Recent study of children joining reception class

I agreed with the article/you until this They say a lot of this is due to busy parents working & having less time to interact with children & teach them basic skills

Children at nursery are learning skills and have less screen time. DP and I work full time and our 1 1/2 year old has my accent. I spend lots of time interacting with her and teaching her. She has the skills that lots of Reception children lack because learns at home and at nursery. It's the lazy parents that shove an iPad or phone in front of their toddler and don't teach their children anything. Nothing to do with job status.

Our school Nursery class has 3 adults to 30 children.

This year (unlike any other) at least one of the adults is permanently changing children / mopping up accidents, and thus the amount of small group learning, story reading, singing, gardening is massively reduced.

As for the American accent thing, listen to many German people who have bettered their English partly by watching American TV - they speak English with an American accent. TBH I much prefer the English with a German accent, but the bottom line is that we pick accents up when we hear them. That in itself isn't a bad thing. Too much screen time is a separate issue!

It is a question. On a forum we are allowed to ask questions. This person has strong opinions and assumptions on working parents and nursery. I assume she and the generations before her claim benefits and churn out babies to stay on UC with no requirements to look for work and therefore can be a SAHM. That is why I asked the question!

Obviously, this could be untrue, hence why I was curious.

Oh don’t you know on mumsnet it’s a mortal sin to have not married a man who earns £250k a year so that you can be a SAHM devoted to your DC.

Maybe her Dad is American or she goes to an American school. Not sure that’s a good measure.

I currently teach in Nursery and Reception in the same 2 form entry school. It is a very socially deprived area. Most mums dont work and have limited English.
Of the 100+ children I teach, 5 are in nappies. Four have EHCPs and ASD with very high needs. The remaining child is currently under treatment for severe impactation so needs to wear pull ups for her own dignity. A couple of the children do speak with American accents because theyve learned English by watching TV at home. They also speak at least one other language and communicate well with their parents.
I have no idea who these 1000 teachers were, but in my experience theres not a crisis!!!

Well yeah, someone is taking care of these children while the parents work and childcare settings do play a massive part in toilet training, table manners and keeping children physically active etc.

Not sure what these people think parents should do? Not work and lose their homes and let their children starve?

One of my kids spoke with an American accent for a time, from watching Dora the explorer.
It turned out as a teen she had an aptitude for languages and accents, according to her teachers who are native speakers. She's very good at picking things up by ear, including languages and accents but also has an excellent audio memory.

Getting to the main point. These were COVID kids who had a range of experiences during COVID, or after when playgroups and library rhyme times were slow to start back.
We lost our 'village' for a time and the internet, zoom etc was a poor replacement for us all.
Hopefully that sense of perspective and social expectation will come back.

What a bizarre comment. You know absolutely nothing about their family dynamics. What’s the difference between an American accent and a YouTube American accent?

Yes, to me it’s appalling to see such tiny children - some look as if they’re barely even 2 - in buggies and glued to a phone.

OTOH one thing I liked about Peppa Pig when Gdcs were fans, was that at least she doesn’t have an American accent!

I still have a Sure Start flannel in the airing cupboard that was given to ds in a gift bag . He's 24 now. What a fantastic scheme that was but as you say,not used by the people it was intended for.

Curious as to why you think that is any of your business whatsoever?

To be fair one of the things picked up at for my child at nursery were the fact they weren't comfortable going up and down stairs. But it's purely because in our house we don't have stairs and most places we go are all on the same level so it's one of those things that they weren't sure because hadn't been around them much. My child however constantly wants to go upstairs whenever we get a bus etc so I had never really noticed it much.

My experience of this children are that they’re of the permissive parenting “they’ll do it when they’re ready” variety.

there was a thread yesterday from a woman who’s 3yo was still in a cot and couldn’t climb stairs. The consensus seemed to be that he was being babied.

Link please? What kind of study and which journal was it published in?

I'm not really sure it was a widespread finding. [Stair climbing] In that the teachers were not asked about stair climbing. They were asked about being able to sit still.

Then in the free form comments someone has mentioned climbing stairs, which has been quoted. But it doesn't say that lots of people also mentioned this in their comments. It could be only one person said anything about stairs.

The benefit of this survey is it asks the same perceptions for 5 years now, so it seems to show a decline in skills.

TBF I know many late teen / early twenties privately educated girls in London who seem to have this accent too.

And they are anything but neglected. I assume it’s fashionable to speak in that way.

30 years ago I had a friend who did it, because she had sky TV and saw all the American shows and thought if was cool to sound American.

Some kids with medical issues might be slipping through the cracks. I have child with hypotonia (low muscle tone) and it has been very difficult getting referrals for physio and the paediatrician and when we finally do get a referral it takes months to get the appointment. I was brushed off by the health visitor and GP so many times between 10 and 18 months it would have been easy to give up. There seems to be very much a wait and see approach with development unless a delay is very severe and children who would benefit from earlier help are missing out. I am certainly worried my daughter won’t be ready for school as she only started walking at almost 29 months and is way behind her peers physically. There is also very little guidance on things like toilet training children with additional needs.

Low muscle tone by the way is usually genetic or caused by problems during birth or pregnancy. Low muscle strength would be caused by not using the muscles.

What ‘generation’ are you? Most children don't actually attend nursery or childminders for 12 hours a day BTW. You may well have been in a good financial position to not have to earn a living - most mothers aren't in that position, and your assumptions are elitist.

Curious are you and the generations before you financially independent? Do you claim UC or any benefits?

They say a lot of this is due to busy parents working & having less time to interact with children & teach them basic skills.

Yeah right.

@ThighsYouCantControl - the stairs thing, could that be down to more children being raised in flats with lifts? Or just general lack of exercise means they are too tired to do stairs?

It's a survey. The comment about working parents is someone's personal opinion not a conclusion of any particular "study". Working parents isn't a new phenomenon. Women in my family worked since 1930s.

It’s not working parents who use paid childcare! It’s working parents who dont use paid childcare. It’s bloody expensive to use childcare and we as a country effectively told a whole generation of parents it was ok to WFH with kids at home with you during lockdowns, then are surprised that people who had dcs a year or two later believed the lie this was acceptable too.

It’s people using no childcare and just doing an hour here and there while their child watches some tv and it’s ok because they’ll give their child an hour here and there. It’s people using grandparents for childcare who then are too tired and put their dgc in front of a screen.

We need good quality cheap childcare in this country.

We need a campaign that you can’t WFH with a young child at home (without alternative childcare at home too) without failing to raise that child well.

Hopefully as sad as this survey is, it’ll start that conversation.