“They won’t go to kindergarten in diapers!”…well, actually, they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is either a case of a teacher not acknowledging a serious and debilitating special need or a troll. Guessing the latter

There's also a bunch of info missing. Why are the parents disclosing this info now for the fall? If this is a real story, the timing indicates special needs, not just kids who aren't potty trained yet. If it were potty training, the parents wouldn't disclose it now, they'd wait until August. Whereas a special needs parent would pursue accomodations upon enrollment and likely be producing a doctor's recommendation.

I also bet troll and I find the second teacher bizarrely claiming the exact same situation (3 kindergarteners in diapers) oddly consistent. If this were truly some kind of epidemic, we'd be hearing about it in more instances with greater variation.

Anyway, I have a kindergarteners now and no one in her class is in diapers, nor were there any kids in diapers in PK3 or 4.

[Anonymous]

My family trains very late. My sons were toilet trained 6.5 and 5.5. We have poor interception, the ability to feel your body. We all seem to be functional adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a K teacher and we just had our grouping meeting with the principal where we place kids into classes for next year.

There are 3 children coming in diapers…and they do not have special needs. Parents are getting 504 for constipation and diapering their kids.

So all those sayings year after year, “don’t rush! They’ll do it on their own time! No one goes to K in diapers!”…actually, they do now.

Sorry you have to deal with this. Hopefully these kids can hold it most of the time.

So what is the 504? Will the kids change their own diapers?

504 is an educational plan for children who may have special needs that don't rise to the level of a legally binding individualized education plan (IEP). Kids can have them for things like anxiety or ADHD or for medical issues like diabetes or asthma

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The result of child led potty training but the child doesn't lead...

Before disposable diapers, pretty much all kids were trained before 24 months. Lots of parents choose to train later for convenience now as it is much easier to have your child in very absorbent diapers than to manage a young child needing to use a toilet regularly.

And some don't train and do the when the child is ready - which may not happen until there is peer pressure in school to not soil yourself.

Agree
This is an American problem.

+1

[Anonymous]

How is this even possible in a non severe SN child? By the time a kid is 5, they would naturally know to use the toilet, whether officially trained or not. Every other person in the world around them is going into the toilet and they would too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher, I get it…you shouldn’t have to deal with that (literal) crap. And if it is just that the parents were too lazy to potty train, then that’s unacceptable.

However, I am also the parent of a child with an intellectual disability who has gastrointestinal issues, and it is possible that he won’t be potty trained by the time he starts kindergarten. I hope his teachers will be accommodating. The kids involved may well have special needs that have not yet been diagnosed. I’d reserve judgement until you meet the families.

Do you -- the parent -- come in and change the diapers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is this even possible in a non severe SN child? By the time a kid is 5, they would naturally know to use the toilet, whether officially trained or not. Every other person in the world around them is going into the toilet and they would too.

It’s possible they had mild anxiety/mild SN and the parents dropped the ball and catered to them instead of making an effort. In the SN world there are unfortunately a lot of people out there who advise wrapping our kids in cotton.

Or the kid could just be very sheltered and parents extremely permissive. They just think it’s more comfortable to poop in a diaper. It’s hard to picture but I know some NT kids who were allowed to use bottles/pacifiers until 1st grade due to extreme permissiveness.

The other possibility is sadly abuse and neglect. The child may have never been taught to use the toilet or may have suffered some kind of abuse around toileting. Or the abusive parent forces them to wear diapers because they don’t want to train or deal with accidents.

[Anonymous]

Some people on this thread have never had a kid with severe, chronic constipation. The judgment and cruelty is staggering, but not surprising.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some people on this thread have never had a kid with severe, chronic constipation. The judgment and cruelty is staggering, but not surprising.

Severe, chronic constipation can be a horrible and painful medical issue, and it can be debilitating and extreme, and it still doesn't mean that a school teacher should be changing the child's waster garments and cleaning up the perineal area.

Saying something is outside a teacher's scope of practice or not on their list of responsibilities or not appropriate doesn't mean it's a judgment that the child isn't worthy, and it isn't cruel.

[Anonymous]

^^"waste garments"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems like a very high number for one school. Where do you live?
My first thought was that there are special needs even if you wrote otherwise. There are several months until school starts.
Also, accidents are different from not potty trained. They may wear them and it will no concern teachers much. Talking about anxiety, check yours.

I am so sorry you have to deal with this OP. But I think the last bit here is key, especially since you mentioned constipation. A friend’s child has severe chronic constipation, which leads to very occasional accidents and less occasional soiling. It isn’t that he isn’t potty trained; it’s a real medical issue.

Usually this is just functional constipation though, not because of an abnormality like Hirschsprung’s disease. In layman’s terms, the kid is eating a ton of dairy and behaviorally holding his poop and does this for a year and the parents don’t want to give miralax and hem and haw about what to do, or deny there is even an issue, and then tada you have a kid whose bowel has been chronically stretched out and now it takes a long time- months - to get it back to normal and it requires strict adherence to a toileting regimen and to giving daily miralax to keep everything moving smoothly and easily. For months, to let the bowel shrink back down. Guess how many parents think it’s fine to stop the miralax and toileting regimen after a week since the kid seems better? Like, 90% of them. And then those kids are constipated again in a month because their bowel was still stretched out and poop just got all impacted again once the miralax wasn’t keeping it loose and the toileting regimen wasn’t making sure the kid was pooping after every meal.

If you can’t tell, I have little sympathy for parents who refuse to help their kids and listen to the science behind their issue.

+1. Less dairy and carbs. More water. Clear the blockage and move on. It’s poor parenting in the form of poor diet. Nothing more.

You are so wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some people on this thread have never had a kid with severe, chronic constipation. The judgment and cruelty is staggering, but not surprising.

Severe, chronic constipation can be a horrible and painful medical issue, and it can be debilitating and extreme, and it still doesn't mean that a school teacher should be changing the child's waster garments and cleaning up the perineal area.

Saying something is outside a teacher's scope of practice or not on their list of responsibilities or not appropriate doesn't mean it's a judgment that the child isn't worthy, and it isn't cruel.

Have you read through this thread? That's not the judgment and cruelty part. Most of the "how would this work?" posts involve the kids changing themselves and/or going to the nurse's office for help of needed.

I had a kid with severe constipation and urological issues (anatomically related and resolved by surgery; NOT a problem of too much dairy or late potty training). My kid never had a teacher or nurse help with changing, but missed over 3 weeks of school last year due to symptoms and recovery. The judgment and cruelty part is the idea that if the parents just fed the kids better diets or were less accommodating somehow (???), they wouldn't have medical problems. You truly don't know, people.

[Anonymous]

Looks like “least restrictive environment” needs to be explicitly defined in court, ASAP. Teachers being forced to deal with students’ poop is unacceptable it’s just going to turn the last of the good teachers away from teaching at a time the industry really can’t handle it.

And if there aren’t even documented special needs, I don’t know what the problem is. The school just needs to say no.

[Anonymous]

I had a student last year who turned 5 at the end of August. His mom brought him into school and didn’t tell us he was wearing a pull up. We found out after lunch. Mom said he wasn’t interested in potty training. We sent him back to pre-k where they have an aide. She basically potty trained him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some people on this thread have never had a kid with severe, chronic constipation. The judgment and cruelty is staggering, but not surprising.

Severe, chronic constipation can be a horrible and painful medical issue, and it can be debilitating and extreme, and it still doesn't mean that a school teacher should be changing the child's waster garments and cleaning up the perineal area.

Saying something is outside a teacher's scope of practice or not on their list of responsibilities or not appropriate doesn't mean it's a judgment that the child isn't worthy, and it isn't cruel.

Have you read through this thread? That's not the judgment and cruelty part. Most of the "how would this work?" posts involve the kids changing themselves and/or going to the nurse's office for help of needed.

I had a kid with severe constipation and urological issues (anatomically related and resolved by surgery; NOT a problem of too much dairy or late potty training). My kid never had a teacher or nurse help with changing, but missed over 3 weeks of school last year due to symptoms and recovery. The judgment and cruelty part is the idea that if the parents just fed the kids better diets or were less accommodating somehow (???), they wouldn't have medical problems. You truly don't know, people.

Cleaning up poopy kids and dealing with soiled clothing and furniture shouldn’t be the school nurse’s problem either. Once in a decade maybe when there’s an unknown medical issue that suddenly occurred but not when the parents already know that their children can’t use the toilet.