Reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic -- and potty training?
- Joanne Jacobs
- May 15
- 2 min read
Toilet training kindergartners is part of the job of teachers and aides in Anne Arundel County (Maryland) Public Schools, reports Matt Small for WTOP. Helping children “work toward toileting independence” is a staff responsibility, the school board decided. The policy applies to all children, not just those with disabilities.
School board members called for urging parents to potty-train their children at home, but said schools can't turn children away if their parents failed to do the job.
“Neither side should be stepping into the other’s lane. We should be partnering with one another,” board member Joanna Bache Tobin said. “But when the gaps exist, we don’t have a choice.”
Parents have been complaining that "students have been left in soiled underwear, and soiled diapers and soiled Pull-Ups,” said Sonya McElroy, who directs special education for young children. Parents are supposed to provide an emergency contact who can come to school and "attend to the student's needs without delay," writes Small. But that doesn't always happen.
In the age of Pull-Ups, parents are toilet training later than ever. Once parents were urged to start at 18 months, then 24 months, then 27 months. Now the median is 33 months. Some families never get around to it.
Since the pandemic, kindergarten and even first-grade students are coming to Pasco County, Florida schools in diapers and PullUps, Superintendent John Legg told the school board. He wants to send children home to be potty trained, reports Eric Weiss for CBS12.
“It is not the kindergarten teacher’s responsibility to be changing diapers for kindergartners,” Legg said. “It is not a suggestion that students can use the restroom independently. It is a requirement.” He added, "We are not their parent."
The proposed policy does not cover children who need help due to medical issues or disabilities.
"Several Florida districts — including Sarasota, Manatee, and Hernando counties — already require parents in voluntary pre-kindergarten programs to sign forms confirming children are toilet-trained before enrollment," writes Weiss.
I think it's unfair to expect parents to teach their children to read at home. Some parents don't have the education or the time to do it, and see that as the teacher's job. But potty training? Parents, that's your job.
NO, NO a d more NO, and that includes pre-k-4 and pre-k-3; although the latter should expect OCCASIONAL accidents and schedule regular restroom trips (as was formerly the norm). I include spec ed placements in regular classrooms in that ban. The message, to parents and kids, needs to be that going to school means being toilet trained. Period. That’s a parent job.
It used to be that schools, both public and private, had lists of school-readiness-behaviors for parents. Kids with too many gaps weren’t admitted. I remember hearing that a relative really struggled with tying her shoes, but her mother spent the time necessary because it was an expected skill. Some of my own grandkids (now still under age…
Sixty years ago, the average child was finished potty-training by 18 months.
This argument evaporates ina competitive market in education services. Schools "should" do whatever their contract with parents specifies.
Under pressure from system insiders, who benefit financially from the span of compulsory attendance, the duration of compulsory attendance has grown at both ends. It hit a wall at 18, when children become legal adults. The thoretical lower limit is birth.
Children, parents, real classroom teachers and taxpayers would benefit from a shift in policy to a tax-subsidized competitive market in education services.
I keep thinking that expectations can't be lowered any further, yet every week someone excavates a new sub-basement.