If this is your first visit, check out the community guide. You will have to Join us or Sign in before you can post.
Toilet breaks
Misscollette
Member Posts: 2 Listener
Hi, I am a primary school teacher year 3. I don't let children go to the toilet during lesson time. Do you think I'm harsh?
Replies
Are you a teacher in school that has children who have disabilities and illness or special needs.?
My question is why ?
If you are doing this that is wrong that controlling and be bullying is that the answer you seek.
Are feeling guilty doing this then?
I had this situation similar in a training programme. Scars me mentally right now to this very day. These training programmes. Have to sign a sheet to have a break and then to toilet, if too long banging on the door. Only access was a key.
I suffer anxiety enough with out the torment of people who ran these schemes. Give me a key I can still hear it, say please I did and me clutching my stomach. No way I ended up very much the wrong end of this women's sadistic behaviour.
Remember I was an adult.
So please just think what harm are you doing to these children. We all need to be able to go to toilet.
SCOPE Volunteer Award Engaging Communities 2019
Mental Health advice, guidance and information to all members
Nutrition, Diet, Wellbeing, Addiction.
Recipes
Does your school have a policy on this? When I was at primary school we were allowed toilet breaks during lessons if we put our hand up and asked. Surely toilet breaks are preferable to 'accidents'.
I had one teacher who told us we didn't need to ask to go to the toilet unless a lesson was in progress. As we only ever had lessons, I'm not sure when we were allowed to go without asking!
I will tell you one thing if I was a still child and you stop me going I would soon tell you were to get of teacher or not. Yes I was a difficult child too.
I really do believe your walking on thin ice regarding what you have posted in denying toilet for the kids.
I created one of the campaign election videos for Labour, and Jeremy Corbyn,
This is a new version of Emeli Sande, Hope "You Are Not Alone
You can see the video here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P5o8hRHh9IY
He had a couple of spinal surgeries and a couple of other surgeries over the next few years, although the damned lipoma keeps coming back. (He has too much scar tissue to have any further operations now, so he's slowly becoming paralyzed, in his 30's.)
However, when he turned 12, he got a new teacher, whose policy was not to let kids go to the loo during class time (I dunno, some weird "teaching them discipline" thing?) Even though my Mum came in on the first day (and several times after that) and explained that he had a serious medical problem, she refused to understand. Our house was very close to the school, and the poor kid was going in his trousers at least twice a day. My Mum would send him to school with a fresh set of clothes and a waterproof bag, but he often ran home in the middle of the afternoon in tears, having wet himself or pooed himself a third time, and unable to endure the teasing amymore.
Even after complaining to the Head, this teacher hung on to the idea that he was just challenging her authority (?!?!), and refused to understand. My Mum took him out of that school 2 months in and out him in a private school, where they were very understanding of his problems, and gave him his own little bathroom to clean up in, and permission to go whenever he needed to, without asking.
20 years later, I was sitting on my brother's front step with him, watching his sons play and having a cigarette. We were discussing my recently acquired chronic pain condition, and he was helping me to understand how to handle it a bit better, when he suddenly said, "Do you remember <name of school>? Yes, I went there too. Then this incredibly strong, gentle, understanding man, who had weathered two spinal surgeries, an ankle fusion, and another operation on his leg all before 13yo; chronic pain since he was a young child, a 3 inch leg-length difference, and slow progression toward paralysis, said, quietly, "I still have nightmares about Mme. <hername> not letting me go to the toilet."
It broke my heart.
Maybe consider the age, the possible health problems before deciding not to let a child go to the toilet when they NEED to go.
I know of a child who gets very anxious when asking to go to the toilet so you may be instilling this in some children.
When asking if you are being harsh maybe ask who you are helping by doing this. Is it for the good of the children or so your lessons aren't disturbed?