[Long rant]
My brother has two twin autistic boys.
I came back from the UK to Canada a few times in the past to see family and when I spent time with them … I came really close to getting them to talk back to me. My brother would always come home later and then say: “gooo gooo gaga”. I was like, “what the hell are you doing? I’m almost able to get them to repeat what I say”. He was like, “oh it’s fine, they’ll pick it up”
Years passed. I came back to move in with my brother and when the kids were 4, almost 5. Guess what? They’re not toilet trained and they have speech issues. They can say colours, numbers, and shapes and can sometimes repeat things but they have no concept of sentences and stuff. My mother’s helping them take care of the kids but she’s addicted to her phone and speaks mainly in Chinese and didn’t really understand the purpose of getting the kids to learn incrementally. Their actual mother and father just keep saying “they’ll pick it up”. My brother actually said: “oh, it’s okay, you know why I’m not worried. Grade 1 teachers can still change them”. Their mother was like: “they’re autistic! I’ll change them as long as they need!”
The fury it sent through me while I was there was insane. I’m not a parent but while I was living there, I got them connected with my behavioural therapist friend and did so many speech exercises with them. I remember specifically knowing they loved to be picked up. Every time I picked them up, I said “up” and worked all their phrases from there. It was one of the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Especially when their parents come home and my mother would just undo a lot of my progress because they would just do things for them instead of letting them do it themselves. Toilet training these kids was no picnic either … I had to hold one of them down onto the portable toilet thing when he was constipated to half understand the concept. Did I do anything the best way? Most certainly not. However, these two kids can talk now and they were toilet trained after a few months.
I’ve never felt so drained and so angry at my brother and his wife for being so absolutely inept.
They say parenting comes with no guidebook, and that’s true…but OTOH, maybe common sense isn’t so common either.
I’m not here to judge anyone: I have two ASD kids and am ASD myself. That shit is hard.
One of the good things I did as a parent is enrolled my kids in a year of Montessori based pre-school. They teach the kids to clean, cook, use keys, use locks, look at people when talking, put beads on a string, brush teeth and hair, make cups of tea, use scissors etc. I know Montessori is seen as a sort of hippy-dippy thing but my experience has been the exact opposite. Don’t get me wrong, I still had to take my eldest to Speech Pathology but they (the school) laid a good foundation.
One thing to mention that might help you: ASD kids have whack bodily perception. They literally have to be taught that “feeling full bladder” = “need to go pee”. It seems insane but they just don’t…notice it, until too late. The don’t understand the body sensation.
Lot’s weird little body quirks like this.
Anyway, good luck to you. I always think to myself “be kind; everyone one is fucked up one way or another”
I actually agree with you. My twin nephews are high functioning though. However, their outbursts, communication skills and stuff are just quite delayed. Their math is absolutely amazing though. When they were around 6 they knew their times table up to 13. I taught them quite a lot myself with long division, fractions, 2D-3D formulas of shapes and a few formulas I thought were fun like the sum of natural numbers. All by 8.
The bathroom thing is hilarious because the eldest learned later than the youngest but the youngest just doesn’t understand he needs to go until it’s an ABSOLUTE EMERGENCY. lol, so many close calls and umm … “accidents”. I also had to teach their parents that they shouldn’t give them a full glass of water every night because they seem to consistently wet the bed.
I hate judging parents, so what you’re hearing is a total outburst of 3-5 years of living with them and just getting so exhausted – like I’m a single guy living in London and every week would be something new to me. I literally put so much time and money because I saw the parents not putting the required effort for these types of kids …
(sorry more ranting …)
They both love watching K-Dramas (as they should). However, they would watch it till like 2-3am on a Friday. Weekends they would sleep in until 2-3pm. They used to keep the kids up until 1am-2am because “they” were up. After I got there, they finally put the kids to sleep at a reasonable hour like 9pm. However, on Saturday morning the kids would be up at 7am and they would just sleep in. My brother would wake up fix the kids some breakfast and then hand the kids an iPad and then go back to sleep himself. Bear in mind he doesn’t wake up until afternoon, so the kids would have an iPad for 6 hours or so before the day started for them. There’s a lot more where the mum was working or gaming in her room all day (my own mum and me would be taking care of the kids) … she would leave the room to say “goodnight” to the kids and then she would go back to her room. My brother would do the same. I don’t mean to demean their jobs but I don’t think any job requires you to stay at your computer THAT long and I’m a programmer.
Also my brother wouldn’t buy the kids “books” because they don’t know how to read yet. They didn’t understand the concept of reading to your kids until I did it and they felt embarrassed.
Honestly, parenting really isn’t easy. I feel as though it was simpler in my parents generation because it feels like every parent needs to monitor their kids far more now. Also, if it was easy, I wouldn’t be helping this much to get them out. I still love them all (even the parents I’m trashing) and I wouldn’t have traded this experience for anything. Seeing the kids learn and pick up things and the bond they have with me is priceless.
Thank you for making a part of the world at least a little bit better. Your efforts are worth it.
Honestly, thanks. I never heard my brother say that although I know he is appreciative … but like, I’ve never heard it. So thank you.
In another place the adults would have been reported to CPS.
teachers estimated 26 per cent of the children in their reception class this year were having frequent toilet mishaps
That sounds almost unbelieveably high.
It’s true. I work in education and we have 1st graders we are potty training. It’s usually because both parents are working two jobs and are Gen z. Kids rasing kids in a society were birth rates are plummeting. Each year the drop in numbers of pre school and kindergarten students is alarming. (we had to layoff 2 pre school and 2 kindergarten teachers last year. We only have 2 of each left in a school designed for 8 each.) I live in a state that has its head above water. Imagine what it’s like in Alabama or Mississippi. Places with no running water. I’d be shocked if the US even had records of poor rural town births because they don’t have any hospitals out there. Probably the first time those states realize a life was born is when that parent tries enrolling their kid.
Edit: wanted to add that the talking birth rate impacts young new parents because the support network that would have helped 30 years ago is gone. On every level. Young parents could at least lean on other parents for advice and help. When you are literally the only parents in your neighborhood it’s tough. Baby isles in the grocery store are smaller than ever, with companies that make baby products need to charge more because their customers base is shrinking. (why a profit based economies is a bad idea.) What does a parent do when their local school has zero prep school teachers and kinder because the school can’t afford to hire a teacher for just 5 students.
As a parent trying to get a kid potty trained, modern diapers are also a problem. They are too good at their job, so there is less negative consequences and it takes them longer to identify the feelings of needing to go.
Also, it’s very difficult to get daycare to stick it out with you and once a child is in the 3-4 range, it becomes exponentially more difficult to modify bathroom habits. They will literally shit themselves just because you ask them to use a toilet at this stage.
When our kid had just turned 3, we had started making really solid progress finally. He was good with pee, starting to (slowly) get the hang of pooping, and would actually request to go to the bathroom before bedtime if he felt he needed to. Then daycare basically said they wouldn’t deal with poopy training underwear anymore and bring him back with diapers, and all progress was lost. Now, nearly a year later, it feels like we’re still clawing our way back to where we were.
It’s because your daycare staff is under paid, under trained, and under supported. We treat child care workers like trash in America. I have teacher friends ready to go to manual labor over teaching another day.
I don’t disagree, but doesn’t change the fact it makes it even more challenging to potty train. But, yeah, our daycare workers make barely anything and it’s still around 40k/yr here for full time daycare at a good but average daycare. It’s nuts.
Go back to cloth. Gross but at least you’ll save money. I’m 37 and I was in cloth diapers. The disposable diapers revolution was never ment to be the everyday diaper. Great when on the go but if you are going to be home. Plus the environment.
It can be an expensive initial investment these days. To get back to it would likely require a state sponsored program with classes on how it all actually works.
12 years ago, I got a whole set of cloth diapers (20 inserts) and 10 covers for around $100. No doubt its twice as much today…
I didn’t even end up using them, I had to move to a new place, it didn’t have on site laundry. Wasn’t using cloth diapers without a washing machine. Did end up giving them for free to a couple expecting.
My grandmother wanted to pay for a diaper services for me, a thing of her time. It’s not a thing anymore, but I guess you could hire a service, they would come and take the dirty ones and give you clean ones weekly back in the day.
Yeah we took away the diapers when it was time to train and our child hated being wet he was trained to pee in the toilet in about a week.
BMs took a bit longer and had a few gross accidents, but we got there in a month or two.
Surely you could just buy worse diapers?
This is what I keep trying to explain to people when they laugh at the falling birthrate and go “haha more resources for my kids”
No no, if there are less kids they take those resources away
They expect the teachers to deal with it
Yeah, because it comes with the client base. Even 30 years ago there were still 4 year olds that needed guidance. The children aren’t totally removed from what to do but they do need help.
Who’s the client? The student, parent, society, or the payer?
Erh I dunno for the other parents but here children go to school as of 2.5 yo. Technically we could have him at the daycare until 3 but he was already bored to death so we chose to move him to school. At 2.5 yo he wasn’t done with it. Nowadays at about 3 he’s good for the day. Nights not yet.
How would you approach this? Let your kid bore himself? Also when one becomes a teacher for such small kids they expect this… until they are about 4 it’s not exceptional. They have additional personnel helping them even.
They also still do nap times… is that also unfair to the teachers?
That’s not actual school with certified educators. You’re talking about daycare and preschool. They deal with diapers and basic motor skills. If it was school there would be state standards with regular testing.
Nha kiddo is outa daycare trust me I felt the billing difference… preschool technically until he’s 3 but in his school it’s mixed classroom. Belgium btw.
Wikipedia says that Belgium provides a free pre-school from the age of 2.5 years and pre-school is mandatory at the age of 5 years.
This is what pre-school looks like:
There are no formal lessons or assessments, and everything is taught through a framework of play.
Feel free to correct me, I‘m not from Belgium.
Not exactly surprising, and certainly a broader trend than the UK. Lots of parents aren’t really parenting. There’s parents who just let kids do whatever and ‘they will tell you when they are ready’. That soft approach just doesn’t work for things like this.
There’s also plenty of parents who see school as glorified childcare, and that teaching them even basic life skills should be the school’s job, not the parents.
It’s certainly disconcerting. One would hope that parents who CHOOSE to have a child would actually want them to grow up well and properly prepared for life’s challenges. Instead, kids are more like Instagram fodder, something to be shown off but otherwise nog given much attention.
Very scary indeed.
There’s parents who just let kids do whatever and ‘they will tell you when they are ready’.
I mean, having been through this with 5 kids now, that’s kinda what you have to do. But only to a point. There needs to be at least some progress at the very least by the time they get to preschool age. My youngest sleeps in pullups, but during the day he wears “training” undies and happily uses the toilet all on his own, both pee and poop.
Getting him to wash his hands though, that’s a whole different ball game.
My school district, starting this year, began including children down to age 3 for preschool. Prior, age 4 was the cutoff (by late September or October, can’t recall), and now it’s just a calendar year younger. Some of those three-year-olds are not potty trained. Prior to this year, it was mandatory that incoming students needed to be potty trained. I’d say three is the age where average kids begin potty training. My daughter started at two; my son was late three into four. Both went to preschool potty trained.
All this being said, I didn’t see ages specifically mentioned in the article. I’m curious if UK school districts are offering similar grants for younger kids. Because that’s what it was here in NJ: school got more money from the state to take younger kids.
Average 3 years when they start potty training? Over here preschool starts at two and a half and kids are generally expected to be potty trained (accidents do still happen of course).
I would say average age to be finished is before 4, so three. You can start whenever you like, but starting is sure as shit not finishing. My daughter was 2 and just slipped the switch. My son was more of a gradual change. Kids let you know what they’re ready for, and I’m not one to force things. I watch parents and kids pull their hair out forcing things because of X, Y, and Z, but I don’t see the point in stressing everyone out. And it all got done, everyone’s happy. I will stress them out in a few years, when they’re older.
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5 and 6 year olds not toilet trained?
Gen P
No, it’s the UK where children can go to school as young as 4 years old. So this is way less alarming than it sounds to people from other countries, where indeed children are already 6 when they go to school.
So wait, parenting means more than ejaculating a bunch of cells into a uterus? And I have to get off my phone and hand the kids something besides cans of Coke and bags of Oreos?
I guess every part of life is maturing later.
I wouldn’t say late… More like death gasps of a crumbling society. The youngest millinial turns 30 this year, younger adult are having kids at a all time low. Meaning babies born today are likely going to be from teens in rural areas with little resources. Not two parent house holds with social safety nets.
My youngest (4) is potty trained now, but took a bit to get going. He’s non-verbal (technically, he has some words and can get his point across with that and hand gestures), and we’re thinking of keeping him in preschool another year if the school district pussies out again.
What country? Maybe rural regions of central Africa don’t even have toilets?
Do you think people without plumbing just shit their pants, or that using a latrine is a natural human instinct that doesn’t require instruction?
No idea how you came to this conclusion.
UK
