To be shocked at ‘school readiness’

SIL didn't potty train DN because she wanted "to do baby-led potty training". But DN didn't want to learn becuase life was easier. And frankly, his toilet bheaviour is still awful and he's now 10.

Same SIL was very upset to be told at the end of recpetion that her child was not meeting expectations in any of the required areas. It was, apparently, the school's fault he wasn't meeting then in reading/writing. And the school were "wrong" about his social skills and relationships. He was a confident child, no shyness at all, and she thought that meant his social/relatkonship skills were up to scratch. Even though, in fact, he had no ability to share, take turns, compromise. He often asked/said inappropriate things. The very sad thing is he has no friends now and SIL is constantly surprised by this.

I'm a bit puzzled - are these children who haven't been to nursery? Putting on coats was definitely one of the things taught and encouraged at nursery.

I don’t think it’s this. I was born in the sixties and we all started in the infants at 3 or 4. All my class would sit pretty nicely to eat lunch. Of course there were a few children who struggled to sit still but nothing major. We all put our coats on the peg in the morning, stuff like that. I was 3 and could already read and write as my Mum had taught me at home. I was a bit off with some of my letter and number shapes, eg I made an 8 with two circles for a while, but I could write my name and read a Ladybird book, sit and sing a song with the class, that sort of thing.

When was this, the 1950s? My experience of being a teenager in the 90s as a middle class kid in a large, how can I put it, 'edgey' school was not this at all. My own Dad at parents evening refused to accept one of the teachers' assesment of me that I was pretty useless at Maths and wouldn't get above a D and was lazy. This from a guy that permanently had egg yolk stain on his tie. Anyway, my Dad stated that he was completely wrong about that and I was more than capable and he was right as achieved a 'B' grade. My parents were unusual for their time and were certainly probably Gentle Parents by every definition. My Mum read up on and took a course on positive techniques of parenting for the development of the imagination and this was the early 80s when I was a toddler so she was certainly ahead of her time. The more alternative approach to parenting my brothers and had no negative impact on our school life at all, in fact by any metric we did incredibly well academically and professionally so I don't believe this rubbish about the 'good old days'.

Agree. It's not technology causing this problem. It's lazy parenting and parents scared to say no/force their kids to learn necessary skills.

Part of being a parent is doing the hard stuff, saying No, resisting the tears and tantrums and teaching kids.

I suspect these parents will also struggle to get their kids to do homework etc.

I was very surprised when both dd and ds teachers starting calling us up in the week to sing their praises. Their parents evenings were glowing, one teacher said dd had made teaching feel worthwhile again!

Not for academic merit (they both try very hard but sen and other difficulties make their marks average).

They have been praised because they have manners, respect for adults and can follow instructions. They try to help others, pick up litter and are courteous.

It is just the very basics of being a human! But apparently having those now is so rare they get commendated for it!

It definitely made me feel very sorry for the teachers, what scummy behaviour must they be putting up with every day!

That’s a fairly big assumption when it’s just based on your own experience of living where you do. Are these drug dealers visiting the homes of the doctors and teachers? There can’t be a doctor or teacher living in EVERY house on your estate.

I’d argue that you DO indeed have social problems if you have people who are obvious dealers walking up and down so much. Assuming they ARE dealers and not just lost. (many new build estates are not properly displayed on online maps yet or have little quirks with layouts.

I think this is a combination of children who have done nothing for 4 years except look at a ipad screen, and children who have never bene expected to follow rules either at home or at nursrey. I'm a teacher and since having a daughter who is now three and spending time in the wild with parents, I am repeatedly shocked by the lack of boundaries or really a lack of parents willing to tell their children no or hold them to any sort of standard of behaviour.

You work in just one school though.

I work across many many schools in a wide range of catchments. Some have very few of these issues but the majority are similar to the cohort of children the OP has described. Maybe not 90% of the children in one class but definitely a significant portion of them.

But maybe OP is just unfortunate. She isn’t describing the kids in my own kid’s school, anyway.

This stuff gets posted every year but its never reflective of the school I work in and we have a mix of families.

I agree with a lot of what @TiredShadows says - a lot of children were excluded from the school system in a way that doesn't happen today in the past. Although I do think that the number of familes I see who seem to think that asking their children to DO annything is akin to child abuse is not helping (I was bemused to watch a friend making three separate cooked lunches for her three separate children over the school holidays. the youngest is 11. Mine are expected to make their own lunch or I might give them a sandwich if I'm making for myself).

Sugar does not induce ADHD. The idea that it even induces hyperactivity has been thoroughly debunked.

Yes yes. Also, I learnt this in person when DS "graduated" from nursery. They had a little party. It was the most bizarre thign I'd ever seen. it was at nursery. No snacks/drinks/sugar, just games. Kids were totally hyper and over the top. Then they got their "party food" - the sweet option was a small box of raisens, drink was water (not even a fruit shoot!) And they continued to be manic. Prooving to me that mass hysteria is more the reason for hyperativity than the sugar!

Baffling as that's not how it is here.

My own kids also had iPads when young but could do those things. I'm not convinced iPads can be blamed

I don't have children in the school system, I have a 3 year old and a 7 year old who are both home educated so I obviously don't see these things in day to day life.

But what strikes me as odd is blaming parents when most children in the school system have two working parents and have spent most of their days from the age of 12 months or earlier in childcare settings.

Parents getting home from work at 6 o'clock have what, perhaps an hour, before their children go to sleep to spend with them? The majority of that child's life skill learning is taking place in childcare settings.

If both parents must work, and children must attend childcare, it seems we need to be fixing the childcare in order to fix the school readiness issues.

My three year old manages all of the things on the school readiness list and can write and recognise his name, the alphabet and letter sounds, he counts to 10. We didnt actively work on these things formally, it naturally happens when a child is exposed to life enough.

I can believe it, I work in a pre school and the things the parents expect us to do for their kids is ridiculous. The parents are too scared to say no so they get us to do it.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the problem, actually, thanks @user1471429429 . My kids are beautifully behaved at school/nursery and their communication skills are great. It gets commented on by teachers.

What I do see is a pattern of intolerance in a generation of adults who treat very small children and their parents with a lack of understanding and sometimes active dislike. Fortunately my kids teachers just don’t display any of the attitude I see on this thread. Reception kids are tiny still and to be honest need a lot of patience.

I’m in the Not Fine in School group and it has increasingly been hijacked by parents whose DC don’t follow the rules and it’s the school thats wrong.
i worked in a secondary and had to listen to parents who thought the rules did not apply to their super special child and they gave permission for them to use their phone/go to the toilet whenever they fancied/pierce what they like. When they do badly in exams it’s the schools fault for being ‘shit’ like it’s nothing to do with the child putting any effort.

This is what's puzzling me. Youngest is 20 and most of the things in the OP were taught/reinforced/introduced in nursery setting regardless of whatever parents did or didn't do to prep their kids. They had sessions on changing for PE and carrying lunch trays at our nursery.

Our DS was the smallest child in the school so we were prepared to be last to zip up a coat but not prepared for the school putting up a chart in the cloakroom. I hope schools have moved on from this sort of thing now.

And my (many) neices and nephews in European countries are expected to get to and from school from a much earlier age. They start kindergarten young which is all just lots of fun, but also quite regimented and then by the time they go to school, they're expected to walk and get there alone. My sister in law was bemused to be taken aside by the teacher when her child was 6 to be told she needed to stop walking him as it was babying him in front of his peers! :)

So I agree that the expectations at age 4 year int erms of learnign to read and write seem strange to me and I think it's a bit much, but a formal school setting, with clear expectations is very common in Europe

No its not. In the U.K, Children have started school at age 5yrs since the 1800s and some from 4yrs since around the 60s. All the skills OP has described are skills generations of dc have been able to demonstrate including my own dc whoboth started age 4, at the start of school, until more recently, hence the concern.

Lets not switch focus and turn the thread into ..'Well youre having this problem because dc ought to be starting school at 7yrs!. Thats is not the cause of this recent development but could be a very good but 'separate' debate.

OP, my DD teaches in a private school abroad, and complains of “affluent neglect” whereby the DC in her class have nannies or parents who do every last thing for their DC. She has parents asking whether she fed their children their lunch!! (No - she doesn’t have time.) When she suggested to a parent that they might like to let their children have a go with their own cutlery, the parent said, “Oh, I never thought of that.” She would also agree that it’s getting worse.

That is actually not the point. The point is there exist a sizeable number of children who do not have SEN and are lacking basic skills. That is the focus of the OP's post. Anyone trying to make this into a SEN discussion is missing the point.

There have been growing reports of this for years. There appears to be a lot of factors involved.

One that is often left out is how many children were left out of education previously. I think this both alters how we viewed children in the past, and also it means that even the more neglectful parents had reason to ensure certain thing were learned. I was heavily neglected as a child, but I can remember my mother sitting me down to make sure I had certain thing memoried before a summer school visit which I was told repeatedly that I needed to show I could behave and knew certain things so I could attend. She wanted me at school to get rid of me, so she made sure I could.

I'm one of three children. I'm the only one who finished secondary in a mainstream school. One of my siblings was expelled and wasn't allowed in any other school in the area, the other was moved into what we would now call alternative provisions. When people go on about how kids back then could behave and learn, my first thought is kids like my siblings are often erased in the rose-tinted stories of the past. Things may be getting worse for many reason, but there is no golden period of parenting or of children all keen and school able.

No full time working parents haven’t always been a thing or can you link to some evidence plus commutes have increased.

Do you really need links to know for most of history in most families all who could worked in some capacity?

Plus sweets were a weekly treat, and we didn't have sugar induced ADHD

Sugar does not induce ADHD. The idea that it even induces hyperactivity has been thoroughly debunked.

Or nowadays they see their older siblings playing video games and want to do that, books and tying shoelaces are no match for MarioKarts.

Nowadays? Mario Kart has been around since 1992, nearly 35 years ago.

I’m a trustee at a preschool and the preschool manager was tearing her hair out all last academic year about how to get her cohort to school readiness level by September. A new one recently is children that the parents refuse to toilet train because they’re “both working and didn’t have time.” It’s easier to keep them in pullups, apparently! They all got there in the end but it was only because the preschool staff put so much time and effort into it, including consultations with the parents of children that were behind their peers.

And yet UK ranks ninth in the world in PISA results so for you know- actual Educational achievements, above all European countries and the U.S.A, so something must be working with the techniques employed by parents! Perhaps, they haven't all been letting YouTube nanny their children, have Gentle parented with successful outcomes!

This is such polarising, rage baiting nonsense! I remember as a teenager in the 90s visiting my boyfriend at the time whose road regular had a group of kids wondering around in the autumn late into the evening, with the youngest about 2. In the Drama our friends in the North, it has a very sad story of this young boy about 10 joy riding, crashes the car and dies, this is meant to be set in Newcastle. He equally has any uncaring, abusive Dad that regularly frequents the pub and in one scene he whacks him around the head. Although it's fiction it is certainly supposed to represent the social problems of the time so I don't agree that the standards have got worse and worse, it's so cynical and not reflective of reality where things have actually improved compared to the past.