When young children do a wee in their pants or have another type of toileting accident, they can feel really bad or embarrassed. As early childhood educators, we have to deal with accidents in a kind and sensitive way to protect the child's self-esteem and privacy.
Accidents can occur because of many different reasons:
Weather conditions (sometimes when it is cold, it can give us the urge to wee)
Access to toilet and potties
The child's age and maturity - whether they understand the body’s signals for needing to do wee or poo
The child being too engaged in their learning or play that they just forget to go to the toilet
The child's ability to undress in time to make it to the toilet
Illness and medical conditions
Here are some tips on how to manage toileting accidents well:
Tell the child it’s OK and be very kind and encouraging to them
Tell the child you will help them to get changed if they want
Grab the child's clean clothes and undies
Pop your gloves on and get some wipes/paper towel to help to clean up any mess
Get a plastic bag to put the dirty clothes in
Go somewhere private like the bathroom/toilet cubicle
Allow the child to do as many tasks in the clean up as possible
Use verbal and non-verbal cues to explain to the child what to do to clean up eg: here are your clean clothes, take off your wet pants and put on the clean ones, pop one leg in and then the other leg and pull them up
You and the child wash hands
Try not to make a big deal out of the accident or talk about it to anyone else in front of the child. Quietly let the parent know about the accident at pick up
It is important for families to send a clean change of clothes, especially clean undies in their child's bag when they come to child care or kinder to help make managing accidents easier. If there are no clean clothes in the child's bag, you can speak to your supervisor to see if there is a spare clothes basket or box where you can get some spare clothes to help the child change.
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