Potty behavior in kids

[lulalu]

Thanks for the responses! 

[Katy]

Not normal.  Have you seen any other signs these children are being abused?

 

ETA: actually it doesn't matter.  I'm a mandatory reporter and if I heard that restraining the boys in their room without access to a bathroom led to a room soaked in urine,  I don't think I'd even start with CPS.  I'd start with calling the police, and then I'd call CPS.  At the very least these people need parenting classes.  At worst they're turning into the Turpins.

[lulalu]

6 minutes ago, heartlikealion said:

I might talk to the mom... but shouldn’t she notice? 

I did tell her what happened when the boys were over. She didn't seem bothered. But she was picking them up and only over for a short time. 

She was talking to me and saying how the boys pee in their room. But again not in a concerned way, and found it funny somewhat. 

[lulalu]

3 minutes ago, Katy said:

Not normal.  Have you seen any other signs these children are being abused?

 

ETA: actually it doesn't matter.  I'm a mandatory reporter and if I heard that restraining the boys in their room without access to a bathroom led to a room soaked in urine,  I don't think I'd even start with CPS.  I'd start with calling the police, and then I'd call CPS.  At the very least these people need parenting classes.  At worst they're turning into the Turpins.

Well I have seen other signs that raise concerns. But sometimes it just is a feeling you know? And well I tend to go back and forth in my head. 

[Tanaqui]

The bedwetting is potentially normal. In fact, if you'd said nothing else I would've said it's completely normal!

Them having trouble peeing in the toilet may or may not be normal, whether they sit or stand.

Mom locking them in their bedroom so they can't get out, even to pee, is NOT normal and NOT okay. Peeing all over the room as their solution to this situation may be normal in this situation, but the situation is abusive or neglectful.

Mom thinking that this is a funny story to share with others is... huge. If she's willing to admit to this, what the heck else is going on in that household? It shows that her idea of what's okay and what isn't is seriously skewed.

Quote

Well I have seen other signs that raise concerns.

 

Go ahead and report this, and everything else you're concerned about. Locking the children up in their bedroom for naptime and not even letting them out to pee - because I assume that if this was an option, they'd call out to Mom that they need a potty break! - is a huge issue. If nothing else, it's almost certainly a violation of basic fire safety principles.

[SKL]

1) Bedwetting etc is normal. 

2) The naptime errors - I know some kids do this when sleepwalking etc.  It is wrong to prevent a kid from getting to the toilet when he needs to go, but do the kids ask/try to go to the toilet?  Or have they just decided it's fun to pee on the wall?  I have some stories I could tell ... two or more little boys together can come up with ridiculous ideas.  And one time we let a 6yo in so he could use the bathroom - he saw a spider on the wall so he decided to try to shoot it down with his pee.  I was not pleased.

(ETA - does the mom put the kids in pull-ups for nap?  If so, I would not expect her to also keep a free path open to the bathroom at that time.  She may have good reasons to need them contained.)

3) If you are willing to have these kids over again, I would first ask the mom something like, "how do I help the boys in the bathroom, because last time it was apparent they do it differently at your house than our boys do it here."

[HomeAgain]

That's not normal.  It sounds like they're passively teaching their kids how to be okay with high levels of filth and that's the part that stands out to me.  My boys usually sit when they pee and their bathroom is always an inch away from guest ready.  Even the extra littles I used to watch were always taught good bathroom habits.  I could trust a 3yo to go in and get most of it in the potty, though he might have forgotten to angle right at first. ? 

[happypamama]

I have a lot of little boys, and that does not sound normal to me at all. The bed wetting — that could be normal. Some kids don’t outgrow that until puberty. Mine have never tried that, but I could see some little boys thinking it would be funny to pee on the wall. Once. And I’d hope a stern, “That’s not where we pee” would dissuade them from doing so in the future. It doesn’t seem too odd that Mom keeps them in the room with gates — maybe she needs to nap with a littler baby and needs to know the boys are safe — but there should be some provision for using the bathroom, like taking them before naptime, pull-ups, or having the 9yo take them while Mom naps.  “Just pee wherever in the room you want” certainly is NOT an acceptable solution.

 

Getting a few drops on the seat or even not quite making it to the toilet, if you’re still pretty little, doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me, but making a big mess at 6.5 doesn’t sound normal to me. At the very least, if my kid did that at someone else’s house, I’d be embarrassed and apologetic. 

 

Maybe Mom is just overwhelmed? Six kids under nine is a lot. Maybe she doesn’t have a lot of help, or maybe Dad works a lot. I get being completely exhausted. I certainly hope I would not ever consider peeing like a feral animal to be acceptable though. 

[Bluegoat]

If it was just the pull-ups, I'd say bedwetting probably runs in the family.

But it sounds like it is part of a larger issue with the toilet.

I would not be sure that there was something abusive going on.  It' possible, but why it reminds me of is people ho get dogs, especially little dogs, and just never bother to put much effort into housebreaking them, so they pee all over the place all the time.  There is a school of thought in some parenting circles, I think associated with AP usually, that kid just do things when they are ready, and you can't/shouldn't try and push them if they aren't keen.  Kind of like an enthusiastic consent model.  

Sometimes it seems like a parent who is kind of clueless and overwhelmed can take the standard advice about that sort of thing and just go way too far with it, in a number of areas.  They never step in ad give the kids real training or direction, and end up doing things like keeping them in pull ups to solve the problem.   But that just creates more difficulty, in this case the kids become really abnormal in their behaviour around toileting.  

Anyway, that may not be what is happening, but I've seen a similar scenario around sleep issues, and talked to parents struggling with the idea of potty training, and that is what this reminded me of.

[lavender's green]

I won't go into detail, but I have a boy who tried some pretty funky potty behavior, and my friend's boy did the same stuff at that age. I talked to the pediatrician about it, and he was mostly unconcerned, but gave us a few tips and some guidelines about normal/not normal. We nipped it in the bud and we're doing fine now. I think it's a major red flag that they're not doing all they can to correct the behavior. I guess it's possible the mom is talking to a professional about it and the professional is saying it's a normal-ish behavior, within reason. The thing is, it still has to be corrected! To do otherwise is just letting them become feral.

I also think it's odd, red flag odd, to confine older children with baby gates. 6 year olds are big, strong, and smart. You'd have to be literally locking them up to confine them. I'm not surprised to hear about boys coming up with odd peeing games when they're being locked up together and denied potty access.

I think a parent who has their stuff together and knows their boys have too many accidents while using toilets should be doing a bathroom check after he's finished, especially outside the home. Maybe the parents are just overwhelmed and need a little extra help and some parenting classes. I hope that's all.