What is going on?

[pleasemindyourmanners]

I am a teacher and I am aware that this will no doubt lead to lots of teacher bashing as this appears to have become a national past time.
I just can't work out what is going on with children and parents and attitudes towards school.
Younger and younger children are coming through with less and less resilience. I realise that covid and lockdowns have played a part but this was happening before then too. It is just gradually getting worse.
So many parents also appear almost delusional about their children. That is increasing year on year too. They are not interested in any misdemeanours their child may have been part of. They only believe one version of events. And all want their child to be listened to and their version to be acted upon.
I was looking at my pension pot. I have about 25 years to reach the state pension. That is a terrifying prospect. If behaviour and attitudes towards teaching/schools carry on the same trajectory I dread to think what things will be like by that point.
I really wish I could put my finger on what the main problems are but the issues are so massive there are definitely no easy fixes. Lack of resources and specialist staff is one issue but i don't remember there being such a huge need as there is nowadays.
It is like we, teachers, are also becoming immune to being sworn at by parents and even primary aged kids.
It isn't just my school. Friends in other schools and teachers on teaching Facebook pages are all saying the same thing. I'd say this is one of the many reasons there is a teacher retention issue. It is draining.
I absolutely love the kids and what I do. However, I feel like I can't do my job properly a lot of the time as I've effectively become a bouncer or a referee.
Everything appears to be blamed on teachers. Even icy conditions round school was seen as our fault and we were thoughtless putting them out in the icy playground.
Kids who just get on with things, don't try to cause a drama, who are kind without having constant dramas are becoming more and more rare. This is no longer the expected behaviour and ore like a wishful dream. It is Monday night and I'm totally exhausted already.

Case in point: DS’s Biology teacher is adorable. Clever, kind, wants the best for the pupils. DS recounted an incident in class where one boy said “Sir, you’re so bald, where does your face end and your head start?” Rude. Absolutely rude. Teacher did nothing as the boy’s father is Head of Sport. Boy knew he could say it as his eldest brother was Headboy, his brother is likely to be Headboy next year and he himself is likely to be Head of House next year.

Entitlement
Political correctness
Narcissistic shallow world.

@JustanotherBerkshiremum - do you honestly think events like the one above have only started recently and are only instigated by children who have parents working at the school?

The bald maths teacher used to get grief for being bald back when I started secondary school in 1991.

This. How can anyone believe this type of behaviour is anything new? I can recall one of my teachers running out of the room in tears because some of the kids were being so vile to her, and this was in the mid-90s.

The main difference in my opinion, is the attitude of the parents.

I think it's a combination of issues. Lack of adequate funding means schools cannot afford the staff (experienced staff too!) to manage and deal with behaviour effectively. There is no room for creativity in schools. Due to budgets and pressures from ofsted, schools are prioritising English, Maths and Science which leaves little room for other subjects like the Arts or Humanities. The GCSE reforms in 2016 made exams harder (in opinion) and put these kids under so much pressure. Many pupils now prioritise subjects they want to pass and abandon others, restricting the amount of qualifications they leave school with and adding pressure onto teachers who are still fully accountable for their results.

Many schools micromanage how teachers plan and deliver their lessons. In one previous school I taught at, it was pretty much death by PowerPoint and assessment. Kids and teachers are frustrated. Not enough funding to properly tackle serious issues like mental health and support pupils with SEN. Pastoral staff are scarce - My current school has one person to manage all of Year 7 AND Year 8. That's over 300 kids!

In my experience, many parents can be really supportive with behaviour issues. However, many parents literally don't know how to, or refuse to, discipline their own children which makes the job harder. I had one kid come to me the next day saying 'you called my dad last night. Didn't work did it?' He continued to behave appalling for me, and pretty much everyone, and I was powerless to do anything about it. I had a Yr 10 boy throw objects at me because I dared to ask him to leave the classroom. The consequence? The school removed him from my lessons for a week. Didn't stay at that school long.

I have been teaching for 10 years, in a variety of schools, and I am so worried about sending my daughter to school in a few years time. I will be leaving teaching this year, as will many others, due to the lack of respect for the profession - fom the government, some parents, the public, the students. It's emotionally draining. The holidays are no longer a perk for me.

I do understand what previous posters have said about entitlement. I am constantly being argued with and undermined to a point where I no longer see the point in me being there anymore. A lot needs to change to make the education system fit for purpose.

I think in general it takes a village to raise a (well adjusted) child. And for many many reasons not many people have a "village" anymore.

Both parents having to work all hours and still not afford bills let alone a holiday, their own parents working or too old to help, their friends and neighbours working and unable to help, the community reluctant to get involved for fear of being attacked, an expectation that people should live wherever for a job or move wherever because there are no houses in their community.

Lack of affordable and stable housing is at the route of a lot of poverty and social problems.

It takes massive resilience to cope let alone thrive if your landlord keeps pulling the plug on your housing and you have to move areas and your kids schools ...multiple times. Who can thrive in that environment?

Well you say YOU, and it’s not clear to which you you’re referring.

Publishers weren’t watching the effect of books on society and particularly young developing brains and refusing to let their children read books. TV execs weren’t forbidding their kids from watching TV because of the effect on their growth and minds.

To compare the internet, and especially social media, with these other, older forms of information and media is wilfully obtuse. Social media works on algorithms that are specifically designed to train our behaviour and alter our brains on a second-by-second basis, and it’s all built on the concept that we need to feel worse about ourselves, so we stay there longer and buy more stuff. It’s not conspiracy theory territory, it’s literally how capitalism and the internet works.

Turning our backs on taking responsibility on the grounds that we can’t put the genie back in the bottle is lazy at best, dystopian at worst. My kids are fine, socially confident and busy with all the stuff kids should be doing in their teens and early twenties, without the need for smartphones. I even know some people in their forties and fifties who have turned back to dumb phones, and they manage fine too!

That’s nice. Here’s your 🏅

Oh I hate to tell you this but your kids in their teens and early 20s definitely use social media. You are incredibly naive if you think they don’t.

As for people not study the affect TV has on developing brains…you are joking right? Of course that’s been studied. That’s why no TV is recommend before 18 months. You don’t think adverts on kids and teens TV are insidious and damaging? You honestly don’t think there has ever been outrage about the books kids and teens were reading? What planet are you on?

Only read the first post, but coming at it from a different angle, I wonder if part of the problem is that many HH now need two full time working parents, or parents who work close to this. Less time and energy for your kids is likely to impact on behaviour of the kids, and then parents having less time and energy to manage that. Plus if you don’t see much of your kids, you probably are motivated to indulge your kids in the time you do spend with them.
Plus many families no longer living near extended family to help.

Most parents have not been brought up around children so have gained no skills and experience in parenting.

I spoke to a teacher who said, since covid they have kept kids coming to school in PE kit, which has resulted in kids being more delayed in their dressing skills, as teachers used to teach them that when getting dressed for PE. ‘we know parents just dress the kids at home themselves as they are rushing for work’. if basic skills like this are going due to lack of parental time, then other things will be going too due to parental time.

So I think there are probably a lot of factors behind this and not just attitudinal changes.

i genuinely think being a parent is more work than when I grew up. Goodness, parents are responsible for their kids leisure time and social life too now! It was not like that in the 80s! And rushing around taking your kids to ‘activities’ and after school clubs, is not actually spending time with them, is it?

There's a middle ground though isn't there. I was born early 80s, my parents were born early 50s and definitely got some tougher love albeit still within the bounds of loving caring families (I'm talking in the realms of not that much sympathy when they were poorly unless they were really REALLY poorly, and no doubt they got a smack if they were naughty). My parents didn't raise me like that but there were boundaries in place for sure which were absolute, eg bedtimes, manners, things like crisps and fizzy pop etc were for special occasions not every day, various things I wasn't allowed to do until a certain age etc etc. I was painfully shy and if left to my own devices I wouldn't ever have done anything (extra curricular activities, school overnight trips etc) and they definitely forced me to do these things which I didn't want to - at the time I thought it was mean but it really was for my own good as it built my confidence, and with hindsight I'm very glad they did force me out of my comfort zone a bit. I really do feel they got that balance right, and agree that there seems to be an awful lot of a) entitlement (ie no consideration of others) and b) 'snowflakey' behaviour for want of a better word - by which I mean sometimes kids have to do things they don't want to do because it builds resilience and confidence as well as the benefit of the thing itself ie getting an education etc, because when you're a grown up you also have to do plenty of things you'd rather not but that's just life!

I do also think there's something to be said for the realisation that we're not actually supposed to be blissfully happy all of the time; life unfortunately has light and dark, and I think sometimes the expectation of perfect happiness or feeling that something is wrong for not feeling that way all the time is part of the problem and makes people feel less content in itself. I'm going off topic there but I guess it's tied in with the fact there are plenty of things we all just have to get on with sometimes.

A friend’s child threatened to throw a chair and hit a teacher and had to be restrained by another male teacher, as he wouldn’t calm down (first teacher was female and felt threatened). He was only 8 years old. His parents went to the school to deal with it and ended up blaming the school, saying that he hadn’t had a permanent teacher all term and this was their fault. We actually fell out a bit as I encouraged my friend to think about why, if that were true, had none of the other children responded in that way. I also warned them that they needed to make sure their son took responsibility or they would have problems in the future. My friend stopped speaking to me for a long time due to that, and I understand that he was excluded twice more after that. If he was my son, he would have been taken to the school and made to apologise to his teachers and he would have had serious work done with me on appropriately releasing his emotions

Only read the first post, but coming at it from a different angle, I wonder if part of the problem is that many HH now need two full time working parents, or parents who work close to this. Less time and energy for your kids is likely to impact on behaviour of the kids, and then parents having less time and energy to manage that. Plus if you don’t see much of your kids, you probably are motivated to indulge your kids in the time you do spend with them.
Plus many families no longer living near extended family to help.

Most parents have not been brought up around children so have gained no skills and experience in parenting.

I spoke to a teacher who said, since covid they have kept kids coming to school in PE kit, which has resulted in kids being more delayed in their dressing skills, as teachers used to teach them that when getting dressed for PE. ‘we know parents just dress the kids at home themselves as they are rushing for work’. if basic skills like this are going due to lack of parental time, then other things will be going too due to parental time.

So I think there are probably a lot of factors behind this and not just attitudinal changes.

I agree that this is probably part of the puzzle, albeit alongside many other factors. I see it a lot along my own circle, most of whom are busy professionals working FT or 4 days condensed into 5. They are extremely hardworking, highly educated, loving parents, and as engaged in their children’s upbringing as they possibly can be, but so much still falls by the wayside. The point about children dressing themselves is one that I often saw as a teacher, and is now an issue at DD’s school. Also other life skills like family meal times, using cutlery properly etc - one middle-class mum I know was concerned about her son not coping with school dinners because he had never sat down to eat a meal before, and usually just ate wandering around.

Many of the small children I know are in wraparound care all day, and holiday clubs during school breaks - in some cases a different ‘camp’ every day, with a different set of kids. Lots of parents now have patchwork childcare arrangements, where grandparents/neighbours/childminders/other school mums are dropping and collecting each day, so the parents themselves are out of the ‘school loop’ and have very little contact with their children’s teachers.

The biggest thing that slips is always discipline; I’ve seen the lack of follow through so many times, where parents just don’t have the energy to spoil precious family time by taking away the TV/iPad time as threatened, or cutting a trip short when a child won’t stop misbehaving.

But none of this is the parents’ fault as such - very few people actively choose to work all hours of the day. Frazzled, stressed-out parents just don’t have the time or headspace for the calm, consistent, steadfast parenting that many children need.

I think a big part is the inability to permanently exclude violent kids. When I went to school you knew that if you were persistently violent then before too long you’d be removed from the school. So kids on the whole had a basic standard of behaviour whereas now they don’t. One of my kids was being physically assaulted, day after day and when I complained I was told ‘oh but (the bully) is a very troubled child’. So what! Move him to a school where they can focus fully on his needs. Don’t have him in mainstream schooling terrorising other kids. If someone in my workplace was prone to lashing out violently I’d be anxious about attending too. These kids cannot be in mainstream schooling. It is deeply unfair on the mainstream of well behaved pupils.

and the other cause is the total and utter collapse of CAMHS. If a 7 year old is struggling socially and is suspected of having ASD, but is not diagnosed for 3 years and receives no help thereafter in trying to relate to their peer group their problems are going to grow exponentially.

There is a 6 month waiting list for suicidal teens in my area. One of my friends had to take 12 months off work to prevent her 14 year old accessing knives to self harm with while she awaited treatment. She is not the only parent I know who has had to give up work to care for a teen waiting for mental health treatment.

If you don’t treat these problems early they get exponentially bigger. It’s just a sickeningly poor way to fail our kids.

And parents both working full time is due to the cost of house prices. Bring house prices down (by building more) and so many of society’s ills (people waiting too late in life to have kids, parents having to commute for hours, people not being able to afford enough income tax to ensure adequate public services) will be fixed.

I remember getting a detention at school when I bunked off one afternoon. My mum went mad, grounded me for a week, and added insult to injury by phoning the school and telling them to give me extra work to do for the amount of time that I was grounded, which they did!
Imagine a parent doing that now?

One of mine (now mid 20's) bunked off PE one afternoon. She got a detention and came home whinging. DH and I grounded her for a week...not for the bunking cos we're a totally non sporty family but for the way she spoke about her teacher, then argued with us when we took the school's side.

She never did it again still hates sports though