24 secrets of daycare teachers—steal their tricks!

Little ones are often so transfixed with what they’re doing, they don’t want to interrupt that activity to go to the bathroom. Developmentally, they may believe the toy or activity will no longer be there when they get back, so they’ll wait until it’s accident city. VanGerwen gets around this by allowing her extra-persistent daycare kids to bring their toy or activity with them. “We never bring toys into the washroom,” she says, “but we have a space close to the washroom so that they’re not quite out of sight, out of mind. We’ll tell the kid, ‘Your toy is here,’ and when we’re finished, I’ll say, ‘Oh, look, your toy is still here’ to build that trust. Pretty quickly they realize it’s not such a terrible thing to go pee.”