It is common for young children not to make it to the toilet in time once in a while. Even older children can get into trouble from time to time. For this reason, it is a good idea to ask parents to send a labelled bag with extra clothes you can keep in the classroom if you are teaching kindergarten. If there is a child in an older class still have trouble with this, you can do the same thing with just that child and not the whole class.

When a child has had an accident, send them to the bathroom (if they are not already there) with their extra clothes and ask them to change and to put the dirty clothes in the plastic bag. If they are still soiled, even after changing, you may need to ask the office to call the parents to come and take them home to get cleaned up.

Be sure to put pylons around the area that was soiled and ask the office to send the caretaker to clean up “code yellow” or a “code brown”.

If the child does not have extra clothes at school, ask them to clean themselves up in the bathroom as best they can. If there are any extra clothes at the school (some schools keep clothes for just this instance), you can give them those clothes. If not, they can do their best and you can have the office call their parents to come get them.

Preventative measures can also be taken, for example, reminding children to go to the bathroom after snack or lunch and before recess or leaving the room for gym or music. An ounce of prevention…