School readiness survey - surprising?

[GirlfromtheNorthLondonCountry]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jan/30/some-children-starting-school-unable-to-climb-staircase-finds-england-and-wales-teacher-survey

Is it really the case that 4 year olds (absent disabilities) are unable to climb stairs or sit on the rug because of too much screen time? It just seems so extraordinary to me.

I'm reading The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt at the moment and he sets out all the research of what we know so far about the impact of screens on children and adolescents' development and it's actually quite scary. His view is that we now overprotect children in real life and underprotect them on line and that it should be the other way round in order to allow children to have the kinds of experiences they need to grow and develop into resilient adults.

I work in early years and it's so true. I have some days when no toys are moved except by me. They just roll around whinging and asking if it's home time. I've had 12mo parents tell me their favourite activity is YouTube videos. Some children spend all day basically attacking me to get my phone, not the slightest bit interested in the rest of the room. Books are just thrown or ripped apart. If I take them out for a walk, they scream like they're being murdered, and just want to go home. Three year olds expecting to be fed food like sandwiches. Dummies and blankets constantly at three yo. I have free flow into the garden, which used to be the first thing children wanted, now it's a battle to get them outside for five minutes, and when they do, they just want to sit down.

I was at a meeting this week where they discussed research but I can't remember the researcher. I will look at my notes later. The summary was things like tik tok and phone games are very short burst and work by triggering the reward centre of the brain. It makes people have very short attention spans and struggle to focus. At secondary they were saying that not long ago you would have a couple of children who struggled with attention in a class and they had adhd. They said now over half the class are displaying adhd type symptoms. Some chikdren are scrolling tik tok for 8 hours in the night.

I want to clarify no one was suggesting ashd is caused by mobile phones or that there is no actual adhd. They were saying in addition to adhd, another group of pupils are exhausted from no sleep and have their brain addicted to short burst rewards.

The neurotoxic effects of the covid virus itself.
Either in utero, or repeated exposure during childhood, particularly early childhood.

There is evidence of neurotoxicity across the board, but there's been less research on effects on normal child development.

It never really gets reported on, because it's very unsettling. But covid harms the brain.

I don't know why, given the lack of access to physical and mental health care, financial pressures meaning that parents are having to work more hours to stand still, and the cutting of Sure Start/Flying Start services, that people expect any different.

Children are being raised by sick, frazzled people who have pressure from everywhere and no support.

That must be an exaggeration? I’ve never met a child who won’t play. The only child I know who just wants to sit down is a child with both significant physical and mental disabilities. Its a battle to get them to
move their body in any meaningful way (meaning their muscle tone and mobility declines more) but otherwise my experience with my own kids is kids bouncing off the wall and desperate to go outside. My kids want to spend all day on their feet. In the summer they only go in for a poo!

Where is the parental responsibility in all of this? It's never been easier to access advice and support - the internet is full of it. The NHS websites, for example. And, as many people on here attest, many people work full time and still manage to have functional kids. I don't think the poster upthread who said their kid is school ready and knows leaves and flower names because the poster had an interest in early years development is or should be an exception - that's the basic standard of parenting and most people are more than capable of managing it, even when they work outside the home.

I agree wrt screens. They are the very work of the devil, and I think a huge rise in the diagnosis of ADHD is a direct result of high screen time exposure reducing the time that children's brains develop appropriately. Put it this way - if you were to exercise an hour a day, you'd be really quite fit. Instead spending an hour on screens is an hour of your brain learning "screen" brain patterns, not human interaction/running/jumping/reading/playing skills. The only thing screens make you better at is using screens.

I like watching videos on Youtube from the BBC Archive of school children - there are several of young children in the 1950s/1960s all sat around a table eating their school dinners with good cutlery skills.

When you only had an extremely basic washing machine, or had to cart everything to a laundry, there was every incentive for early toilet training. It didn't matter if it was timing/habit/conditioning, rather than truly recognising need, as long as all poo and at least some pees went in to the pot. Post-training "accidents" were commoner, partly because what counted as "trained" has changed and dealing with wet/pooey pants was easier than washing terries.

Early disposables were expensive and extremely bulky - my DMum used to buy them only for family holidays because then it was worth the cost just for the bliss of not dealing with nappies whilst away from home (remember the phrase "dealing with nappies" pre-dates disposables and referred just as much, if not more, to the laundry than to actually changing the child.

@MyIvyGrows one of my DC was very late to train - well over 3 and I was beginning to worry about school (my others were much more typical age) and I think being comfy in modern, thin, highly absorbent dry-feeling nappies was part of the reason - who wants to break off from what you're doing to visit the loo when you can just pee where you are with no consequences?

I think you do get the odd late-to-train outlier, and probably always did. What we appear to be seeing now is that it's a little more common. But I'm never quite sure how robust the underlying information is - there are pieces like this every few years

Not all the children, that’s why I said some days. But where it used to be one or two children who were like this, now it’s just one or two children who aren’t like this.

The idea that a virus can affect development is extremely well known and researched, in fact. Haven't you ever heard of rubella?

Sorry, haven't RTWT and I know one of Jonathan Haidt's books have been mentioned, but if not mentioned yet, Stolen Focus is well worth a read. As is the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma .

As for the utter lack of muscle tone in toddlers, is anyone reminded of Wallie ? (yep, the animated film). Especially the part where the modern humans live on loungers, plugged to screens unaware of their neighbours and unable to walk anymore. Like de-volution . I always saw it as more prophetic than children's entertainment.

I'm finding this whole thread bizarre tbh. I started out as a developmental psychologist and used to be a primary teacher, for context. In 2020 to 'protect' everyone and keep everyone 'safe' every single safety net that new parents had - family support, health visitors, even GPs to a large extent - was taken away. And now everyone is saying 'oh gosh why are the children so fucked up?' I mean really??

I think I was very on the ball with parenting when I had my first child (14 years ago), due to growing up with a lot of children in my life and due to my education, but if I hadn't had baby groups and days out with friends I would have really, really struggled. Just the fact of having to be in the house day in and day out with a baby without any outlet would have been incredibly difficult. My sister had her son in Jan 2020. I ignored all the bollocks about isolating her and spent a lot of time with her and thank god I did - even with my constant help she nearly sank without a trace - trying to get to grips with being new parent is hard enough but trying to do it with every single support taken away is nigh on impossible.

Of course children are struggling. We locked their parents in the house for months and cut off every outlet that kept previous parents sane - friendship, sharing of stories, even just another pair of hands to hold a fussy baby. It really fucks me off that people who insisted on these measures are now blaming parents for stupid, ill thought through policies that totally disregarded the fact that you cannot just cut off human contact and expect no outcome.

If you supported lockdown measures, then you supported this outcome. It was totally and entirely predictable. It'll permanently affect the children of this generation. You cannot shut society down without a cost and it's these children that are paying the largest part of it.

I will add that my children were 6 and 8 during lockdown and I think it affected them badly too. I had spent years building up good habits, hobbies, etc for them and then suddenly it was all cut off. We spent time going to the park etc (of course not to the playground as morons cordoned that off, preventing climbing and other muscle-building activities) but they had no sport, no drama classes, no parties, no playdates and of course no school. Add that to the fact that DH and I both had to work and homeschool them, inevitably they spent a lot of time on screens. It was only last year that I feel like they got back to any semblance of the life they had before and that took huge effort on my part. Lots of DS's friends barely leave the house - he struggles so much to get them to meet up or go anywhere, because in the years when they should have been learning independence and adventure, they were prevented from even going to their own grandparents' house. A massive part of their development was just taken away. It affects younger children more obviously, but it has made its mark on older children too.

This was a situation created by the government, with the support of the public. Anyone who pointed out the likely consequences of this approach at the time was shouted down. IT IS TOO LATE TO POINT OUT THE FALLOUT NOW. The damage is done.

@MoMhathair thank you for that insightful post. My kids were born in 2019 and 2021 so one was 12m when lockdown started the other born in and amongst lockdown. I don’t recognise my children from those described in these threads, they are, IMO thriving. My eldest had a slight speech delay which I’m confident lockdown largely attributed too (it was just me and him at home - DH worked away) but that’s resolved.

But aside. Lockdown was bloody hard and I’m sure that parenting during it has led to my subsequent PND and PNA diagnosis. I remember my boss telling me to just put my son in a play pen so I could work - I was privileged enough to ignore the advice the risk of my job (DHs income was sufficient) but that’s literally what parents were faced with.

What would be interesting and useful to have actual data on is the circumstances of these kids who are struggling.

Many people have suggested potential reasons on this thread but we don't know the real reasons without drilling down a bit with more data.

For example - expecting both parents to be working from a younger age strikes me as a compelling reason. I appreciate we have women on this thread who managed to "do it all", and hats off to them - but not everyone can manage that. The pace of life gets faster, social networks and support become more fragmented - more people seem to be struggling with life as a result. So greater demands on a certain amount of the population will presumably send more over the edge and unable to manage everything. But I may be completely wrong - others have commented that it's not those who are working who don't have school ready kids.

We need to know, not just speculate!

I can imagine the huge effort it took to get through that, particularly when you were unwell. You must be really proud of yourself.

Was also expected to have a life saving op (burst ectopic) without support and no childcare after. Utter madness!

Bloody hell. I hope it all worked out ok in the end?

We didn't really have much choice

Remember the silliness when a couple of friends met for a walk in the country for instance.

Yes of course and thanks for your kind words. But it was such an awful time, not just for me, for everyone. People were treated so inhumanely during that time.

My point in sharing is that I agree lockdown has had a consequence and parents aren’t solely to blame. They have very touch choices.

I think it affects concentration

Being impacted by the measures is different than supporting them.

My point is that it makes no sense to blame parents when by law they weren't allowed to get any help. Some parents like @NewYearStillFat can struggle through against huge odds, but many parents can't - even when parents start out in a good place, it's understandable that they get defeated by months of isolation. If someone starts out at a disadvantage, what hope do they have?

What do you mean though by "supporting"

We just did what was necessary

It reads like an epidemic of neglect.