...to be annoyed by suggestion that children joining reception are getting weaker and weaker at doing what should be expected of them ....

[MoreVegLessCake]

.....because basically parents are rubbish????

I am a trustee of a grant-making charity and today we had a presentation from an organisation that runs nurture groups in local primary schools. We have already funded them, and they were reporting back on their work, though suspect they would like to get more funding for the future.

I am 100% supportive of work in schools to support the (hopefully fairly small percentage of) children who struggle for whatever reason - family difficulties etc. But the language used by the presenter and the way the whole issue was discussed really irritated me.

As parent of children still in/just out of KS1 I found myself feeling very cross at the message that the current generation of parents are more crap than those of even the recent past. Quoting from memory, we were told something like "children when I was teaching 10 years ago did not have nearly so many problems" e.gs cited were not being able to use a knife and fork, do up buttons, hold a pencil, concentrate for long enough, share toys, communicate in sentences.

We were told that nationally 40% of 5 year olds fail to meet the expectations of the EY Foundation framework, and in our town last year 47% did not. I get it that some families really struggle, as do some DCs, some parents probably are a bit crap, and extra help for all these kids is brilliant but if nearly 50% of kids don't meet the expectations at 5 years old, surely the expectations are too high??!!! It makes me feel really sad and cross that so many kids should be labelled as failing to achieve at such a young age.

Didn't help that my fellow trustees are either parents of adults or don't have children so they seemed to lap up the "feckless parents" talk .

So am I getting unreasonably upset or not?? Views from teachers in primary schools particularly welcome - I do really want to know.

Thanks in advance.

[BoboChic]

I'm not an out and out fan of French maternelle by any stretch of the imagination but three years of nursery school means that all DC have been trained in the basics before starting primary.

[PerspicaciaTick]

I don't think the move to allow summer borns to defer will help much with toilet skills, there will simply be a cohort of rising 6yos turning up in nappies.

[shebird]

I know reception teachers who have made a similar observations about children starting primary school. They have also remaked at how each new intake seems to have a lower attention span than the previous year. Just sitting and listening and following simple instructions is a steep learning curve for many. The teachers seem to think the children have become so used to screens and the instant rewards/ gratification that they get from games that cannot focus and get really bored and fidgety in class.

The toilet training, bottom wiping and getting dressed issues are also increasingly worse. Perhaps the recent change to allow parents of summer borns to start reception a year later might help resolve some of these problems. Hats off to teachers though I really don't envy you.

[Shockers]

Some children aren't 'allowed' to fail.

One example of this is when children come into school immaculately dressed, but have absolutely no idea how to dress, or undress, themselves for PE.

Another is when children are told what they won't enjoy, or be able to do. I've seen friends tell their children that they won't be able to climb to the top of the climbing frame/paddle in the river/go near the dog because they'll get hurt/dirty.

I've also seen children actually encouraged not to try food because their parents don't like it.

I was one of those babies who were left out in a pram in the garden, but there were aunts and uncles who were teens who would come home from school and play with me. Also, when I could toddle, I was given full rein of the garden, where I could potter, dig, discover and get filthy while Grandma cleaned the house .

[MagickPants]

Yes Colley I remember a neighbour who was about 14 walking my baby brother for hours in the afternoons, it really helped my mum because he was super demanding (actually extremely sociable). We knew her and her mum though.

I think a lot of what has changed with how we treat children is excellent. Child abuse is no longer considered to be acceptable. What this means is that children have more respect in terms of how we listen to them, and the respect that they have as individuals with personal and bodily autonomy. This is a a massive change - children no longer as possessions of adults- and it's having wide ranging rippling effects through all adult - child interactions. For good reason

[Lightbulbon]

Magick- yes in the 30s mums were told to keep babies in the garden most of the day just bringing them in every 4 hours for a feed. Do more and you were 'spoiling them'.

Sahming in those days was much more about cleaning, cooking & laundry (which were full time jobs) than childcare.

[colley]

That is true. I was also thinking of the small minority of parents who largely ignore their DC.
It also helped teach teenage girls how to look after babies and toddlers better.

[PaulineFossil]

But, colley, you could also look at that sort of arrangement as providing a break for exhausted mothers allowing them to get other things done or focus on another child. Where does that come from for parents today?

[colley]

When I was young, young teenage girls used to routinely take neighbours toddlers and babies out for a bit. My mum was too anxious to allow this. But it meant that the babies and toddlers who were more ignored by their mothers, got regular time with a doting teenage girl.

[NewLife4Me]

They don't come with a manual is my saying every time I muck up parenting.
It's true, they don't.
It's our job to find out what they need to be able to do and by when. To educate and nurture.
To say no, you can't do that we are going to do this.
The amount of times I hear parents talking about what their kids do and it's always completely child lead whether it's right for the child or not.
Some people just give in for a quiet life

[MagickPants]

Ubik, you may be joking but much of this thread is a horrible screed of basically that.

The OP has enough self doubt to wonder whether she is included in this deluge of inadequacy and it pissed her off a bit. Fair enough.

so many of the posters are just going on and on about THEM who do it WRONG. With the odd exception it has entirely ceased to be about whether children are becoming less skilled; why that might be; how it can be measured; what could or should be done about it; does it even matter, if it is a result of changing styles that have certain important benefits? All that would be quite interesting, but no, let's talk about "very young mothers glued to their phones" who "drag" their children around town "day in day out". FFS.

Even if it is the case that a significant number of parents parent less effectively than in past times (as opposed to differently, and even that has not really been proven) then it would surely be more interesting to talk about why and what the pressures are, than just to leap on this trundling hobby horse running plangently around the same rattling old boring rails.

Interacting with children - I know my mother was given a book that said that after breakfast, you put the baby in the pram in the garden and you washed the step. The book went on to talk about the rest of the housework you would do all day, and if the baby didn't like being in the pram you put it at the bottom of the garden where you would hear it less. I don't know how many mothers followed these instructions to the letter, there are always individuals who think "that doesn't sound right" and do their own daring thing (like breastfeeding, feeding on demand, actually talking to or cuddling their babies, crazy mavericks) but surely if everyone did that it wouldn't be that different from the mothers being "glued to their phones"?

[Ubik1]

Oh it's probably just because the current generation of parents are lazy arses.

Except me of course.

[Lottapianos]

'Imo parenting is learned behaviour'

Completely spot on. Nobody knows it all, everybody has questions, everybody makes mistakes, everybody needs advice at some point. That's all totally fine, and there should be plenty of professional, free, easily accessible advice available for parents.

[Lightbulbon]

Re: blaming this on working mothers from my own persobal experience I found that my DC who was in full time nursery from age 1-4 was a lot more capable eg out of nappies 6 months earlier, dressing, feeding without making a mess etc than my other DC who had a couple of short days at a cm then only the 15 hours of nursery from 3-4.

The day nursery my eldest went to did toilet training with the 2-3 yr old room and had them all (sen excepted) trained quickly. Being experienced professionals who had been toilet training toddlers for 20 years they were a hell of a lot better at it than I was as a sahm who didn't know one end of a baby from another until I'd had mine.

Imo parenting is learned behaviour. Lots of parents now haven't learned these skills as they've had no one to learn from (smaller families, living further apart etc).

[colley]

I don't believe for a moment the change is because of poverty. When I was a child, the level of poverty was very high. I grew up in 2 rooms, with a shared outside toilet with 5 other families and only cold running water. That was common for the children who went to the local primary school from 4 years of age.
And yes there were children who were very neglected because their parents were alcoholics. But most children could do all these basics at a much younger age than today. But most children were brought up in an old fashioned way where they were simply expected to persevere until they could do these skills. I still have vague memories of getting upset because I couldn't tie my shoelaces for starting school. My parents simply insisted I keep practising. I suspect today my mother would have been advised simply to leave it until I was a bit older.

[Lottapianos]

Its very worrying derxa. I've been in this line of work for 13 years and it's gotten much worse in that time. Parents often used to say 'TV' or 'cartoons' when asked the same question but now its often a list - iPad, laptop, my phone, computer. When you ask 'but what does he play with?', the answer is often 'toys', no more details than that.

Parenting certainly does take effort but some parents seem unaware of that and don't seem to think its their job to help their child to learn, almost as if child development happens by magic!

[Naty1]

What i dont fully get is how if salt can improve S&L then surely a really proactive parent could do this too. As another PP mentioned they used to get say 6w blocks of help.
Some knowledge/experience has been lost. Im dc2 of 2 i had only held a baby once when i had mine. Never changed a nappy, burped, spoken to a baby etc.
so ive never seen anyone potty training a child.
It was my dp who showed us how to interact with the baby.
I think there is generally a lot of conflicting advice about PT, sleep training etc.
and where are the milestone charts saying 3yrs, should be dressing and undressing, doing up buttons, zips, 4yo tying laces (off to google if ive just ignored this)

[derxa]

Asking what the child enjoys playing with is an eye opener too - some type of screen (iPad / my phone / laptop / TV / tablet) is usually the first thing they mention, and many parents need a lot of prompting to think of a single other thing their child does regularly.
That's so worrying Lotta It's no wonder things have deteriorated if this is a typical response. I wonder if there are any studies by the RCSLT in this area.
Parenting takes effort and can often be tedious e.g. reading the same story over and over again.
Speech and language problems are many and varied and are definitely not all due to poor parenting. But some are.

[FaceFullOfFilleronthe45]

Because I see it and have seen in many times in people I have known.

[MagickPants]

How do you know?

[FaceFullOfFilleronthe45]

Whether it's prejudice and loathing or not doesn't stop it being largely true.

[MagickPants]

I really don't blame the OP given some of the language on this thread:

"eternally glued to phones"
"very young mums from less well educated backgrounds"
"dragged around"
"day in day out" (how do you know? Do you stalk them? How do you know how long or how often they go to town?)
"underclass"
"It's all breaded finger food on the sofa munched on autopilot while they stare at the Telly."
"blind to any possible faults/ mistakes"
"fearful of their children"


there is a lot more thoughtful stuff on this thread than this, but also shocking outpourings of ill informed snobbery. It's like these posters are just waiting for a vaguely apposite opportunity to pour out all their prejudice and loathing

[Lottapianos]

'I wonder if language delay is becoming more of an issue because some parents seem eternally glued to their phones and have (or at least appear to have) very little conversational interaction with their babies and toddlers. '

I'm an Early Years speech and language therapist and I would agree that this is definitely a huge issue. A lot of parents are glued to their phones and get the child glued to a screen from as early an age as possible too. About 7 times out of 10, I go in the waiting area to call a parent and child in for an appointment and the parent and child are sitting there in total silence, like they've never even been introduced! A lot of parents don't know how to chat and interact with a child, or even feel that there's no point because they're 'just a baby'. Asking what the child enjoys playing with is an eye opener too - some type of screen (iPad / my phone / laptop / TV / tablet) is usually the first thing they mention, and many parents need a lot of prompting to think of a single other thing their child does regularly.

[FaceFullOfFilleronthe45]

I wonder if language delay is becoming more of an issue because some parents seem eternally glued to their phones and have (or at least appear to have) very little conversational interaction with their babies and toddlers. I know you can't keep up a constant dialogue with them, but when mine were small I didn't have any distractions when we were out of the house - if it was just me and them in the park or the shops or wherever, we would chat to one another because there was nothing else to do!

I see it all the time, particularly that demographic of very young mums from less well educated backgrounds, the child being dragged around the town centre day in day out, strapped into the buggy, bottle of juice clamped firmly in their mouths and mum wittering away (or more often than not arguing with someone) on her phone the whole time, totally ignoring the child, or just endlessly texting/checking facebook.