Recent study of children joining reception class

I’m not blaming working parents. I’m saying life is hard.
my parents also worked in the 80’s, my grandparents lived round the corner. It was definitely a village. We don’t have the village so much.

Nothing smug in my tone at all. I’m just describing the reality of every family I know, like I say no one I know can afford to be a sahp due to housing costs. That includes me.

The way we all have to live now is really hard on families.
housing costs, sky high, both parents working to provide and protect careers, family support non existent or miles away.
life is hard.

My children may have been in nursery but at least their parents can count to 12...

Wtf at all of these earnest claims that children are in for 12 hours a day ..

Did you just accuse someone else of being defensive? 😅

Funny though both my parents worked in the 80s and I went to childcare. I can use the toilet and climb stairs and so can my sibling. We are perfectly capable adults and have degrees and jobs. But yeh just blame working parents for this… ridiculous

When they say excessive screen times, I imagine they mean excessive screen use by parents more so.I notice parents not interacting with their children nearly everywhere, but scrolling and scrolling.

This.

there was a thread about it the other week where I said the same thing and was inevitably told I was judgey and unreasonable as "how do I know they don't have autism and the parents aren't able to deal with the meltdowns?!!!"

Erm, no. 99% of the time they're just crap, lazy parents who can't be arsed dealing with a tantrum.

If you look at it from a different angle - in the UK the children are carted off to institutions far too early. Screen time, I agree - this is disgraceful.

Whether you both work FT or send your kids to nursery all day, you're rich or poor, live in a mansion or live in cramped social housing...

✅ Don't give your kids touch screen devices
✅ Interact with your children

The solution is easy.

How sad. It's interesting to see that studies prove the trends that seem obvious.

Oh please, I'm middle aged and got in trouble as a kid for using 'Amercianisms' and we had 1 TV with 5 channels which I very rarely had use off and no internet etc... on another thread people where clutching pearls over a 9 year old walking alone to a friends house saying it was neglect but we where out and about playing much younger than that.

America has always had an influence through hollywood films, music, books, cartoons, trends etc... for the short window of the day cartoons where on we watched things like Flintstones, Anamaniacs, Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes and Yogi Bear which are American.

Its hardly new or the results of 'excessive screen time' its always been present.

Can you link the source please?

I am finding it hard to believe that in a class or 30 - 7 children are in nappies.

I also thought that children had to be able to independently use the loo for H&S reasons - teachers won't change nappies.

Wipe your mouth. There's 💩 coming out of it.

A lot of assumptions going on there.

What would you do for intellectually disabled children who never hit any of their milestones?

A lot of my peers who have older kids keep saying ‘just leave the potty training until they are 3 then it’s a lot easier’ whereas my mum and grandma keep saying ‘she’s nearly 2 and should be potty trained by now’

Our private nursery won’t let them move up to the preschool room (unless there is other needs) if they are not of nappies.

It's time we start getting real. Tie benefits to children hitting milestones. I'm not talking about anything ruthless, but if you're kids in nappies by 4, perhaps your benefit should be reduced.

We allow people to get away with so much under being fair, 'SEN', etc. We're doing our kids a disservice.

By your smug tone I gather you don’t work

Ihave noticed some changes around potty training that seem more cultural.

One being that there was a big push, maybe about 20 years ago, that it was bad/stupid to try and train kinds under about age 3. I think this is largely incorrect and has actually made it harder for a lot of parents. There also seems to be less understanding of what's really involved in training in many cases, and parents can't seem to deal with the "accident" phase, which means they try and take shortcuts like pull up diapers which undermine the project.

In general, many people seem increasingly uncomfortable with being really firm with kids about expectations. I don't mean mean, more, consistent. They seem to think when kids are "ready" development will take care of itself.

The poor muscle tone - so many kids get little time outdoors now.

It does but two of these people I went to were born in Ireland , had Irish parents and never lived in America. They had an American accent all the way through school (I’ve been friends with them since then) and they still have American accents. Some people seem to have a tendency towards an American accent for some reason, I’m not really sure why. It’s not new though.

@chojoko I don’t know anyone who WFH with a preschooler.

How would it be possible to do your job?

The benefits of WFH have been being able to drop off / collect from nursery later / earlier in the day - not to not use childcare at all?

This might be a controversial thing to say, because WFH has been so so useful for mothers and I do think it is brilliant. But I do also think it has led to kids not being put into nursery (because it is bloody expensive) while parents work. And those kids are often plonked in front of the television. It's a shit system and can only really be resolved by cheap good childcare.

as anecdotal as this study

i live in the south east. No one I know can afford to be a sahp due to housing costs. what I see is children being in nursery and formal settings from a young age. Weekends spent either working or catching up with house work and the odd day out as a family. The “lazy sahp” mentioned here, I do not see.

28 days annual leave doesn’t go far to teach your kids all the things you need to.

Yes I agree @Cornflakes123 sorry wasn’t clear! I work full time too and potty trained my daughter - if started over a bank holiday weekend and ended up taking a day or 2 off on the second week to focus on it a bit!

the nursery worked with me on it too though which was super helpful to keep consistency.

I don't think if I wad the parent of children in an average sized Reception class that I would know which of the 30 children were in nappies. I certainly wouldn't socialise with 29 families every weekend or be able to tell who was wearing a nappy under normal clothes. I might notice parents going into the bathroom with their 4 year old (of those families I did socialise with), but again I wouldn't automatically assume they were in a nappy.

My DC go to special schools. Every child in their Reception classes was likely to be in a nappy.