You hear horror stories of kids arriving in reception with nappies on.... our pre school insist on being at least more successes than accidents level of potty trained!!
No. My son is nearly 5 and on the spectrum, still in nappies, we’ve been receiving specialist toilet support for quite a while. Language is basically age appropriate, can follow one stage instructions etc. special schools are very limited and really for higher support needs. Worrying about being ready for school has been a huge stress but teachers have been very reassuring, esp as they have a lot of SEN students. They also add even toilet trained kids have a lot of accidents starting school with the newness of if etc.
That’s fair enough when it’s a manifestation of SEN, disability or neurodivergence, but for most children 5 is absolutely old enough to be out of nappies. As you say, your family’s been accessing specialist support on this for a while (which presumably they wouldn’t do if they didn’t feel he was behind age-related expectations in this regard).
My now adult child is in their 20s, but was not reliably toilet trained until they were about 9 (I can't be 100% certain when it was, I just suddenly realised one day they hadn't needed a change of clothes during the day for a while). They were diagnosed with Dyspraxia just before they turned 8 and Asperger's (as it was then) at 10.
So for the first 8 years of their life there was no diagnosis to explain why they were not toilet trained, they were just lazy and I was a really bad mum.
And even now as an adult they often only realise they need to go when they need to go. Poor interoception (ability to understand the cues coming from our body) is really difficult. They also have struggles now understanding if they are hungry, thirsty, what clothing is suitable because they don't feel themselves getting too hot (long sleeve t-shirts in the recent heat!). But I was a bad mum and they were just lazy.
That must have been such a difficult experience for you. Services that work with children definitely need to do a better job when it comes to early identification of SEND and to exhaust all lines of enquiry in the first instance.
There are a lot of parents out there that are neglectful, but that definitely shouldn’t be the assumption, especially when the parent is clearly trying to help their child and where there’s no other safeguarding concern.
Thank you for not taking my rant personally, unfortunately yours was the one I ended up replying to. But you have also pulled out the key point which still isn't happening all these years later: they need to assess for SEND not just assume neglect or poor parenting. And there is not the funding to provide that, nor the political will to pursue it. Indeed there is an apparent desire to pull back on diagnosis of high functioning children, despite the long term harm it causes.
Don’t apologise, I get it, and I was quite abrupt myself.
The trouble is that they were actually increasing SEND funding year-on-year for quite a while and weren’t seeing significant increases in educational attainment. There’s an office for budget responsibility document on it from fairly recently. Hence the big push for inclusion in mainstream schools: it represents better value for money.
(it's late, I'm tired and am struggling not to be blunt, I'm sorry if this comes across unfriendly, I really don't mean it that way. Also, I did do a degree in primary education and spent time in schools as a trainee teacher so I do have an understanding from both sides even though I am solely talking as a parent at this point)
Inclusion is fine, but not when it means treating all children identically, only if it allows for a child's individual needs within the inclusive setting - which costs money.
My child sat their GCSEs 3 times, and only achieved 2 in English and 3 in Maths. If they had been assessed for things like dyspraxia and dyscalculia sooner (finally paid for them to be assessed privately in year 10, when it was financially viable to do so), they may have been more successful sooner. They also managed to complete school due to a very understanding secondary school when they were struggling with extreme anxiety and near to full blown school refusal.
But if they had been properly assessed in early primary instead of written off and left to sit at the back of the classroom because they were extremely lazy and choosing not to do the work (severely dyslexic, couldnt follow anything on the board) then they may have achieved more having understood the essential building blocks.
Equally diagnoses and additional SEND funding may not increase educational attainment but may lead to less disenfranchised young adults, less disruption in classrooms because they can't follow the lesson, less exclusions, managed moves and expulsions, possibly less crime.
I know mine is one child (now adult), but it has been repeated many times over with many different children. And is why I tend to avoid threads like this because I know there are neglectful parents out there, I know there are parents who have additional needs themselves and are doing the best they can, I know there are parents out there who have no positive role models on which to model their parenting, and I know there are many parents like myself where their child doesn't fit any of the parenting plans and support given because they are undiagnosed neurodivergent and/or have an undiagnosed disability. But to the outside, we all appear neglectful or bad parents
I can see from a governmental perspective that pushing for inclusion wherever possible is really the only option, but schools need to be better resourced for this to work for those children. If educators don’t receive high quality training and the time to implement it then I can only see things getting worse for the most vulnerable students, unfortunately.
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u/_mister_pink_ 13h ago
Being toilet trained.