Have parents given up parenting

[Dearparents]

So I was just watching some news.
And apparently their is a rise in reception school children, that 1 in 4 children are not potty trained ,can't eat or drink independently and try to swipe pages in books.

Some parents are saying it's down to the teachers to teach these thing's.

Most say it's because their child has some sort of SEN.

It got me thinking of a family member that has 3 kids 3/4 and 5 that are all in nappies and sippy cups and all glued to a screens.
The 4 and 5 year old dont go to school as teachers said they have to be potty trained first.
I said to said family member the teacher is right, it's your job to parent ther job is to teach.
But im wrong apparently because her kids all have SEN.
I just see 3 normal kids that have not been taught the basics.

Now i do understand some children are unwell and can not do these things.

But im talking about kids that can but parents are playing on the sen to back out of parenting the basic things.
Am I wrong about it?

When my eldest started school in 2004, the brilliant reception class team was made up of a teacher and a nursery nurse, so there was no question of teaching time being affected by issues like toileting. I thought this was standard; now I wonder whether it was a decision based on our LEA requiring the whole class to start school in September - even if their 4th birthday was on August 31st, and even if they’d been born prematurely.

80s for me. Plenty of cars and a 5 year old boy was killed by a car about a mile from where I lived. Sometimes other kids playing out, sometimes not. One of the fathers on our road abused a few of the girls when they went in to play with his daughter. But they were all toilet trained and could use cutlery so it’s all good.

Kids were neglected, parents didn’t know where they were as they wanted rid.

Haha, I remember this too growing up in the late 80s, and 90s. People thought potty training was being out of nappies and "catching it" on the potty/toilet. Sitting a child on the toilet ever hour and keep asking them is not potty trained!
It is well known that children don't even have the sensation to know at such a young age (I'm sure somebody may come along with the science for this). Due to the latter I remember countless kids having accidents in nursery/wet chairs etc, they didn't wear nappies or have parents saying they weren't potty trained, because they thought they were!

Dc 1 (AuADHD - high functioning, unknown at the time), I tried at 2 and a half, but he wasn't ready and weed on the floor behind a chair 🫣. I stopped and tried again at just before 3, and it took 2 days (2 accidents but second one my fault), he was sorted in time for nursery. He went straight to toilet with a seat, as refused the potty outright; he is a very logical intelligent child who didn't see the point. I went cold turkey on the nappies, straight to underwear, towel on carseat, and spare pants with me. I left nappies on overnight only, and they were dry so stopped within a week. This worked well for us.

My other child on the other hand (NT) was potty trained at over 2. Left a potty out with a cuddly toy in underpants sitting on top, I wasn't going to start training yet, just left it there for familiarity and to play with first . One day I came in from the garden and dc2 was sitting on it doing a wee! I had to give chocolate buttons to get dc2 to transition away from the potty (very attached) to the actual toilet though. A very willful child, and still is.

When it takes weeks, it usually means the child isn't ready, and makes the process a million times harder IMHO. People aren't superior because they are doing this.

Yes! I remember being stuck infront of the TV watching mindless rubbish. Cartoons, and colouring books were our ipads, and babysitters. I was playing in the street with all the kids most of the time, dm gave a time to get back and that was it, because she didn't want us under her feet. My sibling escaped and was found in a local shop; he had crossed a main road and had gotten quite far at 2!

I also remember being addicted to the Amega and Nintendo! Pcs computers came out and then it was the Sims. Dm never played with me, so I had too much of an imagination, and little bonding! There is a balance, and I at least play with my dcs and know where they are. They play together, and a range of activities.

According to dm my sibling and I never had a tantrum either. I had to remind her of memories I had at 2 having them! She conveniently, "couldn't remember!"
Different worlds, different vices. There wasn't half the school pressure there is now on little kids.

God if there was access to ipads back then, it would be just like today, if not worse!

All of this.

How does 1970s and 1980s parenting stack up?

When a massive series of public information films had to be produced because many parents weren't doing the basics like knowing where their kids are, telling them not to go off with strangers, or not to play on the railway lines or at a quarry.

I sat in a National Trust cafe with my partner last year, and on the next table, a really bright and chatty little boy of about three was trying desperately hard to get his grandad to engage with him. Grandad was glued to his phone, and not interested at all - in the end, he told his grandson to be quiet and eat his cake. My heart was absolutely breaking for the little boy - but at least he clearly had the expectation that the adult with him would chat and listen. The fact that he was being parented brilliantly shone through, despite his grandfather’s attitude.

I drive past my local primary school pretty much every day.

Virtually every single parent has their head stuck in a phone, whilst walking their child(ren) to school - and if they are pushing a pram as well, they are invariably leaning on the handle, scrolling through their phone, whilst their children trail behind them.

When I am out and about, again, little kids glued to a screen, usually at the highest volume possible.

Is it really that difficult to interact with your children FFS?! 🙄

Two things the rise of SEN children and the generation the parents are from.

I think society is not fit for parenting. So many children now are put in nursery before the age of 1 because both parents need to work full time and can't afford not to. Often 8-6. Practically, how do you potty train a child who you barely see except on the weekends?

I'm lucky enough that my husband and I both run our own businesses part time from home, so we both spend a lot of time with our young children, 3 yo and 6mo. 3yo has never been on an iPad. I don't say it to brag, but it takes SO MUCH time to teach things like emotional regulation, concentration skills, independent play. Same with teaching potty skills. If you don't have the time with your child, you don't have time to teach them these skills, and parents now are deprived of time with their children because they have to work so much.

I don't think we should go back to 'dad goes to work mum stays at home' but we need to look at things like extended maternity and paternity leave, flexible working, more child benefits to enable part time work for either parent. Society relies on parents being present to parent their kids and teach them fundamental skills and we're seeing the effects of this not happening now, we need to fix it.

Oh that is so sad, the poor little boy. My dg always had his head buried in a newspaper while smoking a cigar, and would occasionally grunt at us when we tried to talk. All of the grown ups would talk amongst themselves back then, it was really boring, thankfully we had our colouring books!

If your referring to my comment re read it as i clearly stated its not possible always possible for all autistic Kids. Thats not judgement its a fact.

Accept not all public information films were about parenting and children though. They were about litter, dangers of water (rivers, sea), drink driving, driving through amber lights, driving too fast, about AIDS, about seat belts. There still are some later than the 80's too - who can forget knock off Nigel, lol, and of course the covid information films.

They were and are a way to get information to the masses - absolutely nothing wrong with that. Perhaps we could do with a few more of them today, teach more up to date dangers such as online stranger danger.

Sorry, your point is a little moot if using it against parents of the 70's and 80's.

It really is because of how addictive phones/SM is. It’s changed our brains, for the worse. We just have to look at ourselves. Yet lots of adults here are making a case for kids needing to be tech-savvy and keeping up with the times and how it’s the same as book reading when it became available (wtf) and same as TV in the 80s-90s. Ignore all the damning data on how fucked up the mental health of today’s kids and youth is but come on, even if you watched loads of tv as a kid, did you carry it with you to the playground? Play date? Cafe? Just walking on the street / crossing the road? Train? Bus? Did you watch 30 second videos created to hook you - so largely shocking/negative content - for hours and hours on end? We just have to look at ourselves as adults and stop sprouting the bullshit that phones and tablets are just like TV. We - or more like a group of tech guys who don’t let their kids come anywhere near tech- have run a social experiment on us and fucked our brains up. We are starting to wake up to it - not fast enough, but in a couple of generations what tech is doing to kids today will be seen like smoking in your baby’s room. (And no I’m not 100% anti screen time and my toddler watches certain cartoons and I never objected to grandparents’ TV running on the background. I look forward to watching and discussing good documentaries and shows with my daughter and teaching her to code etc etc - I’m anti tech that means 60 seconds of not engaging with it is physically painful).

i think parents are so busy trying to work full time, raise kids, manage a house that you end up being jack of all trades master of none. And yes social media/ the internet/devices has changed how we communicate /live/behave for the worse in my opinion.
With regards to toilet training my mother claims I was trained and out of nappies at 9month, it’s more likely she spent her days repeatedly putting me on the potty because she had time to. And the incentive of no longer using Terry towelling nappies. I trained my DDs at two because they were ready to and with working there was no way I could do it until they were ready. my son has significant Sen and wasn’t trained until 7, he went to school in pull ups not because I was lazy but because he wasn’t able to recognise when to go until then.

Going back to the late 1990's I remember a lovely manager saying to me "No-one talks to each other any more, do they? Everything is done by email or text message. What is wrong with picking up the phone, or walking to their office and speaking to them face to face?"

~And on the subject of children and screens again, I am not anti screen. They have their place and are very useful. However, I loved the walk to school with my children, just chatting about all sorts of random stuff; a load of birds chattering in a shrub, a cat hiding in a garden, the mist hanging over a field, rescuing a snail in the middle of the path so it did not get trodden on.......the list really was endless, and we had such a lovely time.

It would just be lovely to see people take their eyes off their phones and look around them once in a while.

I know several parents who absolutely use their children’s diagnoses to excuse their children’s behaviour.
‘Oh he can’t help it, he’s got autism.’ Yes he might have autism but that shouldn’t mean other children have to put up with being hit if they say/do something that doesn’t suit him. It should mean that you still talk to your child about his behaviour and how he must not hit people. Yes it might take longer for him to learn that message but he’ll never learn it if you just use his diagnosis as a reason not to try to teach him what is appropriate behaviour.
A friend of mine has an autistic son who struggles in group situations and ends up screaming at or hurting other children. I have pointed out that he would likely benefit from her shadowing him but she never does.

My eldest is in pre school now, and there was emphasis on all children needing to be toilet trained, and for parents to do it if they hadn’t started. The whole class was toilet trained when they started (all age 3). We toilet trained before two, it wasn’t a long arduous process, and we both work

You’re not ignoring your children with a bag of toys as you’ll most likely be sat colouring with them, or looking at a book with them. Well, I certainly was when mine were young and we went out to eat 🤷🏻‍♀️

There are two elements to toilet training, the part that is instinctive (feeling the signal) and the part that is taught by parents (pulling clothes up and down, wiping, washing hands etc). I work in a preschool where we dont have changing facilities so the criteria is they have to be toilet trained before they begin. Most are, and we don't mind occasional accidents. What does really annoy me though is when a parent says the child is trained then it turns out that they need help with pulling clothing down, wiping, pulling up, flushing, washing hands etc. Basically everything that the parent was supposed to work on, essentially they have done nothing because the bit they can't control is the child's body functions.

An awful lot of them were about basic parenting.

I think it’s easy to judge when you have NT children and I say this as someone who does have 4 and so probably would have been more internally judgemental until I had my youngest. He has SEN and parenting him has been a humbling experience to say the least.

He did potty train thankfully at 3 and he was dry even through the night within a week. Don’t think he’s ever had an accident to this day so that’s not an issue. I know there’s another boy with more severe SEN in his year 1 class who is still in nappies. Maybe previously I’d have ignorantly sneered but now I just feel glad that isn’t something we also have to contend with.

He won’t feed himself with cutlery. This isn’t because he’s incapable, we’re inept parents, we haven’t taught him etc. He is able to but he totally freaks out if anything spills on him so he’s terrified this will happen and subsequently won’t even try now.

He elopes. If he gets bored or if something takes his interest, he just runs. We have been glared at for this many times. He won an award at school last week and usually the children sit at the front on a bench until the end when they’re allowed to come see their parents. He spotted me, ran straight past the head teacher and around the whole assembly of children to come sit with me. This of course made lots of children laugh and right now at 5 he can just about get away with it. I worry about this as he gets older, bigger and people just think he’s plain naughty. He has no sense of danger either so will gladly run into a road if there’s a car he likes the look of. He’d also run into a pond to try and stroke ducks or swans.

He can read and loves books, in fact his fixation is books which is quite fitting since I’m an American Lit lecturer so own lots. He likes to line books up according to publisher and also alphabetises them. So swiping across books isn’t an issue.

All I’ll say is not all of the children will have SEN, some of it will just be plain lazy parenting but try not to judge in case. I’ve been sneered at for a few things to the extent I’ve left the school crying. Those parents are maybe unaware he has SEN or think it’s my fault in some way.

There are many, many reasons we’re seeing children in nappies starting school.

in no particular order…..

SEN
Lazy parenting
’normalising’ potty training as starting later (3 being the new 2 nowadays)
Pull Ups
Parents who work long hours with 20 days annual leave a year - who wants to spend a week of your AL potty training.
Kid’s starting school earlier, a lot of us boomers didn’t start until 5 years old, not 4.
Parents who are generally time poor
The ‘he’ll do it when he’s ready’ brigade (nope, that’s a cop out)
It’s easier to not potty train

They were about many situations and topics. They actually started in cinemas during wartime as far as I remember, gas masks and who can forget this one - coughs and sneezes spread diseases! Nothing special about bloomin parenting and it wasn't the original idea behind them. Just because there were some safety with children ones, it doesn't mean that public information films were just for parents or because of the state of parenting in the 70/80's as you made out.

People needed teaching about all things.

Op not been back then.....sounds made up to me as schools in England can't deny children a place because they're not potty trained.

And yes, when we ate out as a family, my 3 DC would each pick a colouring book and crayons to take with them. This always kept them occupied, and...shock......horror.....we had a conversation with them too! 🤷‍♀️