Think ahead. This week’s newsletter is about poop.
Specifically, potty training.
Last January, Utah Rep. Doug Welton introduced a bill to require kindergarteners to be toilet trained. Before parents enroll them in school. Children who are not toilet trained are referred to a social worker or counselor.
Toilet training, or lack thereof, is clearly nerve-wracking for teachers..
“The best and fastest way for parents to potty train their children at home is to: Call the school whenever your child needs a diaper change.” the self-proclaimed kindergarten teacher said in a Reddit thread focused on potty training.
“My friend just started teaching kindergarten And she said she had at least one more in diapers and two more in pull-ups. I can’t fathom this,” said the daycare teacher in another Reddit thread with more than 1,000 comments.
So are there more and more children coming to school wearing diapers?
This is a difficult question to answer, in part because the data is not being tracked. There isn't much recent research on potty training and the average age a child masters it. According to an article in American Family Physician magazine, in the 1940s, toilet training typically began before children were 18 months old. About 60 years later, in the mid-2000s, the same article stated that parents typically begin toilet training their children when they are 21 to 36 months old.
Those numbers haven't changed much over the past 20 years, according to Dr. Ari Brown, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a pediatrician in Austin, Texas, for 28 years. Typically developing children receive weekly training between the ages of 2 and 3 1/2.Night training could take several more years, she said.
By age 5, most children know how to use a toilet. But it's not uncommon to have accidents at that age, and there are many medical and behavioral reasons for those accidents that have nothing to do with knowing how to use the bathroom, Brown said. These may include physical complaints such as constipation, fear of noisy automatic flushing toilets, anxiety about large and crowded school bathrooms, and concerns about asking teachers for permission to leave.
“This is not a ‘toilet training’ issue and should not prevent your child from attending school.” Brown said.
A proposed bill in Utah would allow an exception for students with documented disabilities; Brown said medical problems such as constipation May not appear in individual training programs.
Utah Department of Education does not track bathroom incidents in classrooms, and several districts have said they do not have data on them. The director of communications for Alpine School District, Utah's largest school system, said classroom toilet training incidents “are not a trend that is surfacing as a cause for concern (knock on wood).”
The communications manager for the Nebo School District, located in the district represented by the bill sponsor, echoed this sentiment. “According to the teachers we heard, The rates are the same as before, And there was no noticeable change,” he said.
But national leaders were told otherwise.
Christine Elegante, K-3 literacy specialist for the Utah Department of Education, said: She was told by the school district that they were potty training kindergarteners. I wasn't worried.
But when she held a statewide meeting with preschool program leaders, she heard a different story.
“I’m really surprised that so many people say it’s a problem and that more and more children don’t have the skills they need to be able to go to the bathroom on their own. After the accident, I couldn't change on my own,“It was a bigger, more widespread problem that we hadn’t really heard about,” Elegant said.
After the meeting, Elegante said it heard from more elementary school principals: Since the pandemic, toilet training has become a bigger problem in kindergarten classrooms. Especially this school year.
Elegante said she doesn't know why students are having more trouble potty training this year than any other year, but the school has increased the number of full-day kindergarten classes it offers starting this year. Last year, 46% of Utah kindergarteners participated in full-day programs. This year, 77% are attending full-day kindergarten. Full-day programs essentially double the amount of time students are in school from two to three hours a day to six to seven hours.
As class hours increase, the likelihood that a child will have an accident at school also increases. However, this does not explain the claim that there are more kindergarteners who do not know how to use the bathroom.
This isn't the first time potty training has been implemented in schools in recent years. Preschool teachers in Buffalo, New York; petitioned the office of education To create a policy on toilet training They say changing diapers takes up class time in 2019.
Unlike Utah New York and new jersey There are laws preventing children who are not toilet trained from attending classes at school.
Childcare workers have always dealt with toilet training, but schools are increasingly tackling this issue for one simple reason: Children start school at a younger age because there are many more pre-schools in schools than in the past. Zeynep Ercan, President of the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators, said:
“There are public school teachers who are not used to seeing these kinds of developmental changes. Now they feel they have to become caregivers. [as well as] educator. These two concepts always clash in child care and education systems,” Ercan said.
Expanding pre-K is a good thing, but schools need to adapt to the environment, Ercan said.
“The question is: how can we make our environment more suitable for children’s development? How are we prepared for our children? And how are children prepared to take it?” Erkan said.
It's unclear whether more kindergarteners are attending school wearing diapers, but Teachers can help prevent accidents by being flexible Austin pediatrician Brown said it's important to know when children will go to the bathroom.
“Teachers can play a pivotal role in normalizing the need to use the bathroom when the urge arises and not stigmatizing children who need to stop learning.” Brown said.
This story about toilet training was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Subscribe to the Hechinger newsletter.