This must be a fairly recent development. I remember as a child we were encouraged to use the bathroom as soon as we felt the urge (to keep down on the accidents). However that all changed in high school, but we know why.

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Number One . . . I order you to take a number two.

It is hard enough for adults to control certain urges at times, and to expect elementary school children to be able to do so is ridiculous. And to punish them for not being able to wait until a "scheduled" time in my opinion is cruel.

As wrong as I know it would be, I think a nice batch of chocolate x-lax brownies would be a great gift for the anally-retentive teachers that participate in this barbaric behavior.

Maybe if they are reminded of how suddenly the urge to go can arise, they might "loosen up" a bit.
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Always looking out for number two!

I think schools are way too hard on kids. They are stuck to schedules and tested before they even know what's going on, and they get punished if they don't comply. It's cruel. The least they could do is let kids use the bathroom when they need to. I can understand high schools not allowing it due to smoking and vandalism, but elementary and middle schools need to lighten up.

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Damnit, someone stole my signature!

I've studied this topic for 2 years now, and I've read just about every website there is dedicated to parents fighting this type of shit, pardon the pun. There are hundreds of stories on the net about kids who has shit themselves or wet their pants because the teacher won't let them pee or poop during classtime, and often there is no reason the teacher had to say no other than just saying no.

One particularly heartbreaking incident I remember was some kid who ran out of the room to go to the bathroom because the teacher initially said no, so the teacher dragged the kid back into the classroom from the toilet where the kid ended up either shitting his pants or going in the wastebasket. I can't remember where he went, but it wasn't in the bathroom and it was in front of the entire class while being held captive in the room by the teacher. Had this teacher touched my kid like that, I wouldn't have even gone to the school. I would have taken some serious justice out "old school" style........Jocko or Renaldo or Butchie on the street corner might have been paid a penny or two for some "questionable activity".

My opinion on this subject is not that the teacher is worried about the kid missing work or causing trouble, it's about control. It's a control issue and a control issue only. I am unwavering in this decision because I remember being a kid, and I have now, as an adult, read these cases. The only conclusion I can come to, one that would make an adult be so over-obsessed with what a child does outside the classroom, is that the adult feels a need to control the kid's need to pee because the teacher senses on some level that this is one issue that he or she might not have a good foothold on, and this drives the teacher nuts with some kids whom the teacher doesn't like. It's an issue that a teacher really can't control nor should try to - kid's bladders are so small that they need to pee twice as much as adults - yet they just can't seem to let the issue go because, in their twisted minds, the kid is getting over on them.

I've read every excuse a school has on the subject all the way from vandalism (yeah, second graders are notorious taggers......whatever) to sex in the bathroom, and they are all ridiculous. The bottom line is that if it's against federal law to deny an employee the right to urinate in the workplace, it should also be against federal law to deny a child the right to urinate, especially since their bladders are so small.

2 years ago, my son's school sent a letter home about bathroom breaks, so I sent an anonymous letter in suggesting that since adults have larger bladders, that the teachers be limited to half the breaks the kids are. I am sure the superintendant intervened, because Thing One never was denied bathroom breaks.

I suggest to all the parents who read this site to find out what rules are in your school. If they are ridiculous, bringing up the subject at a PTO meeting or writing to the local paper is a great way to make the practice public. The more parents that complain, the better.

Great story, Scat!
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.....hugging bunnies since 1969
www.daphneszoo.com

i agree, bathroom breaks are vital to life. it could be construed that they were provided for by the founding fathers. "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" i don't know about you but if i'm shitting or pissing my pants i'm not happy.

as far as school being too taxing on kids, it's just progress. they do more earlier then we did, it's a factor of there just being more to know now. that's the problem with technology and history, they never stop growing.

A couple years ago we moved "back home" to where I grew up. Potentially our son could go to the same elementary school I did and may even have the same second grade teacher I did. That witch is STILL teaching second grade! Unbelievable! If she is slated to be my son's teacher I will demand he be moved to another class or I'll homeschool him if I have to! This all stems from when she refused to let me go to the bathroom one afternoon. She said I could have gone during recess and therefore I should have gone during recess and would not need to go again for at least another hour. I tried to bargain with her, but she refused and insisted I stay seated at mt desk. I knew it was only a matter of minutes before my poor little bladder would burst, so I tried sneaking out of my seat and around behind her to get out of her classroom and down the hall. No such luck. Her teacher's pet caught me walking out the door so she (the witch teacher) jumped off her seat and ran to grab me. I froze when I should have made a run for it. She dragged me back to my seat and held me in my chair. I sat there trying to wiggle free while I knew I was about to lose the battle. Every set of eyes in that classroom was on me while the tears ran down my face and the pee trickled down to the floor. I was so mortified! She looked at me and the puddle on the floor and smirked like she won the battle. I was so mad I kicked her in her shin, called her a witch, and ran out of the classroom totally embarassed. I went to the school nurse to see if she had extra clothes I could wear while my mother came to get me. The fucking witch teacher actually tried to call my mother first and tell her it was my fault for not going sooner. I was livid! When my mother got to the school she asked what happened and I told her that I was held in the chair til I could hold it no more. She told me to go out to the car while she and the teacher had a talk. Not sure what mom said to her, but for the rest of the school year I was not denied the right to pee! She did, however, get revenge by making me do math problems on the blackboard in front of the whole class when I was sick and needed to go home. I turned to look at everyone right in the eye (including the witch) and puked up breakfast front and center.

This was back in the early 80's, but it seems that there are still some horrible teachers and administrators still out there. If someone thinks they'll try to push that shit over with my son I'll have to do some ol'fashion skull thumpin!

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Brown tidings I bring
to you
from my ring

Shitwit,
I felt very bad for you when reading about your experience, but all reverence was lost when I read your signature. Had I been drinking something, it would have shot out my nose.
I don't drink anything when I read PR anymore since CEP made V8 shoot out of my nose. You have no idea how badly that burns.

My daughter's school Woodrow Wilson Elementary in Newton Iowa, her teacher wouldn't let her go to the bathroom until she said the word correctly. She called my daughter a liar, and said she wasn't keeping her, that she addressed me in a letter, stating she was, due to wanting her to speak properly. My daughter has no speach problems, and she is a behaved child, no behavioral issue. My daughter has a boul retaining problem, and the teacher was made aware day one of the school year. I believe this was intentional! Deliberate. Because my daughter ended up with a bladder and yeast infection. Also, the teacher turned me into The Departement of Human Services, and said I waited too long to seek medical. I took her in a weeks time!
Needless to say, it's aweful nice of her teacher to do this, when I stated I was taking her into the doctor. The teacher was down right shouting at me when I told her Nicole needs to go when she needs to go! She called my little 7 year old a liar!
Talk about cyco!!! This school also keeps children from recess if they don't have their classroom work done.
Also detention, if classroom work isn't done. A bunch of communist, right here in IOWA!!! Schools are harming our kids!!

No more harmful than YOU, having published your child's first and last name, her age, her school and it's location on a public forum.

I might report you to Protective Services, myself.

Have a nice day.

This goes to show how out of control our yuppie society is today.

Back when I started school, all we had to do was raise our hand, and the teacher would excuse us form the bathroom. I guess the school system in 1982 was not all that bad after all.
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Watch out for the deadly F4, though he's been gone since '53, he will be back.

That was supposed to read from the classroom. It is late and the fog is settling into my brain. Sorry.
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Watch out for the deadly F4, though he's been gone since '53, he will be back.

Tina's experience is reprsentative of a lot of what's happening in the schools. My daughter, 11, is in a challenge program for talented students in her middle school. Because of its programs, it is one of the largest schools in the state with more than 1,100 students.

Last month she called me at 3:05 p.m. to say she would miss the bus and have to be picked up because she had an hour-long detention. She said it was going against her teacher's bathroom "policy".

During her lunch period, she walked to the other end of the building and up a flight of stairs because she had to urinate. She said the bathrooms closest to the cafeteria are very crowded at that time, girls hang out in the stalls, use foul language and generally are uncooperative with the youngest students who really need to use the facilities. She said she waited 10 minutes for one stall to open; it was occupied by two older girls, one of whom was sitting on the toilet and the other who was standing in there going through the girl's make-up, etc. Suffice to say they were just fooling around and talking about their weekend. Because she was caught in an unauthorized area of the building, detention time was assigned and she was forced to go back downstairs, where she had to wait for a stall (although not as long) but eventually got to go in and pee. She didn't appreciate having to use the last of the toilet paper to wipe someone else's pee off the seat before she used it.

The next day she got an additional 30 minutes of detention time by signing out of her social studies class for too long (she said the log showed she was gone 12 minutes) because she had to move her bowels. She said she rejected the three-stall bathroom a couple doors down from her social studies classroom two of the stalls had stools with crap in them and the third stall was without a door. This time she went to the far end of the hall and moved her bowels under much more pleasant conditions, she thought. When she went to wipe, she noticed that there was not any toilet paper in the dispenser and she had to make a trip into both of the other stalls just to get enough to wipe with. Of course, that would take extra time!

Of course her teacher, who is a female by the way, said something about compromises needing to be made and such frustrations being a "preparation for life".

I partially understand where the teacher is coming from BUT I feel the school needs to be more open to non-trouble causing students who feel they are being picked on because of the few kids that misbehave and who treat and occupy the bathrooms for less than honorable reasons.

It's interesting to see so many complaints about children of all ages and their parents complaining of teachers not letting them use the bathroom. My son is 12 and my daughter is in fourth grade and both their teachers have taken a different approach to the problem.

THEY REQUIRE EACH STUDENT DURING A MORNING BREAK, AT LUNCH AND IN THE AFTERNOON BREAK TO USE THE BATHROOM! That means the students are physically taken to the doorway of the designated bathrooms for their class and the students are required to go in and try to go. In theory, it seems like a novel idea because no classtime is being missed by any one student. However, both of my children see it as only an unnecessary requirement since they are well disciplined at home and only rarely have to use a toilet at school.

Tray, for example, usually has a stool once every two days or so and its usually in the afternoon right after he gets off the bus from school. He's gone in a 9:30 a.m. and sat for three or four minutes, but to no avail. He does pee at lunch as do many of the boys and hence the problem when they have to go in the afternoon and "try" again. He resents having to wipe the seat off (some boys pee right over the seat and, he says, sometimes also over the flusher). A male administrative intern does police the bathroom at break time and expects to see each of the boys in the class either at a urinal or in a stall. I see it as a very rigid and repressive situation.

Gina also sees the rule as a waste of time and effort. If she's not one of the first into one of the seven or eight stalls, she has to wait for several minutes to get one and then to sit down and "try." "Try" for what? She is regulated and gets up at 6 am. each morning. She moves her bowels at home either before or after her breakfast. She also pees at that time and usually won't have to pee again until lunch time. Making her sit down and resent it at 9:30 and 2 p.m. each day accomplishes nothing except taking up stall space from some other girl who might need it. Also on the downside, she said that sometimes when she pees at lunchtime, there's no toilet paper left and that when she sits down again at 2, more girls complain that there's no toilet paper left. Apparently, some of the older girls are putting toilet paper over the seat before sitting down which is a foolish move because they don't even need to be in the bathroom.

Sure, I'll admit that some students took advantage of liberal bathroom privileges when I was in school and I admit that sometimes I would get permission to just go in, sit in a stall, talk to my friends in adjacent stalls, and sometimes get out of doing something I didn't want to do in class. I remember once in about 4th grade another teacher came in and listened to us talk. She then asked if we were actually producing anything and of course we said "yes". She then peaked in on the three of us, found that we had our jeans fully up and we were just sitting on the toilets and not going. We didn't feel that flushing would do anything to convince her so we went back to our boring Quiet Time and read!

I've talked to a couple of my childrens' friends' parents and they seem to think the new rule is a novel way to keep down the amount of students whistling in and out of the classrooms and into the bathrooms at all times of the hour. However, I'm not convinced!

Tabitha's posting is disturbing to me. Yes, my children have a similar rule at their elementary school. IT'S TOTALLY FOOLISH REQUIRING THAT A CHILD--BOY OR GIRL--NEEDLESSLY GO INTO A SCHOOL BATHROOM, SIT ON THE TOILET OR STAND AT THE URINAL AND TRY TO PEE. My daughter who is in fourth grade finds it so meaningless. One day she attempted to stay back in her classroom where she was doing independent reading and was forced by her teaching para to go join the rest of the class in the bathroom. She hates sitting on the toilets for no reason and often complains, especially during the morning "sit down" requirement that she seat is cold and she is resentful of having to disrupt what she's working on and go do something so meaningless. Sure a few students are disrupting classtime to go and are abusing their privileges but why punish everyone for the problems of a few. She's very disciplined and both pees and poops BEFORE leaving for school in the morning and until the new rule was implemented last month, she had never used a school bathroom except to straighten her hair a couple of times. I mentioned it to her teacher one afternoon last week when I was late to pick her up and the teacher failed to explain why everybody needs to be inconvenienced just to eliminte a few abusers. I'd peed at the office before picking her up that day and would not have been surprised if those morons had forced me to take a "time out" in a stall too before we were allowed to leave. Somebody needs to stand up to clueless school administrators.

That school is completely stupid! I would've been completely screwed if my school did that. I'm an IBS sufferer. I guarantee had that happened to me and I needed to go, they'd have quite a mess on their hands... Or floor. Really.

I remember I had to have a doctor's note for one class because my issues always seemed to happen in that class. Could've been because it was the class right after lunch...

Either or, I think its disgusting that anybody would be punished for having to use the bathroom! I'd bitch slap any teacher if they tried doing that to (my future) kids! In fact, I'm surprised nobody has tried to sue. Considering I've seen people who have sued for less. I'm waiting of the sue happy people to have a hay day.

It embarasses the child. There is no need for that. Growing up is hard enough. And it is really unhealthy to have to hold your bodily functions in. Man, if you have to go, YOU GO. I hope they learn that this is the most horrific thing ever and karma bites them in the ass.