Nursery observation for a 2 year old 'working towards'. What does that mean? Behind?

[sharingzoe]

My 2 years and 1 month old goes to nursery 2 days a week. He's been in his new room since the beginning of January only.

I got his observation through today, and it's all 'working towards' with a couple of 'on tracks'.

He doesn't really speak at nursery, and doesn't like touching wet paint but apart from that I don't know why he wouldn't be 'on track' for everything. He can count to two and he puts two works together often/has around 50/75 words that he uses. His elder brother had slightly delayed speech so we've got some experience with speech therapy etc. I haven't been at all worried about my second until receiving this observation.

Seems a bit harsh to be honest.

Can someone have a read and a sense check?

Don’t worry OP, it’s the reception outcome that is the first assessment that really counts and he’s a couple of years off yet. He’s only 2.

Work on being less defensive, OP.

My DC is exactly the same age as yours and very similar to the descriptions given there. He isn't at nursery, he's at home with me so we don't have any of these kind of reports. Some kids are going to be towards the back of the curve. It sounds like you are taking it a bit personally?

It’s an observational, early intervention can help at nursery stage rather than waiting until there is formal assessment at school it’s for everyone around the child to think about

feedback given to carers can help boost input at home

feedback always has a variety of info about stages at this age

This !
Totally sympathised until seen the replies to anyone trying to be helpful

It could just be me but it reads a bit uncomfortably like a bit of a pile on the OP for asking a question. There’s no need to keep repeating the child is two: she knows how old he is.

I’ve also worried about these but have taken with a bit of a pinch of salt. The main thing is that they communicate clearly any concerns to you.

He hasn't been marked down.

My son was developmentally fairly normal, but gradually as life's demands got higher presented many more signs of ASD (he's now a teenager). We're going through the assessment at the moment and these sort of nursery records are really helpful to flag how he was as a young child. As parents it's hard to see how our children compare with others as we only have our own benchmarks to judge on, please do try not to see this as your child "failing" because they aren't.

I work in a nursery. For us, selecting 'working towards' just means that we might have observed your child doing something a couple of times, but not necessarily consistently, or it's a new skill. When we've observed the same skill a number of times, we would then select 'achieved'. It definitely doesn't mean anything negative!

Different settings will work in different ways with different recording processes.

Me too @JudgeJ - imagine how much more time they could spend working with the children if they weren’t having to record every single bloody fart the kids do and mark it on a scale of smell, volume and velocity, you never know - they might actually be able to see more evidence of the children doing these things!
OP it’s just bullshit paperwork. Ignore and continue to enjoy your lovely little one.

He’s 2! You’re being ridiculous! It’s full of positive feedback and comments. You’re annoyed because he’s working towards a few things? At 2?! All 2 year olds are working towards things… they’re 2! Most of them don’t have it all figured out yet 😂

Working towards probably means they haven’t seen him do it yet. When I had a 1 to 1 meeting with my sons key worker when he was a similar age there would loads of things that he’d been marked down on but when I spoke to them it was just that they hadn’t seen him do it but he was doing it at home. It was like we send a different kid to nursery every week that couldn’t do anything 🤷‍♀️🙈😂

Speak for yourself! At two years old my son was doing my tax return, mastered abstract algebra and was taking the free market by storm. Thank god to the nursery for flagging what he was ‘working towards’, it really encouraged me to get his arse into gear.

Literacy in a two year old as a measure. How ridiculous.

it's all age appropriate, they are not being measured against kids reading Harry Potter.

OP - Like others have said there is an age range and he is on the younger end so will be working towards most things, you can probably google to find out more about it or just ask them. From what you described he sounds like he is working towards most things which is absolutely fine.

Two year olds vary massively, by just over 2 my eldest could count to over 100, he recognised numbers and letters out of order and could read phonetically built words as well as write letters and numbers. My youngest at just over 2 couldn't recognise any letters, could count to 10 but couldn't recognise the numbers out of order. He refused to write anything until he was nearly 4. They are both predicted fairly similar GCSE results, DS1s will be slightly better as he is naturally more academic and copes well in exams, but DS2 works a lot harder at revising etc.

Yeah it just means they haven’t seen him do x thing yet. I would put no store whatsoever on those bits at his age, and focus on the nice comments.

Sounds like he's doing great! I wouldn't worry. If nursery had any concerns they would have raised them with you.

I remember my oldest being marked down by nursery and HV for not being able to climb stairs because they hadn't personally seen him climb any stairs because there weren't any at nursery or in the room we did the assessment in 😅

Arghhh are we meant to be showing toddlers numbers for them to learn? 😬 My 22 month old can 'only' count to 10 (understands it, not just reciting the numbers) but I didn't know I should be using queue cards to get them to recognise the numbers written out...😂

I don't really get your post, not sure how to take it really. I haven't said anything like that in mine about cue cards? Surely you just take the lead from what your DC is interested in?

Also I meant my DS2 could only count to 10, as in recite the numbers, no understanding really, I was never concerned at that age. From y1 he was great at maths so no bearing whatsoever.

Numberblocks is pretty good. It does square numbers too lol.

And alphablocks is how dc learnt the sounds and could blend etc very young.

Dc also used to love peg +cat where they went to higher numbers etc.

Dc2 was doing number bonds on the squeebles app.

I'd not set much stock by it tbh. At 3 I was reading fluently at the expected level of a 6 year old. At 33 I still can't recite my 6 times tables. Kids learn and develop at different rates for different things. Don't get stressed about it, it sounds like he is settling in well there.

I am the anxious sort and even I wouldn't be worried about that. I don't like sticking my fingers in wet paint either. Our children in my country don't even start school until 5 years old. I was just rereading my now adults son's old school report from when he was six. He came across as totally average. He is a fifth year medical student so he obviously blossomed later. The idea that a report on a four year old reception child could be important is totally foreign to us.

At about 7 I was put in a class for slow learners - we were exiled to a rickety prefab classroom out the back which very strangely had a woodburning fire. They were my best school days - I nabbed a desk next to the fire, I could do the work in about half the time of the other children and I spent most of my days basking in the warmth and happily reading books. After a few months they worked out I didn't belong there and slung me out and back to regular classes. I was repeatedly told I was hard working but not terribly clever. I have two university degrees in hard subjects and have a successful professional career so I guess it depends what you do with it.

A legal requirement? Is it balls😂 Where on earth have you got that from?

Literally this. This has no value whatsoever.

OP myself and many other I know have done very well academically despite silly early reports. I still have mine. People thought I didn’t know how to talk until Reception. My mum had to convince them I did speak at home, I was just shy. I still remember thinking wtf don’t these people just leave me alone at age 3. I used to then purposely ignore them to retaliate.

I see why you are concerned based on your other child but we are all very different so don’t worry they would have certainly mentioned more serious issues to you.

@RosyappleA same
I didn't speak. Nobody worked out why until my dad figured out they were using my full name, which meant I thought I was in trouble all the time. I always went by my nickname so "Sam" at home but "Samantha" if I was in trouble!