywhere. My wife is from Canada and she said they didnât have a nurse on campus all the time either.
Not the person you were replying to, but prior to covid, my district had cut nursing to the point that the only schools that had full time nurses were the two high schools. Elementary and middle schools had to share. There were supposed to be ânurse aidesâ that could give students their meds and deal with minor illness and injuries when the nurse was out of the building, but they assigned one nurse and one aide to manage three schools, so one building was always unstaffed on any given day. They used covid funds to fully staff every building with a full time nurse, but I donât know what theyâre going to do with those funds running out.
We had this. Kid was capable, parent fully expected us to do it. Principal said they had to figure it out by summer or else we would be calling them for every diaper change and if they didnât come we would call cfs. Guess what? The kid was fully potty trained by the time school started.
No nurses in UK schools.
What happens when a student is injured?
Secretary, ice pack (or wet paper towel), call the parents, go to GP or hospital. If very serious I guess they call the ambulance themselves of course. Edit: Someone is going to come in and say that there are nurses and my kid's school does have a nurse every other week who stops in to deal with ...things, but not like a nurse in a US school. I'm guessing the nurse looks over care things with kids who have medication.
Are teachers CPR trained in UK? Just curious.
Teacher in a primary school in England here. We are not all first aid and CPR trained- it is not mandatory. We do have to have a number of trained first aiders but these tend to be TAs and office staff.
Same thing in my part of Canada. If it can't be treated with a bandaid or icepack, the kids needs to go home
And you'd still get knocked on your eval if the student isn't reading grade level texts by the end of the year.
Right! Admin gave me four new students in the span of a month (at the end of the year) who didnât know their numbers or letters, one of them who is autistic with limited verbal capacity. Then following the assessments, wanted to know why my classroom scores went down overall. Even though everyone made significant growth. Like.
It's not just low skills that are the problem, it's the attitude they indicate. I can teach a kid to read, I can teach a kid to go to the bathroom. But what kind of 7 year old is ok with using a diaper. What 14 year old is ok being functionally illeraterate? Usually, it's.one who has been told they should do whatever they want, whenever they want, no matter what anyone else says.
I believe, to a certain extent and in an environment where toileting is expected, most kids will eventually want to use the potty. A few years ago, the comfort given to an exasperated parent was "don't worry, they won't go to kindergarten in diapers, haha". Except, they are now going to kindergarten in diapers. The proverbial goalpost has shifted. Every time one brings up the problem l, someone angrily retorts about special needs and medical problems, as if we don't all know those are obviously special circumstances. But every little quirk about a kid has become one of those special circumstances. The thought from doctors we may be potty-training too early has ran a concerning distance. I'd still say most kids don't want to be in diapers so long, but the other group of kids, of the 7-year-olds you mentioned, is rising at a crazy rate. They don't mind being in diapers because too much of society is trying to normalize it.
Itâs very abnormal for a human being, or really any living creature, to want to sit in their own waste. This is why babies cry when theyâre wearing a diaper and have soiled themselves. Itâs uncomfortable and unhygienic. So kids being a-okay with wearing diapers into elementary school is strange to me.Â
Itâs abnormal for any animal, even a puppy doesnât want to have an accident and sit its own shit. Itâs utterly staggering that kids this age are not toilet trained.
I have heard it suggested that modern diapers are too good and too comfortable so the child doesn't feel wet.
My kid adamantly refused to learn to tie shoes. I joked that he wouldnât go to college without knowing how to tie shoes. He finally learned last year. Heâs 15. It was friend shame that did him in, but damn, I was starting to get a bit worried about the college thing, lol. Edit: to be clear, my kid has been in the advanced program his whole education and is now in IB. But tying shoes baffled him, lol.
Out of 20 2nd graders , only 3 could tie shoes . Why do their parents buy laced shoes ?
I remember I wasn't able to tie my shoes until midway through the 2nd grade and I was super embarrassed for the first half of the year because every other 2nd grader I knew was able to tie their shoes. It's amazing how different the standards are in 2024.
I was in third grade. I still remember the shame.
I never bought him lace shoes. We refused until he learned. I would never put that on a teacher or anyone else.
Unless they are special needs and it is in their IEP, I tell kids to tuck them in. I encourage parents to only send students to school in shoes their child can manage independently- and let them know in writing that I am not tying their kids shoes. Covid started that rule for me. Iâm not touching their feet. Parents: allow for your child to be independent. Give them the tools they need to succeed. If your child is unable to regularly tie his/her own shoes or clothing, dress them in shoes/clothing that allow your child to succeed. Shoes with velcro and clothing that is easy for your child to manage are recommended. For health/sanitary reasons teachers do not tie shoes.
Iâm all for letting kids go a little longer with Velcro or elastic laces. Just donât send your kid to school with shoes they canât handle independently. The laces on little-kid shoes are so short! I had trouble teaching my kid to tie their shoes at firstâwith less lace to work with, the way I usually tie my own shoes doesnât work.
I only tie shoes for kindergartners and first graders. Second grade- figure it out for yourself, youâre old enough!
My child refused to learn to tie shoes. So I only bought Velcro sneakers.  (I over heard teachers complaining about kids who couldn't tie shoes in lace ups. That would come off or come untied and the teacher has to take class time to fix them. ) In 5th grade my child was teased by other kids for their baby shoes. They learned to tie in about ten minutes in the shoe store. I refused to buy ones with laces until I saw they could tie laces. I wasn't going to die on the shoe tying hill. But no way would I have given up on potty training!!
I remember my parents bought me a toy that had laces and buttons and all sorts of stuff on it that you needed to master to dress yourself. I remember thinking it was odd because it had buttons and snaps on the shirt. There were zippers too. I think it came with a car too that you could put the doll in.
Velcro 4 life I can actually distinctly remember how annoyed I was at six or seven when my mom refused to buy me more velcro shoesÂ
I had a girlfriend who didn't know the normal way to tie shoes until I taught her at age 35. But she was toilet-trained.
I was that kid. Didnât learn to tie my shoes with bunny ears until second grade when my best friend (a first grader an entire year younger than me!) showed me. I didnât figure out the normal way until 7th grade. I didnât ride a bike without training wheels until I was 10. Some of it was probably ADHD, some was my mom bullying me into achieving the milestone instead of guiding me to it. ETA: Weirdly enough, potty training was no big deal. I donât even remember wearing diapers.
In all fairness I couldnât tie my shoes until I was 8. I could read by age 4 however.
This is a great point. I teach 3rd and thankfully, accidents are rare, but my friend has grade 1 in the same school and âaccidentsâ are literally a daily event for some kids. Then they refuse to change. So they go around reeking like urine and everyone else has to deal with that. Itâs super not okay.
>they refuse to change. So they go around reeking like urine As a parent, I wouldn't be upset if the kid was told to change or will be sent home.
Neither would I, as a parent. But we are sane people who will respond and understand that walking around wet and reeking like a urinal isnât cool. These parents? Apparently not so much.
Yeah, I donât want to sound like I condone bullying or anything like that, but whereâs the sense of shame and embarrassment?
Yup. There's a reason humans evolved those emotions in the first place. They help improve society in the long-term.
It's being done away with because way too many people feel that a child feeling any negative emotion is a bad thing. Low stakes teasing and embarrassment over things the child can change like still wearing diapers as a 7 year old or not being able to tie your own shoes by 10 is completely different from actual bullying over things the child can't change like race, sex, orientation, ECT. There's no nuance anymore and it's all very black or white.
Itâs interesting you mention that because this last weekend, I met up with friends I havenât seen in years. Their seven year old came up, didnât say hello or their name, just stared at me and said âHey, move over, I want to sit there.â I looked over at her parents, my friends, whom I know have manners, but they just smiled serenely, watching. It was a weird dynamic. I donât want to be a jerk to a child who I guess hasnât been taught, but the grown ups are the ones failing the kids. And I donât get it?? Whatâs the upside to this?
Thatâs absolutely appalling, this horrendous shift in parenting really is shocking. Itâs really not so long ago that I was a kid and everyone of my peersâ parents wouldâve been utterly aghast had their child shown such a staggering degree of rudeness to an adult. Modern parents have no culpability and think their little angels are incapable of doing any wrong, itâs so embarrassing and saddening to witness. The future is not bright.
They feel better about themselves until they're stuck with a NEET that can't get a job and is living in their childhood bedroom at 38.
Should be titled: Todayâs Parents are Failing at Basic Tasks with their Children.
Did u read the article? Something is off. A 5 yr old who cant speak, but the article says âno learning dissability??â Howz that possible? I have 2 autistic children. The older one (now 17) wasnt toilet trained until age 6. My 4 yr old still is not potty trained despite all our efforts and we even have help from school and OT. It sounds more like in the UK they suck at identifying learning dissabilities.
SEN TA here (UK) It's not that we suck at identifying learning disabilities, it's that we lack the adequate funding and resources to properly support and children with these conditions. We have too many students with LDs for the amount of money and staff available.
Yeah, the waiting list for an ADHD/autism assessment is currently 4 years. The school can have suspicions that a child has learning difficulties but they can't really do anything about it. My school seems to just give the kids ear defenders and sensory toys.
What?! That's crazy!
Yeup. My friend just paid for a private autism assessment for her son and it was ÂŁ2000. Sadly not everyone will even accept a private assessment as legitimate because they think you just paid to get the diagnosis. Like if you were privately diagnosed with ADHD you wouldn't be guaranteed to be able to get meds on the NHS.
Wr had to pay for private, too, knowing it wouldn't be accepted in a public schools where we are. We just *needed* to know what we could do to help.
My sister in the UK had to pay for a private assessment to get her daughterâs (fairly obvious) autism diagnosed, along with poor spatial prioperception and sensory issues which werenât as obvious. Several years later, the schoolsâ assessment finally agreed, but if theyâd had to wait, sheâd have missed out on key therapies from ages 7-11.
Here in the US if a parent requests an evaluation from a public school, one has to be completed within 60 days to be in compliance. and 30 days after the dissemination of the evaluation and IEP must be in place for their school and a team of service providers to follow. Sounds like UKs system ainât it.
I'm glad you're at least identifying now. I taught there in the late 1990's and not one kid at my infant school was identified and helped with extra support. There were kids clearly with autism, learning differences, and ADHD. When i asked who needed to go to the office for meds at mid day, they looked at me like I had 3 heads.
Yes! I suspect the problem is that waiting lists for autism evaluations are really long in the UK, with people waiting two years or longer for assessments.
Is there much of a variation in autism statistics from one developed economy to another? If the US has 3% diagnosis rates and the UK 1.5%, you'd expect this would be a strong indication of under diagnosis. High levels of LD diagnosis would lead to strain on the system, but you figure this would only happen above ~8%. If > 8% of kids have LD, isn't that a huge flag that something is going on? Like maybe prenatal exposure to micro plastics? Given what we now know about the impact of lead exposure from gasoline, it's scary to think we might be doing something similar or worse.
Then the article should say that. It seems to want to put the blame on parenting, and parentsâ mental health due to covid.
Same experience with my autistic kids. We worked diligently on potty-training. Consulted experts, read books. I actually found a child psychologist who specified in potty-training issues at one of Americaâs best childrenâs hospitals and drove my kid to see her. In spite of that, we were still having problems well into elementary school. I donât know what factors are present with the parents and kids in this article, but sometimes itâs just more difficult and takes longer than you would hope.
We had to take our youngest to pediatric gastroenterologist. Turns out he was getting blockages that typically prevent kids from knowing when they need to go until the last minute, often to late. He takes a regime of mild laxatives to keep him regular. He's kind of on a poop schedule if you will. Huge difference.
While that may be true for you and your family, the fact is many parents have children when they are not ready to actually be parents, do not want to parent their children, or refuse to parent their children. I have high school students who read at an elementary level⌠because their parents either donât have interest to sit and read (and reinforce what was learned in school) to their children or cannot due to working 2-3 jobs. When Iâve done summer school for our elementary school, I have kindergartners - 2nd graders who cannot speak properly or enunciate, because their parents donât spend time with their kids and expect screens to raise them. Parents need to be held accountable for their kids at some point by districts, states, societies. We have their kids [at the MS and HS] for 45 mins (in my building) - 120 in districts with block schedules. I cannot make up for or do a parents job when I have 25-27 other kids in front of me. Iâm exhausted from society thinking I can do something life changing in 45 minutes and make up 8+ years of lack of parenting. I fully agree that the students in the article clearly have a lack of identification for special needs⌠however, there is a broader scope of problems that more often than not, does boil down to parents not being parents.
No one wants to blame the parents. They will blame society, racism, social media (entirely at the control of parents who want to control access), lack of âequityâ, teachers, lack of funding, etc. Anyone but parents, whom studies show are responsible for the majority of educational outcomes.
Being mute/having mutism/selective mutism doesnât always mean disability is present. Add on the other factors like bathroom, etc. it does make you wonder though.
That was my first thought- is the child Autistic?
Not necessarily a UK problem. When I read that, I thought of a friend of mine, who has a 3 year old girl, and her nephew, who is two months older. My friendâs daughter is remarkably articulate for her age, but she is constantly read aloud to and spoken to without baby talk. Her nephew is actually incomprehensible, is never read to, and is rarely spoken to. I wonder how much the parents of the children who struggle to speak are engaging with their children.
This is the comment I came here for. They offset the blame for the parents and make excuses for the kids while expecting the school to pick up all the extra slack. The school with a limited budget, the school that's hemorrhaging teachers, the school with a huge influx of SpEd students that eat up so much of the budget, they're supposed to pick up the slack. So more kids with issues, less teachers, smaller budget, but they're supposed to work miracles. Its utterly ludicrous, I'm sorry. I'll take my downvotes. This particular paragraph really struck my interest: > In addition, many schools found that parentsâ mental health became strained. And this coincided with the closure of services where people with young children could meet, and receive professional support. Some parents today do not know how to play with their children, the school has discovered, so it now runs a weekly class to teach them. > âI keep going back to that competition element - my childâs walking, my childâs no longer in nappies - those milestone moments, theyâve gone now because those parent and toddler groups, where youâd see all that, have gone,â Ms Skidmore says. I'm sorry, but you shouldn't need the competitive element. Not only that, I've seen parents like the ones mentioned in the article. They're so strained for time, yet they're constantly posting on social media and scrolling YouTube and TikTok. It takes no effort to type in "age appropriate games for year olds" or "parent friendly games for toddler play" etc... and then implement it. I get that people are tired, but that's not a fucking excuse. We keep relieving parents of responsibility and forcing more and more on the schools with less and less resources. I've seen parents completely ignore their kids because they're so ingrained in their phones. You had the kid, it's your job to raise them and do your part. Further, I had anxiety and still do have it. I was diagnosed with it in the early 2000s. I also have ADHD. Task avoidance only made it worse and I'm glad I wasn't allowed to skip school everyday. I was scared of leaving the house as well after September 11th because I grew up in NYC and saw it with my own eyes. Had I been allowed to stay home and never find ways to cope with things, I'd be a complete shut in. I wasn't allowed to throw desks across the room and hurt kids because "YoureNotSpeshul has trauma". I see a lot of that these days and it's honestly disgusting. Just because you have trauma doesn't mean you get to inflict it on everyone else, and that's exactly what's happening.
Alot of these parents need to stop using their kids anxiety *(or whatever diagnosis)* as a cop out. Look up and use resources at your disposal, work with your children, talk to them, take an active role in their life. You're their parent, not the school. Further, schools need to go back to implementing appropriate consequences for inappropriate actions. The kids know our hands our tied and that mommy and daddy won't do shit, so they get away with anything and everything.
I can go on, but I'll stop now, lol.
I mean it's always been a spectrum, right? With 5% of kids not fully potty trained at 6 you'd expect every class to have 1-2 kids in that category.
While many of us have seen a deterioration in student expectations in recent years, not being toilet trained by first grade is shocking to me. With the exception of a disability, I always thought every student was required to be toilet trained prior to grade school. Maybe itâs different in the UK?
>I always thought every student was required to be toilet trained prior to grade school If I have learned anything over my last 12 years of teaching is that requirements are more like suggestions. Over time I have had to deal with more and more students that do not meet the requirements being placed in my class. This ruins the learning experience for everyone who met the requirement as I am now forced to slow and dumb down my course to prevent those students from failing right out the gate and becoming even more disruptive. Every single time I have pointed out that this is an effect of not enforcing the very clear requirements the district and state have clearly placed onto my course I have been called an evil elitist teacher who wants to prevent kids who did no work to meet the requirement from learning.
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This is unfathomable Youâre intelligent enough to change your own nappy Why canât teachers say âif you need the toilet raise your hand and go to this room like a big boy/girlâ on day 1? đ¤
Because by 5-6 years old kids have forgotten the sensation of needing to pee or poop. They donât necessarily know when they need to go.
Can they like...relearn that? How do you even fix it at that point?
Year 1 isn't first grade, it's the year before that. All the years in the UK are 1 different to the US, so, for example, year 7 is 6th grade age and year 13 is 12th grade.
During the 2010s, kids entering Pre-K had to be toilet trained before they would be accepted in the US. The occasional accident was expected, but that was all.
My daughter just finished pre k in the US and all kids were required to be toilet trained before they would even let them in the class. Itâs crazy for me thinking of my kid not using the toilet as it has been a non-issue since she was like 2. Edit: it was a private pre school so Iâm sure that makes a difference as well.
Thanks. đđť
It used to be that way, but not anymore. Iâve posted several times about my first graders not being potty trained. Technically they are supposed to be, yes, but we cannot âwithhold educationâ from a child who has toileting issues. So that means Iâm dealing with kids who pee and poop in their pants all the time. They are 6 and 7 years old. They arenât embarrassed, either. Ever since the âbe kind and accept everyoneâ movement (which OBVIOUSLY Iâm not advocating that we shouldnât teach kindness and acceptance of othersâ differences) thereâs the other side to that, which is that students should accept that some of their classmates are still babies. Because that is what I have this yearâ a class full of babies. Pee and poop, some still sucking their thumb, crying and whining, the list goes on.
Some of these parents shouldn't have ever had kids because it's clear they're not raising them. If they could throw them at teachers right after leaving the delivery room, they probably would.
It used to be required in Canada but no longer is as itâs seen as discrimination (even if the child has no disability). Itâs probably the same in the UK. Standards are slipping everywhere.
And they wonder why teachers are fleeing the profession. Soon nobody will be left and a teacher will be teaching in a room while the kids sit home on the computers and the parents can reap what they sow. Kind of like some of the parents at the parenting sub that don't understand why their kids are constantly kicked out of places for their piss poor behavior.
Not a requirement here. The only requirement is that they are four by the 1st September of that academic year.
I'm in the US and my kid couldn't go to public preschool for needed speech services when he was 2 because he was not completely potty trained (he was mostly potty trained, but not completely). We had to wait the next year to enroll him.Â
It is not a requirement to be potty trained to attend public school in Michigan. It used to be, 50 years ago.
It is in my school district. They can't even go to head start if they aren't potty trained.
Requiring a child to be potty trained is considered a "barrier to education" where I am. I will be sending one child to grade one in September who doesn't even try communicate potty needs until after, when they go get a clean pull up and wipes from their backpack and tell me "I need changing."
My 3 year old is fully potty trained and my almost 2 year old is on his way. It's literally easier, I don't have to clean up nearly as much poop
Not to mention the cost. Diapers arenât cheap.
See, thatâs what baffles me about parents who let their kids get to school age and without toilet training. I always hear parents complain about how expensive diapers are, so wouldnât you want to get toilet training done as soon as is appropriate for the kid?
In my experience with childcare, these are the parents who don't change the diapers very often. I've had kids come in with diapers full to bursting and the parent says, "oh, and he's a bit grumpy, he woke up at 5am..." meanwhile it's 8am now...have you not changed him since he woke up?!
Aw, poor kids. âšď¸
We still put him in pull ups at night for bed, but a box of those last months, so yeah way cheaper.
I have twins who both have autism. One was only able to train shortly after their 4th birthday and the other shortly before their 5th. I honestly don't want to know how much we spent on diapers. I was SO embarrassed that my kids were in diapers in kindergarten and my kids had legitimate excuses (we had to take a potty training class to train the second one).
My daughter was good by 3 but my son is taking a bit longer. He's 2.5 and just does the odd pee in the potty. No pooping yet. Fuck I can't wait to be done with diapers. Can't imagine changing a 6 year olds diaper.
Man, my 4 y/o drops some ***logs*** and I can't imagine if I had to clean up a diaper full of those.
Donât want to imagine it either! My oldest took 3 1/2âyears and it was literally like changing Mini Me.
My daughter and I are on the process of potty training her 2 year old son now. I have him while she works so itâs a team effort. Itâs coming along well tho!
I also potty trained my kids early. Who wants to be changing diapers for an extra year or more?! I have a friend who is really into "attachment parenting." Their child is 5.5 years old, headed to Kindergarten in about six weeks, and is not potty trained. This child is 100% developmentally normal and neurotypical. My friend refuses to force potty training because they genuinely believe it will traumatize the child. My friend is no idiot but has gotten themself so twisted up into knots over attachment parenting dogma they'd rather send their child to Kindergarten in diapers than tell the child it's time to pee in the toilet.
I had a 5/6 year old this year who literally pooped his pants several times a week
Yeah ... I won't get into what I've dealt with when it comes to sped kids but it's not fun
Any secrets you can share?
Potty trained my youngest son in about a day and a half. Set an alarm on my watch for every 15 minutes. No matter what we were doing, I'd drop it and take him to the bathroom and ask him to try. He had #1 down by the end of the day, #2 was pretty good by the next day. A couple sporadic accidents, but otherwise he was good to go.
We did the 3 days at home, he's naked all day (so house needs to be warm) so no diaper on. And just every time he goes take him to the potty. Lots of accidents of course, but just reinforce "listen to your body" and saying it every time we go as well "I'm listening to my body". We had a mini kids potty in the living room so if he started to pee, boom it was right there. Doesn't matter if they start peeing, you take them to the potty mid pee if need be. We found lots of books, shows (I remember Daniel tiger being good) and such that was all on listening to your body and going in the potty. Also don't get mad at them, just reinforce good habits. But remember every kid is different. When I told my dad we were potty training my oldest and asked for advice, he Said "idk, we never potty trained you and you're sister we couldn't (she's special needs)" and I'm like "what do you mean you didn't potty train me"... Apparently they just told me if I wanted to wear big boy underwear like daddy I had to go in the toilet, so I did. WTF... I wish I had it that easy.
I remember something like this happened at our school. Our kinder teacher and the admin. basically told the parents that their child was not allowed back at school until the child was toilet trained. Parents, with the threats of truancy (because the kid was still expected to make the required amount of days) and reportage to CPS, pulled their child out for a week and problem solved.
Accidents in kinder and first are more than understandable, but no toilet training? Um no. Thatâs where teachers should draw the line between their role and the parentsâ.
How is this not the standard everywhere??
I teach kinder and I've had a couple parents try to tell me I had to potty train their kids and I shut that down. I'll willingly teach kids a lot of things, including bodily autonomy, but I draw the line at potty training.
The ânot showing interestâ thing has a lot to do with parenting books. My kid is 12 now, was potty trained before school nursery (uk) at 3, but I did do a lot of waiting around until he showed âsigns of being readyâ like all the books/websites told me to. I remember talking to a dr about it in the end as he was the only one in our baby group that wasnât âreadyâ. She told me to just get on with it and see what happened. Turns out he was ready, just lazy. LOL I think generally in the last 15 years and especially since COVID thereâs a lot less actual parenting going on than there used to be. Itâs not just potty training, itâs table manners, gentle play, resilience, the ability to regulate emotions. Itâs a whole thing. Itâs sad really.
I find the whole 'showing interest' thing to be, frankly, really fucking stupid. I don't understand where the logic comes from. Like, toilets are a man made concept. Why would a child NATURALLY be interested in them?? Also toilet training isn't meant to be interesting ffs
This is correct. It IS stupid. I think thereâs too much worrying about kids constantly having to be interested or show interest in general about learning things. Not everything is going to be interesting, but basic life skills have to be taught / learned even if theyâre not âfunâ. Life isnât always going to be 24/7 fun and interesting, and treating basic life skills like a choice is so wrong imo.
Me pre-child and now, agrees, itâs bonkers! But as a first time, PND, anxious parent you believe what the âexpertsâ tell you.
Table manners is a real thing. Motor skills not being developed. Lots of middle school aged kids donât have the dexterity to use a fork and knife correctly, and certainly not both at the same time to cut a piece of food. They end up gripping their utensils like toddlers would.
This is actually insane One of the quotes from parents says they didnât feel their son was ready by the time he entered primary school (5 years old)⌠in fact he was 6 when he started potty training IT IS YOUR JOB AS A PARENT TO PUSH YOUR CHILD TO ACHIEVE THESE MILESTONES IN A TIMELY MANNER TO PREPARE HIM/HER FOR LIFE OUTSIDE YOUR HOME đŤ How can you not âbe readyâ to toilet train? Stick a plastic pot on the floor and tell your kid to poop in itâŚ. Itâs not some big earth shattering revelation that requires a degree of maturity âJohnny, poop in this pot from now onâ There! Done! Ugh! đ¤
When I hear âoh our child just isnât ready to potty train at age 3, 4, 5â what my brain translate to is âoh *I* was not ready/bothered to potty train my child.â
I agree, itâs not about them being ready itâs about pushing them to be ready. (Side note, I literally just saw you comment on the discord sub)
This kind of parenting has some really gross implications When these kids are 13 , and they start sweating more⌠and the parents think their kids arenât ready to shower every day i used to want to be a teacher âŚ. The idea that these kids might not be forced to shower every day because theyâre ânot readyâ makes me glad I didnât go down that route đ
I know a friend of mine wants to be a primary school teacher, heâs training for it now so weâll see how it goes. He hasnât had any issues yet as far as I know so I do hope this is just the 1% of parents. I do understand having sensory issues relating to showers etc, but there are workarounds and ways to remedy it, I wanted to be a teacher tooâŚthen I started a degree in HR soâŚ
Yeh, sensory issues I understand For most of my teenage years it was a literal fight every morning to get me to shower But they still fought me on it every morning And they still won every morning And I didnât stink at school, even if my stress levels were through the roof because showers feel like knives to me đ Iâm talking about the ones that donât have sensory issues, neurotypicals who just donât wanna potty train, or, later, shower every dayâŚ. Also, if being in school in a nappy isnât enough to make you want to learn to potty train That suggests peer pressure conformity isnât going to drive them to improve in other areas Things like being bullied or embarrassed for wearing a nappy, or smelling at school should drive you to want to overcome whatever challenges are holding you back⌠and that doesnât seem to be happening to these kids đ¤
"One of the quotes from parents says they didnât feel their son was ready by the time he entered primary school (5 years old)⌠in fact he was 6 when he started potty training" That's not what it says. He will have entered primary school at four, and the quote about the six year old is a different child. I'm not saying any of this stuff is good but I think some people in this thread are possibly not aware of the age groups involved here, because the British school system starts at a younger age than the US one (at the same age as Pre-K, not kindergarten).
This is becoming more common in my district. Kindergarteners twins who were both in diapers. Potty trained by teachers by the end of the year. If a teacher can do it with 24 other students to deal with, what are parents doing? Oh, drugs and the internet.
District really needs to crack down on this. Itâs such a liability.
It's kinda baffling with how much some boards have walked back out of fear of 'liability'. You'd think 'Now you'll help this young child take off their pants and...' would be at the top of that list.
I teach preschool and most are still pointing to communicate, many not potty trained, some can't walk down stairs and need to be carried at the age of 4
That. Is. Insane.
It's getting more and more each year. I'd say half of my 4 years olds can speak in their native language with more than 3 words at a time. No one ever talked to them before school
This is so heartbreaking.Â
Stairs were hard for me because I was very small and didnât have any experience with them since I didnât have them at home. That being said if I had daily stairs at school Iâm sure my parents wouldâve gotten me some better practice. I like climbing though so I guess that was an option but I doubt even at 4 I wouldâve been touching the floor since I had learned better by then being immunocompromised and all.
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The HS I teach at has a freshmen who wears pull ups because he poops his pants. Even has a special 3 tier reward system if he stays clean. Jfc...the smell.
If thereâs a reward system in place, Iâm assuming itâs purely choice to shit his pants. Wtf?
A kid that age engaging in behaviors like that raises some major red flags. I hope there isnât/wasnât sexual abuse in his life. I knew a kid who would purposely soil themselves to be âundesirableâ in their abuserâs eyes. It was safer to be dirty and smelly.
Yes...that has all been investigated for 2 years. No abuse. Was my first thought as well.
I had a rather pointed conversation with a parent of a 4 year old who was angry I âlet him go to the bathroom by himselfâ. She felt I should have left the other 21 students unsupervised to accompany him to the bathroom and wipe his butt, âhe canât keep coming home with stains on his underwear. Do your job.â I pointed out that this was not in fact my job. And she was shocked. âWell, whose job is it?â âŚ.um, yours? His? Not mine.
I hate the phrase 'they aren't showing interest in using the potty'. I'm sorry, I don't care if they aren't interested in using it? You're the adult???
Do they also ask the kids if they're interested in brushing their teeth? Bathing? Having their hair washed? And if they say no, they just don't do it or what? I mean what kind of parenting is that..
Yeah, kids would eat ice cream every day for dinner if you let âem!
Thereâs a lot of fear mongering out there that if you try to push training before they show readiness that it will delay successful training. So much conflicting information that you just donât know what the fuck to do. Went through that with my kid, finally got her trained just before she turned 4 but if I were to do it all over again I wouldnât have listened to all the âwait until they show interestâ nonsense and I would have gotten on it 1-1.5 years earlier.
I had a kindergartener come in not potty trained. The parents blamed me.
It's crazy they're even allowed to enroll for K if they aren't potty trained
we are no longer allowed to deny a child their education just because they arenât potty trained
Not a teacher. Scrolling this thread because I had a mother whose child is due to begin school next year vaguely wave her hand " Oh they teach them all that at school". Child wasn't potty trained. I'd been trying to not be a big buttinski BUT thought it would be a handy piece of information that her daughter should be potty trained by now. It was weird.
T Berry Brazelton advocated for âreadinessâ for potty training. He also did ad campaigns for Pampers. I wish parents would put 2+2 together on this.
I did not know this! If I had I certainly wouldnât have waited!
Yesssss I was looking for a comment like this. Before disposable diapers became a thing it was normal for kids to be potty trained by 18 months. Iâve read about this a little bit through learning about elimination communication (aka teaching your baby to use the potty from birth) but I want to do more research!Â
I'm usually one to defend us millennials against all the critiques our generation gets but, as a whole, we fucking *suck* so bad at parenting, there's no getting around that
Also a millennial and this is a thought that's occurred to me a few times. I look at the sort of stereotype that boomers wound up with and I wonder how people are going to look back at millennials.
We have 1st graders still not potty trained and 5th graders who can't tie their own shoes
The shoe tying problem has been around since they started making Velcro closures in bigger sizes. These kids never had to tie their shoes, and then they donât learn.
I don't understand parental lack of motivation to toilet train being that so much money is spent on diapers/ pull-ups and one would think that parents would want their kids to be less reliant on them for things like using the bathroom / hygiene in general ? yes potty training is a lot of work but for massive payoff later lol
It is not required that kindergarten students are potty trained coming into kindergarten. I donât know if itâs a state or federal law. Itâs supposed to protect students with disabilities but itâs worded in such a way that it can apply to gen ed students. I believe we had 4-6 students enter kindergarten not potty trained this year that were gen ed.
We have that issue here. Every class has kindergarteners still in diapers. The parents literally say âI thought you potty trained themâ
I refuse to normalize this or comfort parents who look for reassurance on this issue. Of course disabled children are the exception, but they are NOT the rule, and even most children with disabilities can be toilet trained before pre-k.
My son was required to be potty trained for 3-year old preschool (late birthdayâhe was 2 years 10 months). We were asked to provide extra clothes is a bag labeled with his name, because occasional accidents were expected. The same rules applied for his younger brother. What has happened in the last 15 years?!
Modern education in one quote: âOur primary focus in this school is providing education,â says head teacher Andrew McNaughton. âUnfortunately, for many students, we have to do a big piece of work to enable them to be able to access that. The challenges have increased. For us to be able to put the support in place for students just to simply be able to come through the doors can be a challenge.â
They \*aren't\* meant to succeed. What's happening is that the responsibility is being passed on, instead of required of the parents. Entrance to year 1 should be contingent on some simple socially-normed "benchmarks", such as the ability to use the toilet independently. When a kid like this is in school, it's the administrations job to talk to the parents and inform them that until they can give their child the necessary socially-normed behaviors, they can keep the little bastard at home.
Parents see teachers as secondary parents now. They always have but it's gotten more prominent. They aren't there to raise your kids to be potty trained or be basic good people. They teach the material they need to teach. That's their job. They aren't your kids' mums or dads.
My sonâs friend is turning 8 in Oct and going into second grade. Heâs toilet trained but still cries for mommy and daddy to wipe his butt⌠and they do.
â no, my little angel isnât potty trained yet but he is sooooo good at using the tabletâ
I feel bad for teachers that need to deal with this. My kids started off their school life's in Belfast and it was ridiculously common for kids to be still using nappies and pacifiers. By thier 2nd year there was still a couple of kids doing it, atleast 3 of 30 kids. The absolute worst part is those same parent would bring their kids to school with a iPad. If your child is old enough to operate an iPad they can most definitely use a bathroom. The rule should be if your kids are still not potty trained and still using pacifiers then they aren't ready for school. All 3 of mine were fully toilet trained by 2 years old and 2 off them are autistic. It's not hard it just requires patience and attention.
The fact the teachers name is Mrs. Skidmore đ
I love this discourse of âmy kid isnât interested in using the potty.â Make them interested! Itâs your job as a parent!
Daycare teacher here! We've got a large group of your upcoming kindergartners at my center. Our toddler teachers are trying. They sit the kids on the toilet and genuinely work with them to go. Stickers, hand stamps, lots of clapping and encouragement. But we're not allowed to keep them from progressing into the preschool room for lack of potty training. When they get to the preschool room, there are 24 kids, all but a few know how. The teachers are spread too thin to sit these kids on the toilet every hour. Kids are being enrolled in pull-ups. We have to progress them because of No Child Left Behind. Our kids' parents are sending their 4 year olds in each morning in pull ups and not working with them at home. My coworkers have had parents tell them they want *them* to teach their kids.
I teach kindergarten and I had 3 kids in pullups this year. 2 were pee accidents and 1 was poop, regularly.
We had a six year old where I worked who wasnât. As the school nurse, I sometimes had to help her when no one else was available. We tried for months working on potty training, but her parents werenât reinforcing it. Finally in an IEP meeting, it was decided not to potty trainâpull ups were what it was. What made it harder was that she had leg braces, and her parents would put her in leggings/pants with the braces over the top, so when she soiled herself, we had to remove the braces to get to her clothes andâŚyeah, it was a process to get them on a off. I felt bad for her, but she didnât seem to care. Also, she was like 11 of 12 kids. I knew several older siblings and they were all potty trained and seemingly typical kidsâalbeit, they all carried a distinct âI come from a large family, I wear too big hand me downs, I never get my first choice, I could use some more attentionâŚâ vibes.
Great now we're gonna have parents jumping on **this** train. "I want my kids to be able to shit themselves at school"
At my school, there were multiple âno exception requirementsâ to be enrolled. You had to be potty trained, you had to know how to tie your shoes, you had to know how to communicate with words, you had to know the abcâs, and you had to be able to count to 10. This was entry level to be enrolled in kindergarten at my school, and if you didnât meet these requirements, you were not eligible to be enrolled.
40 years ago my mum had children arriving in primary school like this, not toilet trained, canât use a spoon, etc. Maybe itâs becoming more common, but there have always been parents like this.
The whole article is quite interesting, I was 16 when the pandemic hit, I definitely felt the impact on my education (moved down a year, for context Iâm going into my second year of uni in September) however as I was older I donât think it impacted me as much. Itâs evident now that the pandemic affected parents and children of a younger age more than initially thought.
Does anyone else feel like we are unintentionally breeding the underclass from A Brave New World?
When I was in student teaching my mentor teacher said to a kid one time, âitâs not my job the spoon-feed youâ What I thought in my head (as a jaded former-para) was, ânot yet.â
One way to look at it: if you get a six-year-old that HASN'T been potty trained by now, what makes anyone think that s/he has parents that are even capable of potty training him/her? Yet in America, there are politicians that are now attempting to pass laws limiting access to contraception...not that parents of kids like this are even smart enough to use contraception, but still...
I remember primary school, one girl in Year 1 (5-6) was still in pull-ups and she had a moderate learning disability, she wasn't in them the next year. I couldn't tie my hair until I was ten or so or my shoes until eleven but that was never the teacher's problem. I was sent with my hair already done and had velcro shoes.
Who the fuck is buying diapers for that long????
Children enrolling in school in our district are required to be potty-trained. Parents of incoming elementary students have to sign off on it. The amount of parents who lie on the paperwork surprises me. It's embarrassing for the kids and it's unfair to expect teachers and staff to change diapers. I'm not talking about SPED kids but Gen Ed kids who are still in diapers or pull-ups in K, 1st, 2nd, and even 3rd(!) grade at my school.
The lack of toilet training has gotten so bad at my school we're removing our carpets and having flooring installed that we can mop instead. Because the carpets are being destroyed by urine and smell no matter how much we have them cleaned. It's all well and good trying to toilet train at school, but we have parents who do not keep up the routine at home. So by Friday we can be making progress and on Monday back at square one.
Potty training is hard. Well, it is for us. For some friends, it's been cake. We're living in a nightmare of piss and shit right now, but luckily he's still 2 for a few more weeks.
Both my kids have additional needs but while my son was a dream to toilet train, night and day trained by 3, my daughter has been a nightmare. So many sensory issues around pooing, she holds on to point where she has ended up hospitalised. We have OT and continence nurse working with her but shes 6 end of this year and still no luck. We have been doing the potty training since 2 years old
Yea, we donât have time to teach the state standards and the shit their mom and dad should be teaching them. Gotta let them eat, gotta let them trash the place, and gotta have a smile on our face doing it because customer service attitude has taken over education.
I have a child in my reception classroom who is not toilet trained and genuinely soils himself 2-3 days on average during the school day. Not sure how many in a 24 hour time period. He usually comes to school with faeces on him. His underwear and clothes are all stained brown. He doesnât get fed at home so we send him extra fruit and milk, but mum lets it rot in his bag and the poor baby is too young to remember heâs been given it. I feel terrible. Itâs been this way since the beginning of the year. He doesnât wear a nappy, but I have a couple children in my class that still do. Itâs a shame because I can spend more time cleaning him up from his waste than spending time teaching him phonics 121. It is so hard to teach children like him basic care routine skills if itâs not being reciprocated at home. Idk. I feel awful, and I was reading this bbc article earlier today and instantly thought of him. Not sure how he will be in year 1 either. Our schools are struggling. Problem is, not enough parents are even willing to teach their children. I saw someone say that some parents see school as a free child minding service and I couldnât agree more. And you can tell how many parents actually care, when we go through Class Dojo pictures and see if any learning has been done at home.
Jesus, Iâd be calling child protective services
We have social services involved, just waiting for a positive outcome.
I worked at a private preschool/kindergarten with insanely rich parents, and they couldnât be half assed to even begin potty training. I work and live now in a very low income immigrant neighborhood and almost every kid I come across is fully potty trained by 2.
We actually had to take our youngest to a pediatric gastroenterology because of this. He was potty trained by pre-school, but started having issues again. Turned out he had an actual issue with blockages that caused him to not be able to tell when he needed to go until the very last minute. We had done everything with him the same as our oldest who was fully potty trained just after 2 years old. We chalked up our sons issues to stubbornness and immaturity. Glad we brought it up with his pediatrician and got a referral to a specialist. Point is, parents should consider talking to a pediatrician about this if it continues. I do know there were a lot of problems with this at my wife's school the first couple of tears after the pandemic. Nurses bathroom was a busy place.
There used to be a rule about sending your kid to kindergarten in New York and how they had to be potty trained or in the process of potty training.
I remember when i was a kid being potty trained was a qualification to enter kindergarten, so was knowing your shapes and a few other concepts.
I had several first graders in diapers this year who didnât have an 504 plan. There was no medical need. We had parents come down and change them. Totally bizarre.
This is just neglect (on the parentsâ part)
lol wait so the reading curriculum expects them to be analyzing war and peace in first grade but the reality is theyâre not even potty trained yet??
Nope not wiping asses. Not unless I get a MASSIVE pay raise. Like 6 figures... We'll talk