Originally Posted by Willow:
There are much better more age appropriate ways to promote responsibility though imho. A child cleaning up a urine or poop accident isn't the only, or anywhere near the best, way to go about instilling that value.
With my foster care license it was literally against regs to ask a child of ANY age to do it because of the issues it has the potential to cause or how often adults would abuse it. I had a 6 and 8 year old sibling set once, both had issues with having "accidents." Although they would obviously clean themselves up anything else fell to me, and I was not allowed to even furrow my brow about it.
Studies have shown it's THAT big of a detriment. Although it was very often challenging to deal with it went along with the job. Same goes for childcare, again imho.
I don't see how encouraging a child to help clean up their own urine or feces accidents is going to assist them in learning anything really. In fact, I'd be inclined to believe frequent contact with the pee and poo could very well desensitize a child to the ick factor of it all, and actually encourage them to feel comfortable with it touching them. What's the difference between cleaning up urine with your hands and having it down your pants and on your legs? For some toddlers I can't imagine it would be that big of a stretch.
That said I don't believe in potty "training" at all. If kids are actually ready there should be no accidents, so my perspective is a little different lol.
That's okay. Our views can be different on this. You do it differently; doesn't make me wrong. It's just different approaches.
Foster care is totally different from child care...I could never do foster care because it's not in my personality to feel comfortable caring for kids coming from traumatic situations to be in foster care in the first place. Does that make me a bad person? NO. I know my limits. I am not terribly interested in ever doing geriatric care either, like at a nursing home or something. And I couldn't ever handle being a nurse either.