Adventure: Children need the Bathroom as a Space for Experiences

For children, the bathroom – at least in an ideal world – is a place for having fun, a place where they can splash around with water and mess about with rubber ducks, shampoo bottles and sponges, where mum towels them off and dad gets soaked by their squirt guns. But it is by no means unusual for children to see the bathroom as an anxiety-ridden place too: they might be apprehensive of water, embarrassed about going to the toilet or just fed up with having to clean their teeth.

In this case, an atmosphere of security can often be far more helpful than a set of colourful plastic beakers, and if anything happens to go wrong it needn’t be a problem for either the children or their parents.

More than anything else, children need space, safety and security. But they also want to be part of what happens out of their reach. If they are to feel part of things, they need furniture, toilets and washbasins that are in line with their size. If that isn’t possible, helpful aids should be provided so as to bring them up to eye-level with the grown-ups. All it takes to make allowances for this when planning a bathroom is a little empathy – and of course a little more space.