Teachers should not agree to this. Changing a 5-year-old’s diaper opens them to accusations of inappropriate touching. A stranger should not be touching a child’s genital area. If these kids aren’t ready for school, they shouldn’t be in school, that’s all there is to it.
Like all kids in my country, I went to school at 7. Not because I couldn’t use the toilet, which I, of course, could, but because it’s how it was done. Clearly, this in no way prevented me from achieving way more than normal academically. There’s too much school as it is. Inflicting this on teachers and on kids who clearly don’t need school is ridiculous.
Clarissa's Blog 
We need to start taking away children from parents for behavior like this. Not teaching your child how to shit in a toilet is child abuse and a clear indicator that you are not an appropriate parent.
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I can imagine isolated cases where it’s hard to get them toilet trained by 5 but this has become a mass event if these measures are taken. That’s very disturbing.
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When my mother retired, a decade ago now, one of the things she said had changed over time, and was really terrible, was having to potty-train four-year-olds whose parents couldn’t be bothered. She’d had preK and kindergarten for some ten years by then, and it was a new development. Either parents did not send their diaper-using 4yos to school previously out of shame, or the general belief they were not ready if they were not toilet trained, or there had been a pretty catastrophic culture-wide slacking-off when it came to parents doing this essential job. These were not children with developmental disabilities. We’re talking about normal non-impaired kids.
She was told, by the parents of such a child (who were both doctors): “but that’s your job”. Toilet training children is a job for the help, apparently. Why else would you send them to PreK?
ethyl
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It is definitely extremely concerning that, as people have fewer and fewer children, they do less and less actual parenting. What do you do as a parent if you can’t do even this? And why would you want anybody else to do it?
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I don’t think people realize that after two kids it starts getting *easier*.
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At the very least, there needs to be a pretty heavy social taboo about it.
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There is a substantial category of parents that never want another adult changing their child’s diaper because of the risk of abuse and avoid leaving their children with strangers until they wouldn’t need that kind of contact.
It is abusive to prevent your child’s development to this extent. (Of course there are exceptions)
there are also a bunch of 7yo kids who can’t use scissors! How Infantilizing
Amanda
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My children were never left in the care of a non-family adult until they were completely toilet trained. Mostly because we could not afford babysitters.
Please explain how this is abusive. I am terribly confused by this statement.
ethyl
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I am so sorry! I left out an important transition. I don’t think the first part is abusive. I think it’s appropriately careful. I was referring to the people who don’t potty train by age 5 (for typically developing children)
🤦♀️
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Of course. It’s definitely not the norm to not be able to use the toilet at 5. That this is such a mass occurrence that there needs to be school policy is disturbing.
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Ah! That explains it then.
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