...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.

Ask anyone who has taught in reception and infants for more than ten or twenty years what they think. Surely these statistics and feedback on surveys come directly from them. If they say it seems to be the case then surely it must be the case?

I think it's partly due to a burgeoning underclass with social problems, partly due to the fact that children with developmental delays and autism etc are increasingly being included in mainstream education, and partly due to a fairly recent fashion for leaving toilet training until three or older so that many children are arriving at school with very little experience of being fully independent when needing the loo.

And of course our obsession with screen time. the screen Children don't sit up at the table with a knife and fork as often as we did. It's all breaded finger food on the sofa munched on autopilot while they stare at the Telly.

Expectations have fallen and I wonder if it's due to the fear of pressurising children leading to a lack of perseverance- e.g. put pants on child, two or three accidents- "Oh they're not ready". DD wet 9 pairs of knickers straight and then it clicked (i think the point about super dry disposables is spot on- she didnt realise "that" feeling was her weeing) and she's been almost completely dry since. I accept that it often takes less time if they're older, but at the same time, you still save yourself months of nappies if you start at 2 and it takes 2 months to get accident free, vs. if you start at 3.5 and it takes 2 days.

DS starts everything from the assumption that he cant do it (just how he is). If I hadnt encouraged perseverance I'd still be wiping his bum and nose at 5- he'd probably still be in nappies left to his own devices. When I saw his (mandatory) school shorts and realised they had a hook and eye I nearly cried, but he learned to do it with practice once I made him realise that the teacher doesnt have time to do everyone's shorts up 3 times a day. What colley said rings true actually- I mentioned to mum about the shorts and she said "Sophie, when you were 4 you had to be able to tie our own tie and your shoe laces. Just make him do it FGS"

I also think a lot of these skills require practice and a consistent approach which is often inconvenient and is harder when you're working and relying on childcare (I am a wohm btw). It's hard to enforce "Mum/nanny, dont do DS's shorts up, make DS put his plate in the dishwasher etc". Even harder in a communal childcare setting when they cant tailor everything to your child- that said, DS's pre-school were a godsend in encouraging personal independence/responsibility.

I think there is a growing underclass with DC who cannot undertake basic skills, but that is not the sole source of these problems.

Many DC from naice MC families spend inordinate amounts of time in front of screens and never hear the word 'no'. They are babied and pandered to like emperors.

Sashh I have to disagree - if you are an alcoholic or depressed or non English speaking you can still teach your child to wipe its bum or do up buttons.
If you are comatose or unable to carry out normal functions due to any of the above your DC should be removed from your care.

I agree with she it's just as much a naice mc fashion to overly baby a child. Its certainly my experience that age appropriate independence is more likely to be present in poorer families than mc ones. When deprived families get it wrong it's usually too much independence, it's the mc pfb mentality I find leads to babying.

lurked that's my observation.

Lots of middle class parents are very timid with their DC. In some ways that softness is nice to see, but it often tips into fearfulness. Fear that their DC will be unhappy, make a fuss, have a tantrum or whatever perfectly natural behaviour a child might exhibit when he doesn't get his own way.

Many parents also seek to avoid any failure for their DC. Anything tough. Anything that they feel (wrongly in my opinion) might impact upon their self esteem.

Parents seem to assume that they can boost their child's self-esteem by protecting them from failure and struggle.
What actually builds self-esteem is trying something new, struggling, persisting and ultimately succeeding.

Agreed.

Yy she. And more likely to be blind to any possible faults/ mistakes, it's never their child that could be in the wrong, it's always the other child.

I think i agree with ^^ not only the mc lots of parents are fearful of their children not liking them so wont upset them or they dont want them dissapointed so never say no say stuff about self esteem so overpraise.

I agree with Lurked as well. Too much independence borne out of necessity is the case for many children from deprived or troubled homes - they learn to cook or they don't eat. They learn to cross the road using sheer instinctive survival skills because no-one is there to hold their hand.

But often that comes later. In the early years they are often going to be behind in speech and vocabulary and will have short attention spans and behavioural issues because they have never had routine, structure or consistency and their best friend/babysitter has been the television.

True lurked.

I grew up in an environment where people were tough on their kids, probably too much so. My mum was seen as a right namby pamby .

But there has to be a balance. Yes, we have our kids backs and try to assume the best rather than the worst, but not at the expense of ignoring their faults and failings.

Just musing - I teach rather older children so I don't have anything 'professional' to add to the mix.

It seems to me, though, that the 'academic achievements' we expect from children at a young age have become more demanding over time, and the 'non academic achievements' we expect have become less demanding. So early years in school, pre-schools, nurseries, faced with greater demands in terms of 'curriculum', have had less time for 'basic skills', and parents getting children ready for these settings have also become more focused on 'academic' skills than 'non academic' ones.

The excellent pre-school DS and DD attended required children to be toilet trained before they started at 2.5 when DS (now 14) started. As a result, the community of village mums, the toddler group that fed into the pre-school etc was focused on potty training around the age of 2 -2.5 years - lots of idea sharing and expertise, lots of 'toilet breaks' at toddler group, lots of 'look at x in their big boy pants', etc etc. Once in pre-school, despite a word and language rich environment - many stories, lots of pre-reading skills, - there was no formal teaching of phonics etc at all, it was all about fine and gross motor skills, independence, co-operation, listening to adults and other children, buttons and coats and lining up and taking turns, paying attention to particular activities for extended periods of time, structured snack time, knife and fork skills etc.

DD is 2 years younger, and in response to new guidance on discrimination, the pre-school dropped the requirement to be dry for entry. At the same time, there was a push for early phonics and formal number work from the neighbouring school and the 'powers that be'. So the balance shifted - less time on the 'non academic' skills, more time given to formal teaching of phonics and numbers...

I understand that almost all children start there in nappies now, and the 'collective knowledge and focus' of potty training around the age of 2 has been lost from that community of mums - but the neighbouring primary school now gets better academic results as a result of good early years phonics and maths teaching started in the pre-school...

teacher you may be right.

The prep school my DC attended fully expected some DC to arrive unable to read or write etc. And for them to come from a number of settings. Mine had been in Chicago in a part time day care setting, but spent a lot of time at home actually.

Now the prep school would rather its pupils comes from its pre-school (which it has expanded) which teaches academic skills in a rather formal setting (5 days per week, 9-3pm).

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.

'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.

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

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

How do you know?

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

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.

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)

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!