To be shocked at ‘school readiness’

It isn't impossible. Many of us do it. I'd be interested to see whether the lack of school readiness can be attributed to having working parents. I doubt it.

Dear Lord … of course people were more illiterate 100 years ago.

So, roughly 100 years ago (around 1920–1926), about 20% to 30% of the world's adult population could read and write

Now or today as we are talking current trends and parenting on this thread. Approximately 87% of the global adult population has basic reading and writing skills.

Astounded also 😂

Exactly. Not to mention only around 30% of women owned cars and drove in 1975 compared to around 70-75% now. Using public transport instead of a car for groceries, errands, commutes to-and-from school, appointments, medical visits, social events etc. were much much more time consuming and took a huge proportion of the day for a mother than they do now.

As @user1471429429 says, appliances and conveniences since then are saving us more and more time each cycle - better hairdryers, washing machines, dishwashers, robovacs, heated dryers, vacuums, cleaning products, slow cookers, air fryers, blenders, mixers, baking tools - all of those things have cut down the time it took mothers to use them since 1975.

Nowadays can do anything from order groceries, takeaways, stream a Disney film, open a credit card, bank account, book an appointment, get something fixed, order everything from birthday and Christmas gifts to an pair of emergency sports shorts to arrive the next day on your doorstep in a matter of seconds with a click of a button. Back then you had to handwrite postal letters back-and-forth, attend faraway shops for niche things, wade through paper correspondence and applications from schools or sit through long in-person appointments for virtually anything. You can literally select and buy all your Christmas presents and your family Christmas dinner to arrive the next day all within the space of about an hour.

And as the poster said, generous maternity leave, increased holiday allowance and flexible working patterns which were minimal or non-existent decades ago for women have all helped to make more time for women now. Women who worked back then were far more time-poor doing identical tasks to the same woman today.

Women have always worked throughout history. Maybe some affluent households could afford to have a stay at home Mum and the % of these women as part of the population was higher but there has never been a time throughout history where a sizeable proportion of the female population did not work. And a lot of women who didn’t have formal employment, often did cooking, cleaning, ironing, caretaking for neighbours, friends or the community to gain some more household income. I attended primary school in the 80s and bar one, don’t recall a single one of my friends (upper working class/lower middle class) who’s mothers didn’t work.

HRTFT but I'm surprised by all that. My eighteen mother old DGD says please and thank you and knows how to use cutlery. Edited to add she absolutely knows her name and will respond to it when called.
Did these DC not go to nursery/preschool? Even if their parents were useless you'd think they learnt some skills in these settings.

I was trying to say I could not imagine institutionalising my dc at 2 or 3 or 4. I think it is cruelty to let your children fend for themselves in an institutionalised setting from such an early age. It is naive, no, it is irresponsible to think they will be properly looked after by the staff.

What an insult to the dedicated staff who work in early years settings. I can only speak for the community nursery school both my children attended from the age of 3 - half-days mostly and then full days for the final term before they left. You couldn't have found a better place for children to spend time. I would have loved it myself and I was an adult! The children were extremely well looked after by the staff. They had a wonderful range of activities to choose from and of course while playing they were learning how to get on with other children and to listen to adults. They had outdoor play, climbing apparatus, home corner, toy cars, construction toys, weekly cooking sessions, woodworking, painting, drawing and craft activities, weaving, nature study, stories, all sorts of stuff. Both my children settled in very well once they moved on to primary school and so did all their friends from the nursery school.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more, I am curious.

I have never fully understood why kids in the UK go to school so young. Is it a form of government provided childcare, considering the government offers very limited funded childcare before that age, and this is why school started being offered at such an early age? Or is it the case of social inequality, and therefore the desire to level everyone as early as possible so that poorer children don't lose 2 years?

Most of Europe go at 6-7, I think. I'm from Denmark and started at 7 (I think it's now changed to 6). It was possible to go at 6 if you chose to, but not mandatory, parents have a bit of choice if they wish to send their child earlier or later depending on their maturity and available care at home. I also attended school in Switzerland and Germany and it's quite similar, 4/5 would be considered too young to attend school, considering kindergarten/ home provision comes at low/no cost.

Talking of maturity levels and what kids can do... In Scandinavia you'd expect a child to have these skills aged 3ish. A parent dressing a child to go out, e.g. putting their coat, shoes, boots on for them, would be considered quite schocking, and the child's peers would probably make fun of them, or teach them. I used to struggle with my laces aged 5-6, and my friends would teach me as they found it embarrasing and like I let the side down 😂

I do find it quite schocking that the cohort lack these skills, but guess times have changed, and maybe they can't pull up their own pants, but can use apps 😇😂

Methinks I detect a touch of sarcasm.

The grandchild is now an adult.

I did my best to facilitate interaction. This wasn't easy, given that we were in Scotland, I was still working and my husband's daughter, SIL and granddaughter lived abroad.

The granddaughter's father was the SAHP. Although they were based abroad, the daughter's job demanded that she fly here, there and everywhere.

In the end, she decided that it was untenable. She'd earned enough to allow her to quit when she was in her 40s and moved back to England with her daughter.

By then, I was my late husband's carer as well as being my late mother's carer. When my husband's ex's second partner died, I was the person who was at hand to help with hospital appointments - there was no sign of the daughter or her sibling coming up to Scotland to do this, but they did express their gratitude.

And no, I'm certainly not a wonder. I was - like many in my position - simply exhausted.

Covid babies are no longer an excuse

Really? Mine just started and was most definitely born in 2020 so is definitely a ‘covid baby’ which has likely contributed to delayed speech for him and some of his peers. Difference is they can do EVERYTHING you have mentioned in his class. They are working on counting to 100, writing every alphabet letter correctly, are expected to be independent in taking care of their items and dressing before and after PE and can write their first and last names ( let alone understand them). My child is 5 so one of the eldest but we live abroad so they start a year before at 4 out here.

Do they not attend preschool from the age of 3 years. In my experience of schools (not in uk) this usually does a lot of work on feral children

Yes my mum had 3 under 5 and my dad didn’t see changing nappies as something a man did. We were all potty trained very young as only cloth nappies available. No automatic washing machine until I was about 10 years old. And I was the youngest.

What age are they? I find it hard to believe 90% can’t do these things.

Argh for the 50 millionth time - THAT'S NOT WHAT FUCKING GENTLE PARENTING IS!!

Gentle parenting is rules and boundaries and expectations, just in a way that treats children like human beings, not compliant robots who do things just for fear of punishment.

You should be blaming Permissive parenting, which is a load of shit and kids do what they want.

When ds was in year one, the teacher pulled me aside and gave me a lecture about showing my child how to dress. In a really patronising way “I know you love your little boy but you really have to start allowing him to dress himself - he’s the last one to finish dressing after PE”. My little boy had been dressing himself at home quickly from he was 2 years old but not with the distraction of 29 other kids - but I could hardly manage that situation or teach him to deal with it at home.
The next year another “helpful” teacher explained to me that it would be good if I could sit with my little boy everyday during mealtimes to help with his language development. I had been sharing meals with my ds ever since he was old enough to sit in a high chair. No surprise she had no further suggestions.

Teachers assume a lot of stuff! Of course my little boy was later diagnosed with autism and much later ADHD - the infant teachers would have diagnosed him with shit parenting - I moved him to a better school after that.

Unfortunately, although there’s a lot of talk about what phones and tablets are going to kids, there’s not enough awareness that a lot of parents also have their head stuck in a phone and are failing to parent their children and teach them the basic skills of life.

Exactly - people find excuses for everything.

100 years ago a large portion of parents would have been illiterate and unable to teach any kind of letter recognition

What!? 100 years ago people were far more literate than they are today.
There was no telly, no tech. Books and reading was the most popular form of entertainment. Public libraries have existed in this country since the 1800s and they were free and available to all. My grandparents were avid readers and this was 60 years ago.

I'm truly astonished that anyone would think people in this country were illiterate 100 years ago.

I agree with this.

Someone complained that I picked my children up from a club during the summer holidays during my lunchtime. My manager had my back and told them it was none of their business and had been cleared with them first. Also my workload had no impact on that person.

Women with kids are expected to work as if they have no chilldren or caring responsibilities whilst at work, and then expected to run the home and family as if they didn’t work in the first place.

Just to add one of the reasons children were potty trained was how hard washing clothes and cloth nappies used to be. You potty trained to save your sanity.

And haven't health visiting services been cut too? We regularly saw the HV when mine were babies/toddlers and they were always available for advice, but I think some of the checks they used to do no longer happen?

According to many MNetters, health visitors are useless and you should just tell them you don't want to see them. Refusing to engage in services that are available, and encouraging other people to refuse, isn't going to improve matters.

In 1975 50% of mothers worked. It is not a new thing, the jobs they did may not have been as intense that might be true.
Your lack of understanding of how appliances have changed is also understandable. Washing machines - twin tubs - were in homes but even the good ones were no where near as good as today. Dishwashers unheard of. Dryers very rare. Washing and cleaning took up substantially more time than it does today - not an hour or two extra a week a massive amount of time. If you don’t know this then you are very lucky. Shopping was a massive effort, very few cars and the man mostly had them, shops only open limited hours. Shopping took an awful lot of time, carrying bags on buses several times a week - and I appreciate some people are still doing this. No constant children’s TV to distract just an hour and half early evening, no videos, no iPads. Boomers and Gen X had advantages in many ways but they also had some very big challenges modern parents do not have.

Until recently housework and shopping was backbreaking and constant. Today’s parents have different pressure but limited time is not one of them.

Yes I lived in France admittedly many years ago. Women seemed to go back to work early and children went to state-funded “maternelles”. I mainly associated with working-class people when I lived there. Being a SAHM didn’t seem to be a thing

Our local primary communicated the expectations before children joined reception. This was done at open days for the school, the children didn’t have to know how to read but had to be able to be toilet trained before joining and able to change their own clothes for PE for example. This was made easier as the last year of private nursery they wore uniforms and helped prep them as best as they could. I think it would have been seen as embarrassing for the parent, if children couldn’t do these things when joining school (unless SEN). We went to a small primary where everyone knew everyone.

Yes, in a previous post I mentioned a similar scenario. The school concerned had a similar client group.

Some parents don't say please and thank you so what do you expect..
Helped a woman in a supermarket yesterday, not a word of thanks.

I felt like saying say thank you but I didn't.

We've had fox mother and cubs set on fire. Deers deliberately killed in sadistic ways. People being attacked. Seagulls and pigeons around the country are being targeted, now all the Parakeets being killed. As wrll as storming shops etc. There's never been the youth crime en masse, that there is now. Isolated incidents, of course.