To think there needs to be a public inquiry into child development

There's the five to twelve study which is going on right now op

Huge surges in aggression and violence towards NHS staff, teachers (not just from DC but from parents) , retail staff, Police, public transport staff (including airlines).

I don't think that when this happens, some of the social media responses of "maybe they're ND, traumatised, have MH difficulties", the armchair diagnoses and use of clinical speech are particularly helpful; and are possibly contributing to the increase.

Agree OP, nrtft, bookmarking to come back to later!

I have 2 children all of who arrived at school needing help. Two are diagnosed with autism and the third with dyslexia. All 3 have been diagnosed with ADD. I agree that a public inquiry would be helpful because there is a problem with how children are being raised.

Being in the U.S. and having family living in the UK I’m able to see how the UK has followed US policies but implemented them differently and not applied the same funding. Another big huge problem is family court and the way children are divided between parents with little regard to what is best for the children. My experience has been that by 11, there are more children with separated parents than those with parents still together.

My experience as a parent is that their father is undiagnosed with autism and it’s greatly affected the children because he isn’t able to parent effectively. Now I’m divorced, I’m not able through the family court system in the U.S. to protect my children. Ideally I would have the children at my home every night and he would take the children during the day. It would be similar if I was in the UK. The current arrangement of week on week off means every other week they are struggling to follow class, school rules and they become disregulated. They come to me Monday evening, it takes me until Thursday to get them back. Schools refuse to get involved in custody cases, understandably so, but the courts are also very biased towards the non primary parent and there is much work to do on recognizing emotional abuse. I think most of the issues my children have would be resolved if the emotional abuse wasn’t an issue. Alas, never going to happen. I do question the ADD diagnosis of my children because it mimics the symptoms of trauma. The emotional abuse they saw and were subjected to by their father was so bad I didn’t want leave the marriage and there are times when I question if I should have waited until the children were a bit older.

As it is my eldest is 12 turning 13 shortly. My home is slow, steady, highly structured and child focused. Bedtime is at 7pm 7 nights a week with lights out at 7:30-8pm. We are up and out by 7:30am mid week and 7am at weekends (cycling or running the local trail to get Starbucks). Daddy is focused on his girlfriend. They go to her home every weekend so my children are seeing their father be with another woman overnight, there is a lot less structure, a lot of yelling and bedtime is as late as 10pm. He does some good things with them but I’m not thrilled my son, who at 11 has just learned how to ride a bike thanks to my sustained efforts, was allowed by his father to get on a motorbike yesterday. My son fell off after he drove into a bush and really hurt himself. My lawyers advice was to teach my son to not get on the motorbike. Hmmm ok. WTF are we doing people?!? This father should have supervised visitation and work towards day release with the children. Overnights should never happen. No wonder my son has struggled so much at school this year.

Call me old fashioned but my children know zero about my private life. They don’t know if I have a boyfriend. I’ve had two boyfriends which they have not been introduced to or known existed. Now I’m married to parenting my children. They really need me and I’m fortunate I’m able to prioritize them. Its a shame their fathers rights supersede the children’s. They deserve so much more.

I agree with most of what's already been written above re screens etc.

But what I've not seen is the Soham effect.

After that awful murder parents stopped letting their DCs out to play unsupervised. It was the norm until then. I remember going to the swimming pool with friends/ not adults from age 10.

Are there any 10 year olds now who go swimming/cinema/sports centre with friends and no adults?

And what about the parents? You can't lay all the blame at the door of the government and schools. Children only go to school for a very small percentage of their week. Parents always think someone else is to blame for the way their Children turn out.

I work in retail, the behaviour of the general public has definitely delined. I get sworn at daily. Have been physically assaulted. Very few people use please and thank you. I often get people just wave their phone in my face and say where can I find this. I constantly get interrupted when serving someone as though their need is more important than than the person I'm serving. It's as though I'm not treated as human. Oh and witness lots of toddlers in pushchairs with propped up phones. It's very depressing.

And about time - good parenting takes time and can’t be squeezed into a free 5 minutes here and there, especially not with stuff like toilet training.

Thorough research needs to be done into the reasons for the significant rise in MH problems and ASD diagnosis in young people.
It's too much of an increase just to be due to better diagnosis.
As a society we need to know why this is happening, our young people deserve better

YANBU. I'm amazed at how so many parents are so keen to keep their heads in the sand.

Why is it so sneered at to acknowledge that the huge amount of time spent on screens, by parents and kids, is having an impact on child development?

I've seen the current exposure of kids and young people to violent pornography described as a crazy, uncontrolled experiment that no one agreed to. But it continues. Children have no way to cope with the extreme footage they've seen, often on a friend's phone at/after school. That has to be a factor in MH.

Covid and lockdown can be added to the mix. Cohorts of kids missed normal social experiences at critical times and it had an impact.

I completely agree with the second half of this. The expectations are through the roof in every aspect of life - you need to think about a career, not just a job, your home should look a certain way, you should aspire to a certain lifestyle, etc. That’s before children and education even come into the mix.

I think screens, modern parenting, parental age, healthcare inequalities, UPFs and a whole host of other factors are contributing - including increased awareness. Two parents working doesn’t help - though I think a lot of the time when mothers stayed at home, they would have done chores when I was a kid in the 1980s.

Overall, I think the modern environment in schools makes it more difficult for some ND children to cope who likely would have managed OK in primaries in the 1980s. There is definitely something about expectations.

I often wonder about the state of our diet and the effects that has. Over production in the fields of crops grown quickly and harvested to get the next crop in. Combined with very over processed food. The levels of Folic acid and other B vitamin deficiencies as well as vitamin D deficiency are very high throughout the population.

I also think the phone usage is a problem particularly the ability to just look everything up. No need for critical thinking or a trial and error method. etc

I think it’s a combination of what seem like pretty obvious issues.

1. lack of intervention, screening etc means issues aren’t identified and no more treated until much later. We don’t see HV’s, doctors etc routinely anymore. Same is true for mental health.
2. Similarly a lack of resources in school. I’m not sure why we’re so surprised about the decline in behaviour in school when we readily accept there’s less staff and higher ratios. Even good kids are more likely to act up. It’s a self perpetuating issue.
3. pressure on parents.
4. better survival rates for infants and fertility treatment meaning children who wouldn’t have survived, survive with issues.

Why is it unpopular? I agree with you. Even in households that are not struggling financially both parents are probably still working to maintain that. There are ridiculous expectations placed on parents and their children to be doing certain things and projecting a certain image which is hard to maintain. Lots of adults are stressed or anxious due to this and children are perceptive sponges.

I don’t think human beings are capable of living happily in the environment we have created. We are all being pulled in too many directions constantly, causing mental health deterioration. A token well-being day at work does not even begin to scratch the surface. This all trickles down to children.

Why the shitty reply? She clearly says she's giving her particular experience and she doesn't extrapolate to the whole world. It'd be a crap discussion if nobody could contribute their experiences.

Also 1 in 10 not working sounds very low to me.

Yes, absolutely. I'm not saying that it isn't different in other schools. That was just my last class. But there are higher levels of ALN now, whatever the reason.

Exactly, imagine how a 6 year old feels if he or she is getting bullied, but the minute they get angry and lash out they get in trouble while their bully’s bad behaviour is ignored? And then they can’t really explain to their parents what’s doing on. It breaks my heart to think so many parents unwittingly send their kids into these awful environments. I’m glad your daughter ended up doing well :-) My daughter is also one of the overlooked and underestimated.

Of course there were, SEN children would maybe spend an afternoon a week in a mainstream class, now they are in the classes full time.

How to tell us you don't look beyond your own tiny world...

The answers will be a complicated mix of "all of the above" poverty, screens will all fall in the mix.
But no one has mentioned parental age, which has been steadily rising since the 1970s, and has links to increasing rates of ASD diagnosis globally. ASD was always there, but the increasing rates can't just be based on better diagnosis.

Edited to add that residential units were there in the 90s. My mother had to fight to keep my very dyslexic sister out of one and in mainstream education and living at home.

so we come from a very middle class London borough, children are apart of a very traditional catholic school with a lot of top line range rovers dropping the kids off.
my DC is highly disabled and moderately SEN, probably the most complex in their class but there is a further 4 children with ehcp in their class all from including mine deemed “ middle class “

I do agree with you, however I think it’s obviously a lot more reflected in statistics than it would have been say 20 years ago. There is a big focus on mental health now and it’s easier to diagnose dyslexia or other things that make schooling more difficult.
Cost of living and both parents working also means parents are less time rich and therefore some leave parenting to nursery/school because they have no choice.