For the past month or so the school that my daughter attends have been attempting to toilet train her. This is something we have tried – and failed – to do on a number of occasions in the past. The problem is that all guidance starts with “explain to your child”… so as our fae is non-verbal and ascertaining understanding was virtually impossible, toileting also became impossible. I asked many professionals how to approach this and they shrugged. I escalated asking how (because frankly after 4 years of nappies I am more than ready for her to be done with them) until we were referred to the wonderfully, if slightly erroneously, named child continence clinic. The frustration we had with this is that our daughter is not, by the definition, incontinent. She has the muscle control and the ability to be toilet trained; she just doesn’t know that she’s supposed to be. The first nurse who talked to us merely explained in an overly loud and painfully long winded fashion that, until she talked, she couldn’t be out of nappies. I don’t agree with this.
The second clinic sent me a survey to fill in, where they expected me to be able to ascertain on an hourly basis if her nappy was used, and estimate using the Bristol scale any matter in it (if you don’t know what the Bristol scale is, you’re very lucky and don’t google it).
The frustration of being told once again that no, she can’t be trained, but here’s a 6 months supply of nappies (providing you only use 4 in 24 hours) and they will talk to the school later.. My heart fell, this link between verbal communication and toileting was taking a toll on us.
We taught our daughter to use a fork and spoon, to count, to colour, to buckle and unbuckle a seatbelt and operate an iPad through “monkey see, monkey do”. I couldn’t see why this would be any different (spoilers: it is).
We tried encouragement; we tried giving her books with pictures; and tried sitting her on the toilet. Nothing worked. So, it was with trepidation that I agreed to allow the school to try at the beginning of the week. It was not an auspicious start. The first day she returned home with several bags of wet clothes.
We are now several weeks in, and she is either not evacuating at all, or still bringing home bags of washing. When I had the audacity to suggest that maybe she wasn’t ready, I was told quite curtly that they had “been doing this for a number of years now”.
As a former teacher, I did have to fight the urge not to shudder, as this is a variation of the worst sentence to hear in education (or indeed any industry) which is “we’ve always done it this way”. I’m sure you have, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s not working, I can see it’s not working, and unless you can explain complex bodily functions through the medium of interpretive dance, you need to step back and think again. Creative thinking is the most vital commodity in finding techniques that work for teaching anything. Trust me on this, if doing the same thing over and over again isn’t working, then a new approach is needed.
Or I could be completely wrong, I don’t know. I give up sometimes, as long as my daughter is still happy to go to school and isn’t coming to harm, I will continue to insult the washing machine with the endless loads – at least with the new solar panels the electricity isn’t bankrupting us any more.
Raising the Modern Fae 