To wonder why screens aren’t investigated as a cause of childhood behaviour issues?

Found it, though I didn't listen to the podcast to actually hear what was said because I can never listen to podcasts
https://yle.fi/a/74-20158012
There's a quote from the chief physician of THL, which is the research and development for health and social care in Finland, so the experts, so to speak
"I think the most important factors are the big changes in kids' and teens' environments in recent years, such as more screen time, less physical activity and less sleep, and this evidently contributes a lot to the increase in ADHD diagnoses," THL chief physician Terhi Aalto-Setälä tells the show.

I think the evidence needs scrutinizing, because it's never going to be an RCT.
So, because kids won't be randomly assigned to more screen or less screen, you have to make sure it's not self selecting. This is the problem with all these cohort studies showing association now.
People who travel to hospital by ambulance are more likely to die, but it's not the ambulance causing it.
I know that my elder child, a bouncy son, who wouldn't colour in, or play shop etc was given more screen time than my daughter, who enjoyed different interaction.

I was looking for this thread the other day when there was a news article about this in my country. I'll look for the article once I get on my computer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgp08z3egno

This article was published today. Shame they didn't delve a bit further into the 20% rise of autism with intellectual disability - as that's very unlikely to be due to broadening diagnostic criteria / better understanding.

DS1 was not hyperactive although is diagnosed inattentive ADHD. He was not quite the same although there were some similarities - I remember he used to exasperate me by announcing "I'm bored!" literally the second that an activity finished and I used to say "That's not what being bored means" - DS1 the other day walking home from school said "Oh!!! I'm going to be bored when I get home." In this world weary tone. Again I found myself saying, that isn't what being bored means! But they have been very similar in that. I think they are describing the sensation where they are looking for stimulation.

DS2 is just on the go all of the time. DS3 is 3.5 and can be like that sometimes - trying to move on to the next thing before the jigsaw is out etc - but not all the time, maybe about 20-30% of the time? I can usually bring him back to the first task as well by reminding him. And it's also totally normal/age appropriate because he is 3. DS2 is 6 and should be able to wait for things like an adult to get an activity ready, so the fact it is EVERY time is quite striking and different from other children his age and can be quite challenging. Even in an environment which caters to him it causes issues, so while I agree that ADHD is a normal variation on an extreme end, to me it feels a bit like being shortsighted. There's nothing wrong with being shortsighted, it doesn't mean I'm broken, I'm totally normal despite my eyesight being outside the "ideal" range and I don't really need my glasses when I'm at home and mostly performing tasks at arm's length or closer, but it's very helpful to me to have glasses to wear when I'm out and about, and I think it's totally fair that I can't legally drive without them. And that is very similar to how I feel about my own diagnosis of ADHD and medication. It helps make up for the bit of my functioning which isn't in the "typical" range, because it causes me problems with certain things.

No, my own DC and DGS aren’t like that - although DD2 has inattentive ADHD and may have wandered off into a daydream; but she didn’t flit between 3 activities in 5 minutes. She didn’t bounce around the room like a human whirlwind either!

"We "know" do we? "Horrific effect" Really 😱😂 "Clear risk factor" are they? Give me a break!
The links you've made are ridiculous and the reasons for less screen time for asd and add, adhd are not for the reasons you've conflated.

Please educate yourself before you post spurious and completely unsubstantiated nonsense 🙄

We (including a GP) could all see it in DGD, except her parents, when DGD was 2, before she’d seen screens!

@Peony1897 I could see a clear difference in my son’s behaviour as a baby and toddler at baby groups. He screamed more than other babies and when I took him to something like a music group he would be wandering off investigating behind the curtains or banging windows while the other children his age were watching the music or dancing and joining in. At that point he had never watched screens.

DS and family live 10 minutes away from us, and we help them out with DGC all we can. I know because DS doesn’t believe in screens any more than I do! He’s the sort of graduate professional parent, who was playing Mozart to her in utero, and pushing books, arts and crafts, construction toys, etc as soon as she was able to participate. Even now, she does all the after school clubs and only allowed to watch one hour of TV after school. She started language school on Saturdays and swimming on Sundays, at the minimum age. (She’s being brought up bilingual). I tried to suggest to DS at 4, that he should look for a school with good pastoral care. He told me academic excellence was all that matters!

He accepts now academic excellence is not the be all and end all. Its about helping DGC to keep up, and not suffering MH problems later.

Even now, Mozart helps her calm down, which other music can’t!

Yes Blue I get this with DS2 all day. I try to point out that we were getting the jigsaw out whatever ready and keep his attention on that one thing or at least get him to help me clean it up. Some days though like yesterday it was total madness - I start something off and leave them to it so I can get the next stage ready, and then they request a drink or something else and while I'm getting that they lose interest in the first thing or are just squeezing glue randomly all over.

He has no concept of time so he'll do something like ask for a drink and then not give me time to physically walk into the kitchen before he's huffing and puffing that he wants a drink NOW. Of course we explain that's rude etc but it doesn't go in.

I have DH, who clearly has hyperactive ADHD. I had 3 DC. Two of whom had SEN. I have two DGC, one of whom is on the pathway for assessment with ADHD and she’s clearly hyperactive.

If I sit down to play with her, she might say

”Let’s do a jigsaw!”

I haven’t even got it all out of the box, before she’ll say

”Let’s play I Spy!”

I say

”I spy with my little eye”

She’ll have wandered off to get her Barbies! Or, she’s bouncing around on the settee and her parents; and running around until her face looks like a tomato! Meanwhile, her younger brother is playing quietly by himself with the Duplo!

With that kind of inattention, endless energy and hyperactivity, there isn’t a great range of activities in a restaurant like there are at home, the garden and the park! She will watch a program or play a game for a while on a screen. Knowing she also struggles with loud noise (and hand dryers send her into a panic), I’d rather give her a screen in a restaurant to keep her quiet and I am no believer in giving screens to children!

Despite my experience of nearly 40 years with DH and 30 plus years of my own DC, I had no conception of what a hyperactive child with endless energy could be like!

Yes, exactly. I think some parents must wonder how on earth we parented young DC before the advent of screens. Someone told me that all they need to occupy their 4 year old on a flight was an iPad. Mine used to love their holiday treat bag with a new comic, small Lego set, new book. No screens needed.

I could only share a snippet of it… there was more.

2005 is a bit late to look at special school places - a lot were closed in the 90s. I also tried to find numbers last night but didn't manage and then it got too late.

Very very roughly, because I need to take DC out in a minute, the timeline seems to go like this in my understanding. Apologies for any errors as I'm pulling this from memory and haven't fact checked.

~60s/70s > special schools fairly hidden (e.g. most people unaware of this as Blue says), and pretty much unregulated - disabled children may not have been educated at all. Lower ability or difficult to engage pupils not really bothered with, disruptive behaviour discouraged with physical violence/intimidation of pupils by teachers. School leaving age changed to the summer that pupils are 16 in 1972 - previous to this pupils could leave at any of 3 points during the year as long as they had turned 15.

~80s/early 90s > Shift away from physical discipline, questions being raised about the education offered to SEND pupils, aim to raise standards in these areas, but still not a huge amount of standardisation - some teachers still v intimidating/bullying towards pupils even if not officially allowed to physically punish. Towards the mid 90s you see a rise in official permanent exclusions which seems to be a question mark why is this happening/how to tackle this.

~ Mid 90s/00s > More accountability for schools (which meant more paperwork for teachers) - OFSTED, digitalisation/central records mean more focus on issues like truancy. Many special schools closed, inclusion policies and new guidelines about exclusion. It seems this was a very brief "golden age" for services like CAMHS as they experienced more funding. Seems like things like speech therapy and assessments were available to meet demand during this time. More awareness and diagnosis of things like dyslexia, less tolerance of children being left behind. Beginnings of awareness/diagnosis of (what was then) Asperger's Syndrome and ADHD. I get the impression there was positivity during this time about the prospect of inclusion for SEND children in mainstream schools, although this wasn't always shared by teachers who were already struggling with paperwork and expectations from higher up.

~ Late 00s/early 10s > Massive cuts to services due to austerity policies which seemed to start off the "snowball effect" mentioned before. Schools struggling with funding deficits as well as increased expectation to handle children with higher levels of need.

~10s to now ish > Hugely increased demand for services completely overwhelming capacity likely because services have been cut, but also demand increases due to school funding cuts + increased expectations meaning schools are less able to cope with pupil needs/behaviour. Plus parents have more awareness and more likely to push for referral due to information found on social media/parenting forums/wider discussion of these issues in the media.

I think these things are all true but I feel there has also been an increase in actual prevalence.

I'm really not sold on the screens argument though. If screens are impacting increase in either neurodivergence or neurodivergence-like behaviours (pseudo-neurodivergence?) I don't think their impact is the leading cause.

I thought this was a thoughtful post on a FB page I follow, I think the woman in question is a ND clinician. This specifically mentions autism rather than generalised SEN but still thought it was worth sharing.

I didn't just mean the pre 28 week babies. I meant all the premature babies, ones with severe genetic disorders or complicated health conditions. Survival rates for all sorts of conditions are rising hugely due to progress in medicine and surgery etc. So this naturally means the proportion of children with complex needs will go up, and less severely disabled children will get bumped up to mainstream.

Like PP I think there is an actual increase in pupils with special needs.

But one thing I have noticed, working in a mainstream infant school is, the mainstream offer has got progressively worse over the 13 years I've been in school and the curriculum also got more intense at a younger age and this pushes people into the SEN category, who would previously have been supported in the ordinary offer.

I can see we are getting pupils with a high level of need who we didn't get allocated when I just started. They went elsewhere.

We also can't support pupils with a 'lower' level of need effectivly anymore. When I first started, every class had a full time TA. We had a staffed nuture room, there was a trained play leader in the playground, there was a reading support teacher who came in two mornings a week, there was also a 3 day a week senco. We also had a visiting speech and language therapist each week.

That's been decimated and it's a class TA only in the morning, no nuture room, no reading teacher, no play leader, senco day a week, no salt. Unsurprisingly more children the need a special school.

Although on looking, only around 4000 children attend independent special schools.

"I’ve just had a look and in 2005 there were some 90,000 children in SEN schools. Now that number is 160,000, with huge waiting lists. Even accounting for the increase in population, that seems quite a steep rise to me?"

I think there are more independent special schools than there used to be but these aren't necessarily taking the most complex children. Certainly the school my son used to attend has moved away from taking those with complex needs.