To think we have gone wrong with kids as a nation?

[ABigBarofChocolate]

I've been working with kids for a long time and through the years, forms of "punishment" have changed so much.

You hear the whole " when I was at school we got the belt/ruler/??" I don't condone that all.

When I was at school, you got a punishment exercise (writing the same sentence 100 times) or you just didn't get any rewards at the end of the week because your merit chart wasn't full. Very badly behaved kids would either get sent to the HT office or be suspended with work to do.

My DCs school are having a hard time just now. You're basically not allowed to say No to kids these days. It's all positive reinforcement. Don't punish, distract. Etc.

So when the same 2 kids are physically hurting other people's kids or are giving others verbal abuse daily...how are they supposed to handle it?

Did we go wrong when we were told by education big wigs that we were no longer able to make a child feel bad for what they've done to another? No more naughty corner or punishment exercises or being sent out of class or raised voices.

What are your thoughts?

I work in early years. There are literally no consequences for anything, in the establishment and pretty much unilaterally at home. It is awful.

The amount of children I see who need support who are then placed in mainstream school due to lack of places is abysmal. Both for the child, the other children in the class and the teacher. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a mutiny.

We risk so much in the future.

Please name some so we can discuss

You're making an assumption that all parents are onboard and/or supportive in helping follow through. Sadly they're not.

Everything in modern Britain is back to front. Criminals have more rights than anyone. Crime is not even punished a lot of the time (shop lifters just walk away in plain sight).

It'll only get worse as kids have no boundaries or discipline anymore.

Silence everywhere for a kick off. Unnecessary. Her inability to provide a prayer place for some students.
But mostly, look at who she invites to the school and what she says on social media. Not someone I’d want in charge of a small Guinea pig, never mind the nation's education system.

Well this is utter nonsense.

My parents must not have got the memo. I was told no all the time 😂

The problem with my DS school is they aren't informing parents when their little angels are being physical towards other children. They like to take away their "golden time" and get them to use that time in reflection so they can make better choices (which these kids don't actually give a fuck about) and they continue to harm others. This leads to parents kicking off with other parents (who have no real idea of what's been occurring because school didn't inform them of previous incidents). School then gets arsey about parent behaviour at school and confrontation. School also gets around their anti bullying policy by stating they have no bullies (just misunderstood children).
My DDs school is worse (academy secondary school). Kids aren't allowed to have certain socks, shoes with any embellishments (tassels, bows, chains or mallets) and if they do have any they are to be removed then and there. If kids refuse its an automatic internal isolation (child is put in an area away from other students until the "issue" is resolved). This goes for "toilet passes" - which you need medical evidence for otherwise you can only use the toilet on your 15 minute break or 45 minute lunch.

So yeah I'd say we have gone wrong with kids as a nation. We have two different schools I've mentioned above. Both batshit in different ways. Common sense is gone. Why is the academies on my area obsessed with attendance and uniform standards? Not about student mental health and wellbeing? Why is a child getting punished for having a leather bow on a pair of Clarks school shoes?
Why does my son's primary school not nip bullying in the bud and inform parents when their children have physically hurt another child? I'd want to know, so I could discuss and manage the behaviour at home too.

I think the peer orientation theory is becoming a factor too. Lots of children are in childcare then school settings from babies and some of those who do full time do listen to peers more than adults. They are always following someone else's time table and I think they just start to ignore adults after a while to do their own things.

Obviously this isn't true of all children but I have seen this happen in a few I've worked with.

Also autism and ADHD seem to be rising significantly, on this forum alone a huge number of parents claim their children are ND and are struggling with behaviour.

In another programme at about that time, pupils from a failing school in Doncaster did an exchange with pupils from a private school. One boy said he had never been in lesson where there wasn't constant noise, chatter and low level disruption.
This from a PP sums up what is wrong in failing schools. A minority are allowed to destroy and I mean destroy the education of others!

Also I’m sure mumsnet will ‘flame’ me but also to blame for a lot of the bad behaviour:
poor diets and too much UPF
too much screen time/ toddlers and babies given devices
Not enough outside time and exercise
parents not being engaged and spending too much time on phones and devices themselves
too many ‘experts’ going completely unchecked on social media TikTok etc telling people how to parent
kids watching or playing wildly un-age appropriate games and tv shows with violence and the like

I work in a school, kids get rewarded when they are badly behaved, they get time out to play football on the playground and calm down. If they kick off and smash up the classroom they get suspended and stay at home for a day or two which to a child that hates school is a reward. They should do internal suspensions to make it as boring as possible for the child it would make them think twice. A kids kicks off and all the other children are removed from the class instead of taking that child out because they are allowed to run amok and just gentle words. Parents have anxious children but they really need to get a grip and get their child to school instead of mollycoddling and making their anxieties ten times worse. No one wants to be a teacher. I can tell you there will be part time timetables and kids having to be at home two days in a few years and you tube lessons because there will not be enough teachers.

I work in a school with very challenging behaviour, but we are equally very firm in dealing with it. Behaviour such as swearing at staff or being aggressively physical with other children will get you sent home. We have multiple children on behaviour plans with clear support in place but also with clear consequences. Parents don’t always like it but unfortunately we have to keep other children safe. They deserve to come to school and learn, not be exposed to swearing or hurt.

One thing that I don't often see acknowledged, is that in the past there was less focus on attendance, which meant that a proportion of the children who found school difficult for a variety of reasons just stopped turning up after about age 13.

Gentle parenting works (gentle parenting is literally boundaries, consequences and love). You're confusing it with permissive parenting, which does not work.

It’s fine to say no to kids. They feel
unsafe without boundaries.

Spare a thought for the hurt, insulted and bullied kids who have to put up
with Tiny Tarquin and his entitlement.

And for us when TT flakes aged 18 and can’t cope with life.

I think it goes wrong a lot earlier than that. There's a huge elephant in the room in the form of poor-quality and poorly regulated mass childcare. Kids are doing very long hours from a very early age, often fed poor food, their emotional and developmental needs not met, their primary relationships impacted. It's unfashionable to draw attention to it because naturally nobody wants to set society back by throwing the burden back onto mothers and destroying all the progress we have made towards equality. There is an almost total absence of imagination, interest or any kind of conversation about how we might do things differently so that children aren't the sacrificial lambs, and understandably nobody who uses full time childcare wants to engage with the idea that it is very rarely all it's cracked up to be.

As for discipline in schools - I am always bemused at this popular perception that the schools are too soft. Certainly secondary schools have never been more repressive, joyless and dehumanising than they are now. My kids would have gladly taken the cane over days of isolation, being denied access to the toilet, red period passes for menstruating girls and the general atmosphere of hostility and suspicion fostered by academy chain "heads" who have come from the corporate world, have no feeling for young people and are only interested in outdoing one another in the hyper-control stakes.

Teacher here. I tell parents on the door when a child has behaved well and when they haven’t. It’s important not to always give negative feedback or I find you can never build a rapport/dialogue with parents. Children are not all bad or good either. All behaviour is communication is BS though, totally agree. Directed by SENDCOs and Ed Psychs etc who are don’t dealing with the reality of the classroom. Children are very clever and work out that the ones who misbehave get special attention: Lego and Play Therapy. Some children genuinely need and respond well to these sessions but you always have at least one (or now, 2 or 3!) extremely disruptive pupil who is just badly behaved and the problem is the consequences are not strict enough, and the kids know it. We are setting them up to fail as secondaries just don’t put up with it.

I think sadly we are already seeing the consequences of this, latest figures show huge increase in the under 25’s out of work and over 70% of them claiming PIP are for mental and behavioural problems.

Yes we had a child that parent chased private diagnosis, child of course was given the diagnosis. Child then gets permission to wear trainers, run laps when needs ‘movement break’ etc etc and actually behaviour got so much worse- sadly at the detriment of the other 32 pupils

What are my thoughts?
I'm very happy not to have kids myself and happier still for not needing any pension from Britain. Fortunately.
Thanks for asking, OP!
😁

I think what a lot of parents don't seem to realise or can't be bothered with is that the best way to get your children to listen to you and to behave is too spend lots of time doing positive things with them. Then clear, consistent expectations and the removal of attention for bad behaviour are enough to keep them on the straight and narrow. Kids want time and attention and you can 100% use that to your advantage.

However I think now that both parents generally have to work just to keep afloat there is often a lot less time to parent. Nurseries and school are expected to parent because they see the kids for much longer than parents are able to. When parents get home from a long day at work and commute there's dinner to make and often not much energy or time left to put into parenting.

The internet/SM/mobile phones are also a huge problem IMO, kids now sending dick pics at 12/13, viewing porn at a similar age, constantly available and contactable, no escape from bullies, constant comparisons between themselves and what they see online, constantly told this or that is cool (often when it's actually really stupid or dangerous). The world is such a different place now to when I was growing up in the 80's and 90's.

I taught abroad and the kids were a joy - hard-working, willing, enthusiastic, and committed. Yes they had their moments but they were brought up to value education and respect teachers and school, with the result being that everyone present could learn. Parents were equally engaged and supported home-learning.

I have teacher friends and I’d never teach in this country. Kids are being dragged up on ipads, no discipline, by people whose own school experience was negative and so they don’t consider teachers worthy of their time or respect, despite expecting them to do everything for their children because they won’t be doing a thing to help at home.

The trainees that we’re taking on at work are the first of the ipad kids and they’re terrible - they can’t follow instructions, they don’t listen, they want to do only what interests them and refuse to do anything that they think is beneath them. And if you criticise a single thing they do, they suggest that they will need some time off for their mental health. The difference from, say, 10 years ago is absolutely astonishing.

I don’t know what the answer is but my God we’ve gone wrong somewhere.

DD's high school is generally well-regarded. But they have stuff happen every week that when I was at school would've been unthinkable, eg setting off fire alarms. Some teachers seem to've given up - so long as there's no proper violence they just ignore behavior. Listening to music on headphones, messing about on their phones...all seem to be accepted. Then theres the DC who swear at staff/refuse to do as asked/ etc, and appear to get away with it. Frankly, I'd rather they had draconian behaviour policies (if they worked!) than the "turn a blind eye" approach. Youngest DC is 13-year-old, so of course at that age they're not all particularly self-motivated every day in every class.
Kids who need support (ASN, or behaviour issues, etc) just don't get any effective, consistent help, probably because there's no budget to pay for it. The quiet kids just get left to it.