British Parents Say It's Unfair That They're Now Required To Go To Their Kid's School To Change Dirty Diapers
One in five parents believe that children don't need to be toilet trained before they start school.
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A | Shutterstock A British council is facing backlash from parents after they announced that school teachers and staff were no longer required to change pupils’ soiled diapers during class time. From now on, if a child needs a diaper change, their parents or guardians will be called to the school to do it themselves.
The announcement follows reports of an unusually high number of students arriving at school in soiled diapers or experiencing accidents throughout the day.
British parents are calling a council ‘unfair’ after they announced that parents would be required to come to their children’s schools and change their soiled diapers.
The BBC reported that according to Luisa Munro-Morris, director of education at Blaenau Gwent council, South Wales, the new guidelines aim to have teachers spend more time educating and less time changing students’ diapers, claiming the issue was “adversely impacting teaching and learning.”
One union leader said they heard reports of children up to 8 years old who were still arriving at school in diapers and needed their teachers to change them, missing out on significant class time. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Wales valleys teachers and school staff have reported "very high levels of pupils coming to school in nappies.”
Still, some parents seem to believe that they should not have to be the ones called down to the school to change them, considering it borderline child abuse to force a child to sit in a soiled diaper if they are unable to make it for an extended period of time.
Even though most children are expected to be toilet trained before they start school, some parents brought up the fact that they could have medical needs or intellectual disabilities that prevent them from doing so.
“It is obviously a parent's responsibility to potty train, but my view, if you look at the literature, is that children hit their milestones at different ages,” one father, who has a 3-year-old still in diapers, told Daily Mail.
Data revealed that one in four children are not potty trained when they start school.
Additionally, the BBC noted that teachers are diverting an average of 2 ½ hours a day away from teaching to cater to students who are still in diapers.
So, why are an increasing number of children starting school in diapers? CEO of ERIC (The Children’s Bowel & Bladder Charity), Juliette Rayner, shared some possible reasons. “The longer-term impact of the pandemic and cuts in recent years to many services have resulted in a lot more pressure on families and the professionals who support them,” she suggested to Early Years Alliance. “This is affecting outcomes for children.”
Some children regressed back to diapers during the pandemic.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, experts noted a significant number of potty-trained children regressing on basic skills and going back into diapers. Time out of school had a detrimental impact on getting them to stick to the skills they had already learned, and many parents assumed that since they weren’t going out in public, there was no need for them to be toilet trained.
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However, as children transition back into school, some have completely lost the ability to use the toilet independently despite being well past the age when they should have outgrown diapers.
The Wales council’s decision is not to punish children who are not toilet trained, but rather a nudge to their parents to focus on potty training at home so that their teachers can actually do their jobs.
While having a child sit in a dirty diaper as they wait for their guardian may seem unfair, so is refusing to work with them on their toilet skills so that they can go to school to learn instead of relying on their teachers to change them.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.