I am located in New Jersey if that makes any difference.

I am working at a "Montessori" daycare with kids between the ages of 2.5 and 5. Today, one of the four year olds had an accident (while awake; she mentioned that it hurt 'down there' so I suspect she might be in the early stages of a UTI or something. I plan to keep an eye on her over the next few days.

As she didn't have a change of clothes, she had to borrow from a "friend." Now, I suspect it might be a cultural thing (98% of the kids are Indian), but I noticed that some of the girls- including this one- don't wear underpants.

However, while going commando in your OWN clothes might be perfectly fine as long as the child is toilet-trained enough to not have accidents that will lead to puddles etc., I can't imagine it would be the same for wearing someone else's clothes. In every daycare I have ever worked at, if a child has to borrow clothes from someone because s/he doesn't have any spare clothes, the child has to put on a pull-up for sanitary purposes under the borrowed pants until his/her clothes are washed/dried (if laundry facilities are available), a parent brings a change of clothes, or the child goes home (with instructions to wash and return the borrowed clothes and bring his/her own change of clothes).

My coworker let the child wear the borrowed pants without a pull-up because she cried about it. I honestly felt bad for her, and I tried to give her as much privacy as possible when helping her change. I understand why, at four years old, she wouldn't want to wear a pull-up (and the fact that she wasn't wearing underpants made it doubly confusing), but I was standing firm on the pull-up in lieu of underwear with borrowed pants. My coworker gave in.

So, what is your policy on borrowed clothes- specifically pants when a child has an accident and doesn't have any extra pants or underwear?

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