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

I just can not believe you would allow a five year old to walk home from school alone, do they not have cars there? This to me is beyond neglect and downright dangerous. It may have been fine 30 years ago with much less traffic but now? No way. Shocking! You can hardly hear electric cars these days.

Six or seven or more years ago, almost every post on AIBU seemed to me to end with "Prosecco o'clock!" or similar. I know I am not hallucinating this...

I am not really trying to convince anyone that anything is or isn't happening, but I do think it's useful to examine the assumption that something vaguely-defined and "bad" is increasing, because this is a rhetoric used about all kinds of things, and frequently it turns out the thing isn't increasing at all, in fact it's improving but the newspapers are talking about it more so you get the impression that it's getting worse.

It is increasing in Germany too. And I find German parenting culture very different to the UK - I don't even comment on MN threads about what age children should be allowed to do things alone because my judgement is so skewed compared to what is normal in the UK. Six year olds walk to/from school, I can sign a piece of paper allowing my 5yo to walk home alone from Kindergarten if I want to. I don't because I have to pick his younger brother up anyway, but I could - and I probably wouldn't worry about him doing this. My neighbour had a six year old foster child and would let her go around the car park on her bike while she stayed upstairs and didn't even supervise her - I found this very strange TBH.

Screens are much more frowned upon though like everywhere they are more heavily used in more disadvantaged households, but much less casual use than the UK IME where I find people are obsessed with TV and have it on all the time. Everyone is outside to the point it's a stereotype made fun of on social media. Processed foods (apart from salami which is a staple) are less common. It is common to keep children home until age 3, and rare for them to start childcare before age 2. Mothers tend to work part time. Home education is illegal. When school refusal is thought to be down to defiance, teenagers literally get a police escort to take them to school. But anxiety based school absence still exists and nobody knows what to do about it here either. There is slightly better support for children with intermediate needs (e.g. behaviour issues, sensory issues) in mainstream schools, and more access to speech therapy, OT, physical therapy etc but children with severe learning disabilities are not placed in mainstream schools. There are months-long waiting lists for psychiatric assessment or treatment though not quite years like the UK.

OTOH they are very keen to give children time to develop on their own time. DS2 was nearly 4 or over 4 (I forget now) when he finally potty trained and both his paediatrician and his kindergarten kept saying don't worry, he's fine, he'll do it before school. They have a flexible school starting date thing where they "can" go in the year they turn 6 but they "must" go in the year they turn 7 and essentially parents can choose - we have been strongly advised to defer because he is a summer birthday but also a bit socially delayed. But there are also staffing problems in both schools and kindergartens particularly since the pandemic though I understand this was happening before then too.

The jobs for non academic people have gone - you need to pass health and safety read/write tests to become a cleaner.
Can you pass a driving test without being able to read -I’m out of touch so don’t know.
50 years ago we had a chap who maintained roads in the countryside where we lived. Full time job, he had a bike and a spade.
With AI taking admin, call centre jobs people should be encouraged to develop crafts and sports ability or what will they do?

That's blatantly obvious

Interesting that your comment stands but mine wa deleted when they say the same tuning, fundamentally

If there's a systemic problem then it's going to be about more than personal failings of individual parents.

My personal view is that social stress has really increased across middle and lower income populations for a whole host of reasons but particularly lack of reliable access to healthcare, and lack of access to affordable and secure housing. My brother still has two children in secondary - bright, lovely kids who now have zero enthusiasm for school. He thinks it's because their teachers are absolutely miserable and ground down, and that this is rubbing off on the kids.

I agree with this. When my son got his dx the school stopped telling me about problems because he has been reclassified.

Something I've found as a parent to of two autistic children..

I'm still trying to work to keep a roof over our heads, I have to heavily weight my hours to term time as I can't put either in holiday clubs. So term times it is just eat/sleep/school/repeat.

But what I have really noticed is how happy people are to just leave you. Mine got their dx young and way before screens. It was clear as day atypical behaviour with both rather than challenging behaviour. My 7YO isn't toilet trained, he 100% has something going on with his muscles. The continence service, GP and any other gateway practitioner will not entertain the suggestion there is something wrong because "he is autistic and it is part of his autism". I asked for more in depth help and his diagnosis is actually a barrier to help. What could have been medically examined 4 years ago when I first asked has still not got beyond it being part of his autism.

Speech and language won't support my children, because speech and language issues are.. part of their autism.

Provision removed from ehcps because provisions are supporting needs that are just an expected part of autism etc.

It feels very much that despite having two high needs children, their diagnoses actually mean we get no help whatsoever.

My oldest has full time 1-1, she spends most of her day interacting alone with her adult. She doesn't qualify for the social skills groups because she has a 1-1 who is to provide all of her provision and those groups are for every other child without an ehcp. It often feels like that these days society has such low expectations we are disabling children from the age of 2/3!

I'm one person, I openly admit I need some guidance and I do have to pick priorities in terms of working on skills but there is nothing there to help us.

What about natural selection and strongest genes survive? Nature used to be in charge of this but medicine has advanced. More babies survive nowadays with the advancement of medicine which can mean complex conditions and needs. I don't mean this in a nasty way, I am just saying maybe it's a "side effect" of it

The timing here don't fit though. Mothers before about the 80's were actively told to drink guinness while pregnant, for the iron. Also, my son is 18 and when I was pregnant we were told that it was ok to drink a few units per week. (Unless you were like me and vomited even from the smell of alcohol!). I am aware that the guidance changed a few years later to no alcohol at all.
So surely the putative FASD epidemic would have occurred a lot earlier, rather than now?

I agree too. Shopping centres and supermarkets make me feel really angsty. It feels like a sensory overload.

Alcohol has been around a long time. I don’t believe our habits have changed so significantly that it’s likely to be the root cause.

I’ve just looked online and it said something like 4.3% of babies to heavy drinkers develop FAS. That’s a very small proportion for the group classed as “heavy”.

I completely agree with this. I read a book called Focus by Johann Hari that said as much. Our brains need peace to reflect and process rather than constantly consuming stimuli from outside sources.
I am not ND and even I walk around supermarkets with my sunglasses on and calming music in my earphones. I feel worked up almost the moment I step in there.

I meant to also say - with the rise of binge drinking among women as well as the “wine o clock” type of drinking, women are drinking more than previous generations. For someone who isn’t actively trying to get pregnant, they may be 8 weeks along or more before realizing, by which time the damage has been done.

There is absolutely no move towards alcohol in pregnancy. The message is clear - there’s no safe limit. If there is an issue with FASD it is not because public perception of risk has decreased.

It absolutely isn’t. There are endless posts on here about how it’s okay to have some wine or champagne or whatever when pregnant. It’s seen as very unfashionable to abstain. People were constantly telling me it was okay to have a small drink when pregnant and I was absolutely not having it. There are fashionable pregnancy books that say it’s fine. I think this is especially the case among more educated/wealthy women who would have abstained in previous generations.

There is no reason to believe FASD is the issue.

This is so infuriating because there is so much bad messaging out there about drinking during pregnancy. The message now seems to be that a small amount of alcohol is just fine, and there doesn’t really seem to be enough evidence to support this (lack of evidence of harm is not the same as evidence of no harm). And honestly if someone can’t control themselves for 9 months and say no to alcohol, what can you hope for in terms of teaching their child boundaries and self control?

Sounds like a brilliant idea.

Everybody benefits from " the system". Disability or no.

But you 'can't work' so have possibly never contributed as a tax-payer and you're currently saying you couldn't work because of LED lights and screens giving you a headache and nausea.

You might not be claiming benefits now but you are certainly benefitting from the 'system' as a SAHM. Your prenatal, maternity and postnatal care. Your
GP. Your DC future education..

I don't need to 'relax' .

How do you think all the public services you're using are funded?

If you didn't realise, it's from people working and paying tax.

Even if they don't like LED lights..