To think there needs to be a public inquiry into child development

[MaryMaryVeryContrary]

It really seems like we have a looming societal crisis in terms of child development and therefore the quality of the public in 10-20 years time. Experienced teachers across the board seem to be reporting an overwhelming increase in delayed, aggressive and disruptive children. I’m extremely worried about how this will impact society when they become adults - it seems (as a guess) at least a tenth of children will be incapable of work of any kind, and many more will need copious amounts of support to live any kind of responsible life.

AIBU to think we need an urgent public inquiry into this and what is going on? It seems to be the elephant in the room and anybody who tries to discuss it is shouted down.

I’m sure some of it is due to cuts in services but surely that can’t account for it all - it’s very sudden and extremely alarming.

@NotReallyOnFire I don’t have the answers but I’m sorry for your situation, sounds horrendous.

Thank you for sending sympathy. It helps very much.

As a working parent who has had to use plenty of childcare, i don't think its great for kids.

We need to start embracing career models that allow for both mums & dads to go part time when children are younger, and to allow more options for working between 9 & 3 but being around after school a bit more for under 8s.

We shouldn't be treating parenting as a low value activity that can be outsourced in a bid to reduce what it costs.

Screens are another problem & im guilty with this myself. I impose pretty big screen restrictions on the kids but struggle badly with my own phone addiction. I honestly wish that smart phones & tablets had never been invented.

My 7 year old would be perfectly capable of walking to and from his school (we live in a village). He knows to look before crossing roads and there is only a small residential close to cross to reach the school.

The only reason i can't let him is the school don't allow it.

My DC used to come home from school with headaches from the noise. This would have been in the mid 90s onwards. I remember one of my DC begging the teacher to be allowed to sit and work in the corridor. I can't imagine the level of overstimulation children are subjected to in schools now. Then they come home to more noise, more lights, more screens. It can't be beneficial.

This is exactly the problem. Everything is over-stimulation in school now, and a lot is actual horror, which is mean to be funny, but really isn't for some kids. Kids are then often returning home to peer pressure to play 18+ shooting games. It's really not good. Once the damage is done, it's very hard to undo it.

One of the reasons l left teaching was because l felt constantly over stimulated.

Every wall covered with displays, washing lines with words on them, no time to get a lesson ready.

l used to long for a nice landscape painting on a plain wall.

Yes I think that's absolutely the problem for the kids too. A young friend of mine said recently that she doesn't think the secondary teachers even know what's on the powerpoint slides half the time, and yet the kids have to sit looking at the ghastly slides. A lot of the time the teacher didn't even write the slides and are just delivering a pre-written deck. They should just turn the projector off.

Dh did a Microsoft training on PowerPoint years ago..

Its supposed to have 3 simple short bullet points per slide. About 4-5 words for each point.

Instead kids have to fight through multi coloured essays on each slide.

yes but they were with other kids, playing. Making neural pathways.

My partner was traumatised by the birth and frankly of no help to me.

washing lines with words on them

punctuation pyramids, learning hats, Mozart, big writing.

All utter shite.

This is exactly the problem. Half of it makes no sense, is ungrammatical, badly spelled, or is just there for impact. They would be better to just turn it off and talk about the subject. It would save the NHS a small fortune in mental health care, and the council another truckload of money in EHCP applications.

My DS's happiest time in secondary, ironically, was when they let them play hide and seek once. He talked about it for days afterwards and still retells the story three years later.

What has gone wrong for kids that this has become a rare treat?!

They do indeed need time to play, and time to decompress.

I think the constant push for academic excellent is literally shredding the poor kids.

Walking to school is ok if everyone is on board with it -especially other drivers.
It would be a big change of culture for U.K. drivers -at present even parents doing drop off can be a liability.

I don’t think we need an inquiry to tell us that 15 years of increased deprivation, slashing NHS, social and early years services, meddling in education so the system works for hardly anyone, and reliance on screens from birth, and a pandemic is affecting child development. But if that’s what’s needed to spark some action then I agree with you. Has anyone heard Jon Haidt talk about the issue of smart phones? I’ve not read his book but heard an interview and everything he said made so much sense. We’ve essentially re programmed children and they are not having a ‘biologically normal’ childhood anymore.

This is more than just increased awareness and diagnoses of SEN. I know a lot of teachers and someone who works in early years ASD services and everyone across the board is baffled by the dramatic increases in their area. Not just of borderline cases that might not have been picked up years ago, but really high needs, speech delay, toileting problems etc. Starting school unable to hold a book, recognise their names, dress themselves is common. Echoing a pp, some will voice privately theories that they can’t suggest publicly. Screen use, parenting (or lack of) and UPFs are some things thrown around.

I’ve said this before and wasn’t believed but in my LA EHCPs have increased X3 just since covid. It’s absolutely true and echoes what teachers are reporting up and down the country it seems.

Agreed. Every spare inch of space in my school has some kind of display. Why?The kids don’t look at them, staff don’t look at them, parents don’t look at them. The amount of work that goes into changing them frequently to make sure they reflect current learning is immense. Why do we do it, one word - Ofsted.

Sometimes I think something is amiss and that things are worsening....but then I think back to my own childhood. 30 years ago there was some absolutely APPALLING behaviour at school. Shocking things... Things that would have been on social media, then probably the news...

Not a day went by without someone shouting the most exciting words a kid can hear....."FIGHT!!!" (Everyone runs like a herd of sheep to watch the kids beating each other up in those glorious few minutes before a teacher becomes aware)

But do we just make a "bigger deal" of stuff now? For example videos that have made it on to tiktok or kids beating other kids up... That kind of stuff happened daily...I bet half the time the parents never even got made aware! Let alone millions of folk and trial by social media!!

You could say that the 4 plus year wait for autism diagnosis and 2 plus year wait to see CAMHS is evidence that things are worsening.

I can think of several kids though that definitely would have been diagnosed with ND or mental health problems but weren't back then..it wasn't a thing. Not saying that that was right by any means, but it might explain why things "seem" worse now. We all have a world of infinite data at our fingertips.

We're in a very similar position with our son, it's so frustrating!

I recall 20 odd years ago, my ( then ) child being thrilled because the last afternoon of year 5 they had been allowed to draw funny pictures. How desperately sad.

" talk" Talk I hear you say! A crazed idea. Like, communicate?

( ironic obviously)

It is very different these days than when I was at school in the 80s. We all knew the children who were likely dyslexic or had processing difficulties or were socially awkward etc and they did not get much extra help at all, at least not in my classes and lessons.

Now, due to extra time in exams at GCSE, A level, even at elite uni level - everyone with any type of difficulty is incentivised to get it recognised as they will then benefit from accommodations in public exams. Even if your DC has minor difficulties - you are at a disadvantage if you do not fight for the accommodations because everyone else does it.

That’s not what l got my dd assessed though. She didn’t get any extra time with ASD.

She was just struggling in every area.

YANBU OP (teacher friends - they all talk about the massive decline in children's' behaviour and the massive increase in SEN, though I want to be clear that it's not the latter leading to the former). But it'll never happen, because it might involve blaming parents, and parents won't accept that. So we pander to them and the cycle continues.

(I grew up in a household of abuse and neglect - the people supposed to be safeguarding me did fuck all because, oh no, my parents were stressed people with MH problems and alcoholism, we don't want to make them feel bad, happy mum = happy kid blah blah blah. Not much has changed, apparently.)

Old Enough: the Japanese TV show that abandons toddlers on public transport | Television | The Guardian

Yes, at five years old.

(I used to walk my sister and I to school at 6. I don't know how things have changed so much in a couple of decades that now kids twice that old must be ferried everywhere.)

Even the parents drive dangerously when dropping off at school and nursery!

Nursery in particular has rules about not parking at the front of the building (causes an obstruction) but people regularly ignore it. The issue is in manoeuvring to avoid the car parked inappropriately you are in the path of children, round a blind bend, who are going in and out of the nursery. So the parked car forces you into a pedestrian space. Absolutely infuriates me - the absolute height of selfishness. If you can’t get the parents to respect road safety in favour of their own convenience what hope is there?