Toilet training and high anxiety – how schools are changing
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1ddegp8zvo
by easy_c0mpany80
Toilet training and high anxiety – how schools are changing
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1ddegp8zvo
by easy_c0mpany80
20 comments
Allowing normies on the internet was a huuuuge mistake
As a teacher, I’m going to have a wee rant.
“If we haven’t brought children through the system who are resilient and ready for the next level, who’s going to pick this group up…Somebody is going to have to pick up that group when they leave school and try to put in the support to enable them to be productive and functional members of society.”
And here you can sum up an increasing challenge emerging in recent years. Lack of resilience on multiple levels that is ultimately screwing children (and ourselves) over.
More people aren’t taking responsibility for basic things and it’s having awful consequences. The first part of the article is describing skills that we used to take for granted, even in many working class backgrounds. Potty training and communication. The excuse? The parent felt their child “wasn’t ready”.
What this really means is that the parent(s) didn’t want to parent. It was too hard for them to teach their child a critical life skill, so they left it up to someone else.
Likewise, with the anxiety. Kids aren’t stupid, they can figure out what buzz words to use to get out of doing work and going to school. Having worked with kids that do suffer genuine anxiety, these pretenders have ticked up notably in the last five years.
But parents don’t want the hassle of being a parent. So these kids go home and piss the day away falling further and further behind and then just missing more and more. So then we have to spend more resources trying to help these people, taking away from the people who genuinely need the help.
The goal of empathy is a noble one. But people are taking the piss, and increasingly fewer people are willing to bring consequences. Kids are being passed along without the skills they need thanks to these failures and the sad reality is, sooner or later, no one can help them. It’s called being an adult.
Are we ready to talk about how toxic working class culture is in regard to parenting? This type of passive parenting has always been the case within working class families, it’s probably just gotten worse in recent years. To them, as long as you are keeping your child alive, you are doing your job as parents. To them, having kids is something that just happens to you, no planning at all. They won’t sit with them and read or teach them how to regulate their emotions. Instead, they’ll take a dictatorial approach towards parenting. This “because I said so” style of parenting. No attempt to actually explain why they should or shouldn’t do something.
I could go on and on with examples, and honestly the working class culture is toxic in so many other ways. In ways which can’t just be hand waved away by referring to their economic situation (though it can play a part). It’s politically incorrect to talk about this issue though so we sweep it under the rug. If you go against this sort of noble savage trope of working class people be “honest, hard working people”, then you’re being snobbish.
Edit: I’m not saying that every working class or underclass parent is like this or that there are no middle class or upper class parents who are negligent or abusive of course. I feel like that should go without saying but so many replies seem to assume that I am making that argument.
Oh dear… the head teacher is aptly named.
Does ‘Skidmore’ count as nominative determinism?
It’s an unwillingness to tackle anything that might be a bit of a challenge. Potty training can be hard with some kids, and they’ll have lots of accidents and maybe take a year before they have 100% got it. That’s normal. But some parents don’t (want to) understand that and interpret it as them not being ready and put them back in nappies because it’s just easier. I also think child led parenting is used as justification when actually the parenting is just absent entirely.
Go back 10 years and the closure of Sure Start centres. Parents had at least the opportuntiy to reach out and get help. Add on the years of austerity, greater awareness of neurodiverity, less resources to the NHS, getting diagnosis and support. CHAMS on its knees with huge demand.
This is the impact, not immediate but a slow trickle.
Society now values empathy so highly that others like responsibility and resilience barely get a look in, in fact a lot of the time they’re actively frowned upon. These are the apples this imbalance produces.
When I started teaching in primary schools in the 70s, we wouldn’t admit children who weren’t toilet trained. It was a school’s job to teach. It was different for nursery schools. Can’t do that now but most schools have washing machines.
Towards the end of my career in education, I visited schools where the headteacher would tell me that an increasing number of children arrived in Year R unable to talk properly. One set off parents told a headteacher “we thought the school would teach them to talk”.
This lack of communication skills has been exacerbated because the parents spend more time on their own phones rather than engaging with their children. And an over-reliance on tablets to keep them amused. [Children who are late in language development are severely disadvantaged and schools can’t remediate this alone.](https://help-for-early-years-providers.education.gov.uk/communication-and-language/exploring-language#:~:text=Having%20a%20large%20vocabulary%20helps,it's%20difficult%20to%20achieve%20later.)
Speech and Language Units are hard-pressed at the moment.
The level of anxiety is beyond my experience.
**eight** of 27 kids can’t use the toilet in one class, that’s absolutely appalling parenting, how does that even happen, do they just not care or can’t be bothered!
I can’t believe any child (outside of having a condition) would need a school to teach them potty training at such high ages.
Any parent who has failed to do this will have no doubt failed in many other ways but for some reason I doubt they even have any shame.
Unless these kids have all been assessed, I think it’s a rather bold claim that these kids who can’t talk or use the toilet definitely don’t have SEN.
A parent not bothering to toilet train is one thing, but NT kids should be able to pick up speech just by being spoken to and listening to people speak to each other.
“One mother says her son was late reaching all his milestones, and had no interest in learning to use a potty before going to school.
“He wasn’t ready,” she says. “So when we felt he was, the school really helped with that.””
That is truly crap parenting.
The issue is simple.
Both parents are forced to work, which gives them less opportunity to actually do things like toilet train their children. Forcing kids to go to grandparents, nursery, childminders, home, its not exactly a stable environment to help them learn how to go to the toilet. This in turn is going to start to frustrate parents and carers and cause anxiety.
Fix the economics first, and allow parents to look after their kids and this will stop happening.
The lack of socialisation among young children isn’t helped by the fact that almost all parent and child/toddler groups act like it’s 1983 and only have classes on weekdays at 10am. Maybe put something on when working parents can attend and we’d have better outcomes.
There is **zero** excuse for a non-special needs child not being potty trained by the time they go to school.
They’re 5 for fucks sake.
I think a lot of this is certainly on parents. When I was growing up my parents weren’t sitting brain-dead scrolling through TikTok or Instagram or Facebook. They were parenting me.
I think it’s shocking going out and seeing parents walking through town on their phones. Sitting next to their kids completely ignoring them, letting them scream and about while they sit there scrolling. It’s just plain old laziness.
There’s been fundamental societal changes in the past 20 years. Smartphones are on thing. iPad parenting is another. Parents not even having the time to parent the kids because they’re working long hours or both parents have jobs, that’s another thing.
Call this doom posting but I think the next 10-20 years are going to be a huge eye opener. I feel like my generation is the last generation to be raised in a world without smartphones and social media. We are going to see unprecedented levels of mental health problems, or rather problems induced via a lack of adequate parenting to prepare children for the real world. Kids are being raised with a smartphone in their hand giving them unrealistic expectations.
People can call it just social progression, or evolution, or whatever. But it honestly feels like we are starting to regress in many aspects. Kids might soak up tonnes of information thanks to all the technology we have but if they can’t take themselves to the toilet or talk then what’s it all for?
ITT: users listing every reason under the sun for terrible parenting instead of acknowledging terrible parenting.
Outside of extreme SEN issues or being raised feral, there’s absolutely no excuse for a parent to not have taught their children how to use the toilet or be able to communicate basic needs.
I know the subs trying to sugarcoat it, but your standards for the working class are absolutely patronising.
If a child arrives at primary school and is still in nappies, assuming there’s no disabilities which cause this, the parents should be investigated for neglect.
I work in a special needs school, these issues are only going to get worse I’m afraid. One problem is having a nappy is a kind of comfort blanket for some kids, I work with two 8 year olds, they are both toilet trained, but neither will wear anything but nappies “just in case”.
When my boy first went to nursery, around 18 years ago, kids were not allowed to stay all day unless they were toilet trained, and this was nursery for 2 year olds, how times have changed.
We live in a nation where both parents must work full time.
The people next door are putting their 1 year old into nursery.
I have a child in nursery and that place is the biggest hurdle in toilet training. They dont encourage it at all and im looking for another location due to this. Amazing with the toilet at home and doesnt need a nappy after a two week holiday. Two days back and its like there was no progress ever made.
Ideally i want to take the nursery out of the picture all together. They are a child minding service.
So are Schools.
Luckily(?) im turning horribly disabled so will be able to home school as an option and put my physics education to use. Not everyone is as fortunate as me in that depressing regard though and have to rely on others to raise their children as they have to work.
…What kind of fucking society have we built here exactly?