To be shocked at ‘school readiness’

I do think another factor is that for some children, potty training and other parts of childrearing really are quite easy. I didn’t actively potty train my youngest aside from sitting her on the potty after meals, she just did it herself - extremely rare was it that she pooed in a nappy from 18 months onwards, and she figured out how to hold her wees age 2. I imagine she picked it up from watching me desperately trying to get her older brother potty trained, as he has sen it was a bit more of a struggle. But my youngest just picks skills up with extremely minimal intervention. She’s 3 and can very reliably dress and undress, and only rarely will she get things back to front. She is so very independent and to be honest I’ve had minimal input into that, because she picks things up before it even occurs to me she would be old enough to teach her. She eats properly with a knife and fork - I never once taught her that (and I’m a SAHM so there’s no other input). In contrast I had to spend nearly a year working at every single meal time to teach my eldest to use a fork.

I can very well see that if you don’t know many children and the only children you DO know happened to have been very easy like my daughter, you might assume yours will be too and that everyone is making a fuss over nothing.

By the time my mum had her own babies she’d cared for siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews. In contrast, before having my own baby I’d only ever held a baby once before. Families just aren’t as connected and interwoven as they once were, I don’t think your average new mum today has experience with babies in the way that generations passed did.

I knew it would be our fault! Everything is.

Is your catchment in a not so nice area? That can make a difference as I have worked from one end to the other and there is a trend. My current school is in a nice, fairly well off area and 90% can do all these things. My little one started school last week and she can also do all of these things too.
I think it’s a mixture of parents who don’t care enough to teach them and are raising iPad kids who can’t function and parents who molly coddle their kids and do everything for them thinking they’re being kind and helpful but it’s actually to their children’s detriment.

Sounds like a lot of Yr 7s.

And yet, I repeat the UK is 9th ranking on the PISA score beating all of Europe (except Estonia) and the U.S.A. so something must be working or many parents must be doing a good job.

Equally, the illiteracy rate among 15 years has not changed in 50 years, engagement in reading has. The lack of reading is probably to blame for lots of societal problems, including the damaging trend of polarised, populist politics where people believe anything they read and don't have the intellectual capacity to scrutinise any information!

I may be wrong, but this is not what I heard and read? If this is the case, 12 months is harsh.

You'd think so, but I came across some weird and wonderful nicknames and contractions before I finally retired from secondary. (Retired from my permanent post 7 yrs ago; came off the GTCS this year.)

The local gym does a good deal for pensioners, and now that I'm getting to know people there I find that a few of us in the Senior classes are retired teachers. Thus far, all the others retired from the primary sector and they've told me that they wouldn't consider going back to do supply.

Also no washing machines with washable nappies was a great encourager.🤣

I remember my mil talking about how late one of her boys was in nappies. Turned out he was just over 2yo. That's a couple of months, not nearly 3yo.

I think with the nappies too, there's a move away from making a decision and a lot more focus on doing it when they're ready - even waiting until they ask.

I know when mine were little I decided when I was doing it, blocked a couple of weeks out and they all got it in a matter of days aged within a couple of months either side of 2yo.

One of my relatives had children about 5 years after me and they decided that they would wait for their child to ask as they were told that was the best way.
So they waited, and they waited... and then ended up doing it, with a lot of fighting and difficulties, over the summer holiday after being told their dc couldn't start school in nappies (as you could then). Tbh I don't think if she'd not had to do it for school, she would have done it then either, so her dc would have still been in nappies at school.

Didn't you see them at home? My kids were in from 9 months, but those things were all MY responsibility, not nursery's. Nursery just reinforced what I was teaching them. Including toilet training.

I think parents have milestones drilled into them hugely now, without any material that says it's actually the parents job to get their children to and through those milestones themselves. You see it all the time on the potty training threads, where parents are utterly shocked that potty training is an active process not an epiphany on the part of the child.

No-one wakes up one day and knows how to put a coat on. You try and fail and try and fail and then try and succeed. You can't skip the first bits. Saying 'they aren't ready' is a self fulfilling prophecy.

I worked in private nurseries from 2005-2012, these kids had parents who both worked full time but they were all potty trained before 3, they could all dress themselves, put their coats on etc. The majority of it was taught at home, why is it suddenly impossible for parents to do this now?

Fairly recently, the Scottish Government put out a statement saying that schools should work with parents to help their children become toilet trained.

When the government has to make such a statement, I'd say that it's indicative of a problem.

I remember hearing this on BBC Scotland, and was quite startled that there was a need for this.

Works in my classroom :) and I got it from the nursery who taught my class to do it the year before.

Doesn’t help when parents have to work all hours and their babies and toddlers end up in nurseries 13 hours a day. I noticed when I took my child out of nursery how much he struggles to do things which he can now do and started school with manners, toilet trained, knows how to hang his bag and/or coat up but if I hadn’t saved him from the nursery gruelling day then no way would I had realised how much he wasn’t doing things

To be fair though, children wouldn't have been allowed to start school in nappies. It's only fairly recently that it has been allowed.

I can well believe this.

In the last couple of weeks I have seen parents picking their reception children up from school in a pushchair or carrying them out of school so they don't have to walk. I have witnessed 4/5 year olds talking to their parents like they are dog poo on their shoe so they are not going to have any respect for teachers. I have seen year 1 children unable to use cutlery and refusing to eat unless they are fed by an adult.

Rubbish.

I am in my early 70s. I started school at 4.

We were all able to hang our coats on pegs and sit for much of the day at double desks, without running around the classroom. There were no playgroups or nurseries in my village so the school environment was new to me and to most of my peers. None of us were in nappies at school. I don't think we had any teaching assistants.

It is lax parenting, ineffectual parents afraid to say "No" in case it upsets their kids. Always on their phone, even when pushing a toddler down the road in a buggy - not interacting with their child. Giving them a tablet or "mummy's phone" to keep them quiet rather than disciplining.

My son is 4 and still struggles with two of your list, and has just started reception. He can put his coat on but he does find doing it up with poppers or putting the zip parts together quite tricky. The other thing he can't do yet is properly write his name. He previously went to a school-based preschool for 5 days a week, and I believe they did practice with him but as yet he still needs to work on this. People are entitled to call me a bad parent, but I don't personally believe that is true. He does not have an ipad or anything like that, I think he perhaps has not mastered the dexterity needed for the fiddlier things and more precise pencil movements. His frustration at finding these things hard is also a barrier.

I was horrified when I found out that a relative through marriage is now a child minder: her own parenting seems to consist of sticking an iPad in front of her children.

@Copyandpastry what ages are your kids ? How long have you been teaching? Do you enjoy teaching past the first few months once a you’ve established a routine ?

That seems very high and is concerning if true. There will be various things influencing the increase. One factor that often gets overlooked in SM discussions is the impact of cumulative covid infections on children’s brains and development.

My son knew his name (written down) because they used it in nursery, labelled pegs etc. Plus quite a few other words too.

Come on, this is nonsense. You might come across the odd child who has been at home for 5 years and their parents don't believe in any sort of education before school but any child that has gone to preschool/nursery/childminder has a basic understanding of letters.

My mate was an instructor for joinery apprentices for a local authority, and some of the 16 year old kids, on the first day, couldn't tie their laces on their new work boots, tell the time on an analogue clock, spell the name of their hometown or neighbourhood address properly. It goes without saying that virtually none of them could write concisely or all that legibly, and a good chunk of them could barely do basic arithmetic. A terrible state of affairs.