At the primary school where I work, one harried mum recently forgot to drop off her son’s spare set of clothes and some nappies.
She promised she’d return within the hour, but 90 minutes later there was still no sign of her.
When I called to ask where they were (by this time, the poor boy had whispered to me that he’d wet himself), her response was depressingly, yet predictably, negative: ‘I don’t have time! He’s at school so it’s your problem now.’
But she’s wrong.
Nappy-changing very definitely isn’t in my teaching job description. Particularly because the child in question wasn’t a toddler, but a six-year-old.
You may be stunned to hear that a mother would send her son to school without first teaching him how to use the loo. But, sadly, this blasé attitude isn’t a parental one-off.
In fact, this slapdash approach towards children’s welfare is becoming the norm, especially among many affluent families.
