Toilet training and high anxiety - how schools are changing

[DeedlessIndeed]

Apologies if there is another thread on this, but I read this BBC article at the weekend and it's really stuck with me.

What on earth is happening to a percentage of young children that the schools are having to step in on such a large scale?

In the article it states that 8 out of 27 children starting school in September weren't toilet trained. Some didn't have adequate communication skills such as being able to ask for a drink.

SEN aside, does anyone know what is contributing to this delay in development? What can parents of very young children do to ensure that their child is meeting their developmental milestones?

And also, what resource does this take away from actual teaching in the old fashioned sense. What impact does this have on other children in these classes?

For context, my first baby is due in a couple of weeks so I've no idea on the realities of raising a child to school age.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1ddegp8zvo

I’m sure modern nappies ( the sort full of that weird gel) make them more comfortable to wear -

Something clearly is going on with so many children starting nursery without being toilet trained.

Dealing with poo isn’t pleasant for teachers, they shouldn’t be expected to be dealing with nappies at mainstream schools.

A significant difference here will be SEN provision.

20 years ago children with additional needs would have stayed at home with their mum and then likely had a place in a special school.

The number of children born with additional needs has increased significantly over that time (partly due to improvement in survival rates for premature babies) and special school places have dropped.

My youngest is in year 2 and there are several children in his year who aren’t toilet trained. They all have additional needs.

It also needs to be considered that there are a lot more children with high needs starting in mainstream education now than there used to be so some of the numbers will be accounted for by that. It's not necessarily just that your 'average' child is not toilet trained or has communication difficulties. I've been teaching for 20 years and we never used to see the sorts of needs we see now in mainstream schools.

The predominant issue here is screen time.

Parents on phones all day. Babies handed a phone or tablet from babyhood.

YouTube videos like Cocomelon that run for 3 hours.

It's far easier for a baby/toddler to sit quietly all day when they have an iPad, nappies on, hand them a bottle.

Parents then can sit all day too.

Lockdown will not have helped. This cohort of lockdown babies going into school have so many problems. Particularly if their parents adhered to every single rule as they were told, alongside the many parents who became nearly phobic about germs due to the media/political messaging and then didn't allow their children any contact with others for many months and in some cases years.

Parents also became far more conditioned to use screens during Covid, as it was such an easy way to keep everyone quiet.

Lockdown was supposed to save lives. Instead there are babies/toddlers who were ignored by the system and have not had the necessary health visitor checks, and will never develop in the way they should. This will impact them for the rest of their lives.

When my children were small, if we went to a cafe as a treat, they would sit at the table and I would chat to them, they would babble away at me. As they got older, we would have a conversation. If I am in a cafe now, I often see parents of young children on their phone, ignoring the child in their buggy.

Children have to be taught how to socialise, how to eat properly how to recognise the need and be able to sit on the potty/toilet. These are parents' jobs, not teachers'.

So true!
Children learn to speak and to be social by parents interacting with them.
It seems un fathomable that children are turning up at school unable to ask for a simple thing like a drink of water.
Vocabulary comes from being spoken with-
We used to tease our younger brother as he was learning to talk by making him repeat ridiculous things - one was “ The internalisation of the gametophyte “ - We thought it very funny having a little toddler say such things- “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

Stories being read to children from books, as opposed to screens- all so important.

Next door’s toddler is always being spoken with and sung to by her parents- Her dad sings her baritone songs- It’s lovely to hear.

Screens are horribly addictive- Lucky are those children who live screen free lives.

Related to screens - families wanting to show off on social media, so an emphasis on expensive days out to theme parks, zoos etc which get shared on FB, insta and TikTok, coupled with lots of screen time the rest of the time. It's more performative. A lot of these parents will have been brought up by parents who always had the internet and probably can't remember not having a smartphone themselves.

You can parent perfectly well without the expensive days out but the real grunt work of parenting isn't very shareable but is how children learn. It's those endless trips to the supermarket pointing out different coloured vegetables, interacting in a cafe modelling saying please and thank you, walking down the road counting the blue cars or odd numbered houses, feeding the ducks, narrating emptying the dishwasher and counting the spoons.

Cutlery one is interested as first primary school was already saying this was an issue for them - 15 years ago- their solution was family style school dinner - ages years mixed up and older kids actively encourage to help and support younger ones.

They were also emphasising kids needed to be able to dress and undress themselves and didn't jump in and help when the struggled much to parents dismay.

My eldest is 18 sure start was already established and the HV had a scheme for giving out books - the speech therapist came into session to assess kids and to help run specific support groups- that all been cut back - even libraries that used to spend a lot of time making them friendly place for kids have had huge cut backs - here opening hours are severely reduced.

Add in tendency to try and dump all of societies problem on schools - a possible increase in SEN and reduction in special school places - cuts in funding for schools and other services - and I think all the brewing problems have just come to a head.

That's what Sure Start told parents to do. 😀