I don't know what to think about this - Some parents need to be nannied by the state

Just a tad.

There were plenty of parents who were great amongst my cohort, who encouraged their children to do better, took the opportunity of their child learning to learn stuff on the quiet themselves, who were proud of what their children did. They didn't need some posh bloke telling them they were crap at parenting when they created a warm, safe clean and loving environment for their children to grow up in.

And then there were arseholes, abusive, neglectful and absolutely not ever going to engage with anything. I had one of those and what made the difference was the school, the teachers, the safety of the environment, the cleanliness and calm, the knowing I wasn't going to be hit there. She could read perfectly well, she could do basic mathematics perfectly well, she could say 'Well, obviously, nobody wants Cambridge, if it's not Oxford there's no point bothering, ha ha!' whilst being damn sure that no child of hers was ever going to be allowed to get ideas above their station and go into further, never mind higher education.

He's assuming poor = stupid = crap parent and can be fixed by teaching who he sees as the unfortunate dim souls how to be somebody else, taking away the vital role that schools can fulfil by virtue of being Not a Parent. Take away the schools' involvement and make it all for the parents and you kick away the support from those who truly need it the most.

@TheWayTheLightFalls

"and the psychological toll of poverty and scarce resource for decision making. There's lots and lots to say. But in my opinion the example above is the sort of thing I'm not happy to see or lend credibility to. "

So on one hand you're saying that the stigma of poverty impacts on people's emotions and decision making, and on the other hand you just think the mother refusing the coat is an example of her shitty attitude?

My mum is 90. She was raised by a single mother before the advent of the welfare state and lived in dire poverty as a child. She experienced severe social stigma and abuse because of it. She eventually went on to become a diplomat's wife and live a middle class life, but I can tell you that the shame of her childhood has never, ever left her and it manifests itself every day in her decision making and emotions.

So my daughter is technically from immigrant family in France, we are English and her French was super limited when she started school in September. Now it’s October half term her comprehension of French is pretty good, she speaking a lot of French and singing full songs in French. The school is great, they do sport in the morning including balance bike lessons. Lots of free play and nap time. I was very apprehensive of this but she seems to be thriving, she started at 2 years 11 months. They do allow children to start in nappies now but I haven’t noticed any of dds class in nappies.

"some parents need to snap out of their state reliance pretty quickly"

What does that even mean?

You mean some parents need to just stop claiming benefits and move out of their social homes? Stop relying on government help with childcare? Stop expecting their children to have special needs support at school?

What an unbelievably stupid comment.

Gosh what an angry response.

I don't pass judgment on anyone - as I said in my first sentence. I started and run this charity, and I made a decision early on that the only criteria for access is need. You're hungry, we feed you, regardless of why you're without access to food. Also no limit on particular items etc, and no expectations of gratitude - I think you'll find that's not taken from my post, so I'm not sure where you've gotten that.

You say these particularly people don't genuinely need help. How do you know they don't 'genuinely need help'?

That's not what I said. I said that there is a tranche of people who expect someone else to do everything for them practically down to wiping their backsides, and that they display an extreme sense of entitlement. I'll give a small example, fully expecting that you'll pick holes in it, but you never know. One of my clients came to me last week asking if we knew of anywhere she could find a winter coat for her child. Now we don't have much budget for that and I went through various grant finders etc and came up with nothing. So I and another volunteer who also works in a charity shop worked together, and I gave her a budget of up to £10 and asked her to source a decent warm coat. She came in this week with a beautiful coat that would've passed as new imo. Offered it to the client. Client said no, because it looked like a school coat and she didn't want her child looking like she was in school uniform when she wasn't, and besides she already has a school coat.

I have an endless list of this sort of thing.

Now, we can have a really lively and interesting discussion about how some poorer families are more image-conscious and worried about appearances and being judged, whereas MC kids wander around in 4th hand mud-covered Boden because the parents don't have that fear, and how every child deserves many nice clothes etc, and the psychological toll of poverty and scarce resource for decision making. There's lots and lots to say. But in my opinion the example above is the sort of thing I'm not happy to see or lend credibility to. Buying a child a second winter coat because their first one looks too much like school uniform is not a problem I'm willing to take on, and I'm surprised that the parent thought it would be.

"but at what point do we say people have to take responsibility for themselves? If the state does everything then where is the impetus for people to do anything for themselves?"

At the point where you see evidence that not doing anything for people actually incentivises people to become better parents.

Is there evidence of this from research? From history? That children from the poorest and most dysfunctional families had comparatively better outcomes before the existence of social services, the welfare state, the NHS and social housing?

"Support should be targeted to those who need it."

What - like children who come from families who can't or won't meet their basic needs?

Considering RR has said this week that welfare needs reform - some parents need to snap out of their state reliance pretty quickly.

I thought it was a cargo cult. "Educate them and the jobs will come".
Which might be true to a certain extent in a globalised economy, but as it turns out employers from other countries who provide good jobs usually expect the employee to be mobile and migrate, not to have to open a branch in the UK.

Hence we now have an abundance of graduates in jobs which for the graduate are lower-skilled and lower-paid than they were led to believe.

Of course the most disadvantaged kids need support but at what point do we say people have to take responsibility for themselves? If the state does everything then where is the impetus for people to do anything for themselves?
Support should be targeted to those who need it.

Unfortunately the times article it's self was elitist drivel, Oxford and Cambridge are not the best universities for many subjects and contrary to their beliefs, young people can find out themselves where is best to go for them, I did (Birmingham, best for my subject at the time) and I hate maths so stuff that!

Sure start was good but wasn't available where I lived whatever your income as it was only in cities

You think overall dental health was better in previous decades than it is now?

This is from a dental survey from a few years ago:

A total of 69,318 children, aged 5-15 years, were involved, from 1973-2013. Caries prevalence has reduced from 72% to 41% in 5-year-olds, and from 97% to 46% in 15-year-olds in 40 years.

Dental health as improved markedly at a population level over the past 5 decades.

Poor dental health is now concentrated in minority of families from the poorest 10% of society and has got worse since the pandemic, predominantly because this group has struggled more than most to access routine NHS dental care for their children.

What's changed since 1973 is that we now know more about the long term health damage caused by poor dental hygiene, and so there's more of an incentive for society to adopt simple, cheap strategies to address this in early life. Sadly, wagging fingers at parents isn't an effective strategy for improving children's dental health, because it's definitely the cheapest option and the most personally satisfying for people like yourself.

It was though??? I certainly remember kids on my estate running around with brown/black teeth and some of them ending up having most of their teeth out under GA around age 6 or 7. Nothing's changed in that regard except much less access to NHS dentistry meaning problems now get very out of control before they're fixed.

When I was at school a dentist would come in every year and do an assembly on brushing teeth correctly and gave us all a toothbrush and a mirror to check our teeth. I don't think anyone does that anymore.

Yes I've had the same experience with my SEN child. It makes it so hard to keep a job for people who need support, which is ridiculous when working is obviously one of the major pillars of family stability. It also means DH, who could benefit the most from support, can't access anything at all.

So basically you work in a food bank and pass moral judgement on some of the people who use it.

What is it about people using your food bank that makes you judge them in that way?

That they ask for particular items you don't think they should ask for?

That they don't show enough gratitude and humility?

What do they ask people to do for them that you don't think they should receive help with?

You say these particularly people don't genuinely need help. How do you know they don't 'genuinely need help'?

What are your ideas for improving outcomes for children from dysfunctional families? Other than wagging your finger and judging them? Why do you think some individuals struggle so much with managing their lives and their families? Because they're basically 'bad' people?

I suspect France is very much an outlier here.

I think part of the reason for the discrepancy before is that educated professional women in France almost never become SAHMs and there were no real childcare solutions for children over the age of 3. So as soon as the children of working parents aged out of crèche, they had to go to school, meaning it was only the children of stay at home parents (overwhelmingly likely to be immigrants and speak another language at home) who were able to keep their children at home until age 6.

Some people think there is also an element of wanting to make immigrant children conform and integrate better into French society from a young age, but obviously that's not the official reason for the change in the law.

So why do parents nowadays not know they need to brush their children's teeth? Why has that changed over time to the extent that schools now have to facilitate that for whole classes? What has changed in parenting?
If it so vitally needed then why wasn't it 20 years ago?

In France, infant school starts the year the child turns 3 (so children starting school turned 3 or will turn 3 between January and December of that year, meaning some of them are only 2). The first three years of school used to be optional, and then five years ago the government decided to make them compulsory. So if a child's birthday is at the end of December they will have compulsory school four days a week from the age of 2 years and 9 months old. A lot of children struggle with this, especially the smaller ones who might only just be potty trained, or even not quite there yet. But the government decided to make these years compulsory precisely to narrow the attainment gap between children from affluent backgrounds and those from deprived backgrounds. This means that children from immigrant families who don't speak French, or whose parents are unemployed and don't have a dining table or any books at home, can now no longer start school at the age of six, potentially unable to speak French, sit still during story time or eat with a knife and fork. I'll be interested to see whether they publish any findings about the impact of this policy in a few years' time.

"The more the state (schools) step in then the bigger the incentive is for that minority of parents to continue not to bother."

The biggest incentive for parents to improve their dental health is that their children are less likely to suffer from a whole range of serious diseases in later life. If parents don't know this then they need to be taught it. If parents know it and still don't support their children with tooth brushing then someone needs to step in and help the children.

Metaphorical finger wagging at poor parenting isn't the solution to improving children's dental health.

There’s parenting classes now that are only thing offered when you need help, i was offered one as I’m having issue with my autistic child who is now a teenager. They run a course for autistic primary school aged children which they put me on list on as they didn’t have one for older children. Then they tried to get me to go on the one for neurotypical young children, the leaflet said “do you have problems getting your 2 year old to listen or your 4 year old to put their toys away if so this is the course for you”. I pointed out that didn’t sound at all like my issues with my 14 year old autistic child and they said I might pick up some tips. I didn’t end up doing it as it was in work time and I’d have to have taken holiday which I wouldn’t have minded if it would have been useful but it clearly wasn’t aimed at my issues and it would have then given me childcare issues in the hols. Then you don’t get noted as not having accepted offered help

architecture?

If it's an open discussion you have to accept viewpoints other than your own however I don't see anyone here resenting Sure Start, in fact the majority of comments support SS. It was a travesty that it was closed as a scheme.

Couldn't agree more.

It's really sad to see such nasty, judgemental comments on what should be an open discussion about how we equalise and maximise the chances of all children. You really are a special kind of stupid if you can't understand that this benefits us all and most importantly is the right thing to do in a fair society.

We resent some of the poorest in our country being offered a few coffee mornings and free baby massage sessions but we don't care about the richest few in our country sitting on obscene amounts of wealth, cheating the tax system and earning 6 figure salaries purely through nepotism. That's what's truly depressing about this country.

This for me too.

I run a food bank, and while I serve all comers regardless of my feelings towards them as individuals there is a tranche of people who expect someone else to do everything for them practically down to wiping their backsides. I'm not quite sure how one goes about reducing this extreme sense of entitlement without harming people who genuinely need the support, but I find it infuriating and harmful. These people then go on to have children and those children then turn up to school in nappies, needing milk teeth pulled and with behavioural issues, and the parents shrug their shoulders and hold their hands out for the next. (I'm speaking from what I've seen myself at work rather than some concocted Tory fantasy.)