Recent study of children joining reception class

[Liveandletlive18]

A recent study by kindred2 of a 1000 teachers resulted in finding a quarter of children today joined reception class when still in nappies. Many children are unable to climb a staircase or sit properly on the floor due to lack of exercise & muscle tone. The children used expressions more common in America such as trash & vacation due to excessive screen time. Teachers stated covid is no longer an excuse. They say a lot of this is due to busy parents working & having less time to interact with children & teach them basic skills. Is this a worrying trend.

Well then it’s not about you is it? But posters on the one hand want to blame hours and hours of tv while simultaneously also blaming an increase in nursery use. The reality is the children in private day care nurseries are not watching tv all day.

No need for dramatics about babies being shipped off for 12 hours. You can be happy with your own choice without trying to rip apart others.

This is true. My son has an American twang, always has. He’s much older than a reception age child but he has ASD, ADHD and a learning delay and I wasn’t sure if his speech would ever come along at all. His paediatrician said it’s quite common for children on the spectrum to have Americanised accents and she wasn’t at all concerned by that. My son loves his screen time but also has other interests and he is loved and well cared for. I don’t see it as an automatic terrible thing. Children mimic what they see and hear all the time, we all did it too. I once knew a little girl of about 5 who called people slags and cunts all the time. Don’t think she learnt that from the Disney channel or unboxing videos on YT…

And those with at home parents?? They also cannot climb stairs etc? Just those at nursery? Ok.

Well I am being ripped apart here by people claiming it’s nursery that potty trains and not me at home!

It's actually more common than you think, sadly.

It should always be the parent (or guardian) who leads the potty training. Nursery can support, but the onus to initiate is not on them.

100% agree.

DD was potty trained at about 3 when I was working FT (although she never was in nursery FT as DH worked nights and weekends, plus my parents helped out).

However, we had to relocate 150 miles when she was in Y1. At her new school she was too scared to use the toilet, although I never sent her in with nappies. I became a SAHM when we moved, so would walk up at every lunch time to take DD to the toilet (luckily it was a small village school) for a few weeks until she adapted to her new school. This was 20 years ago and very unusal.

What I am trying to articulate is that there can be extenuating cirumstances / SEN in a child's life, so its not necessairly down to 'lazy parenting'.

Unfortunately I think this will become more and more common now due to increasing numbers of parents who are glued to their smartphones and therefore not interacting with their babies/toddlers anywhere near enough

I am very grateful that my DC were born before smartphones

I am honestly not sure what the solution is but small DC learn from being interacted with and chatted to constantly and if they are spending more time watching a screen than interacting with either parent then it isn't surprising that this is happening

Very sad 😓

My 5 year old starts school this year and has only recently came out of nappies. We deferred for this reason aswell as some other issues we were having. I can assure you I'm not lazy we have had support workers, dieticians, health visitors,speech and language and now armitstead and paeds involvement since they were 2 and a half and have managed to get them down to only wearing nappies at night but that took a hell of a long time. As it is we're now looking at possible ADHD and autism. Not saying that's the reason for every child but I know so many ppl would say oh its lazy parenting when it's actually the opposite. The American accent is also something we've worked on and they barely get on YouTube if they do its highly monitored.

I don’t think this was aimed at you, it was aimed at the OP who was implying that children were lazy from watching too much tv. The poster was just pointing out that this would be impossible from working parents as was implied, as like you say if the children are are at nursery 12hrs a day they won’t be in front of the to watching YouTube day in day out.

I don’t think it was a dig at SAHP by this poster, she doesn’t even mention them, it’s more the OP was making a sly dig at SAHP by trying to dress it up that it’s the opposite but creating an impossible scenario.

Obviously there will be a small proportion of lazy parents whether they work full time or stay at home full time, but most of us are just doing the best we can!

The toileting issue I have mixed feelings about. I managed to get my child who has SEN toilet trained just in time for him to start school (he’s a summer baby so was 4). He wasn’t ready until then, I tried several times and luckily no one at pre school made us feel bad about it.

I’m puzzled by the unable to climb stairs at 4/5 years old though. I know they said about poor muscle tone but I can’t get my head around that at all, additional needs aside. Unless these children are waiting to see a paediatrician or similar as the waiting lists are so long so have started school without anything in place for them at all.

Literally no one said that.

It’s not working parents who use paid childcare! It’s working parents who dont use paid childcare. It’s bloody expensive to use childcare and we as a country effectively told a whole generation of parents it was ok to WFH with kids at home with you during lockdowns, then are surprised that people who had dcs a year or two later believed the lie this was acceptable too.

It’s people using no childcare and just doing an hour here and there while their child watches some tv and it’s ok because they’ll give their child an hour here and there. It’s people using grandparents for childcare who then are too tired and put their dgc in front of a screen.

We need good quality cheap childcare in this country.

We need a campaign that you can’t WFH with a young child at home (without alternative childcare at home too) without failing to raise that child well.

Hopefully as sad as this survey is, it’ll start that conversation.

It's a survey. The comment about working parents is someone's personal opinion not a conclusion of any particular "study". Working parents isn't a new phenomenon. Women in my family worked since 1930s.

@ThighsYouCantControl - the stairs thing, could that be down to more children being raised in flats with lifts? Or just general lack of exercise means they are too tired to do stairs?

They say a lot of this is due to busy parents working & having less time to interact with children & teach them basic skills.

Yeah right.

Curious are you and the generations before you financially independent? Do you claim UC or any benefits?

What ‘generation’ are you? Most children don't actually attend nursery or childminders for 12 hours a day BTW. You may well have been in a good financial position to not have to earn a living - most mothers aren't in that position, and your assumptions are elitist.

Some kids with medical issues might be slipping through the cracks. I have child with hypotonia (low muscle tone) and it has been very difficult getting referrals for physio and the paediatrician and when we finally do get a referral it takes months to get the appointment. I was brushed off by the health visitor and GP so many times between 10 and 18 months it would have been easy to give up. There seems to be very much a wait and see approach with development unless a delay is very severe and children who would benefit from earlier help are missing out. I am certainly worried my daughter won’t be ready for school as she only started walking at almost 29 months and is way behind her peers physically. There is also very little guidance on things like toilet training children with additional needs.

Low muscle tone by the way is usually genetic or caused by problems during birth or pregnancy. Low muscle strength would be caused by not using the muscles.

TBF I know many late teen / early twenties privately educated girls in London who seem to have this accent too.

And they are anything but neglected. I assume it’s fashionable to speak in that way.

30 years ago I had a friend who did it, because she had sky TV and saw all the American shows and thought if was cool to sound American.

I'm not really sure it was a widespread finding. [Stair climbing] In that the teachers were not asked about stair climbing. They were asked about being able to sit still.

Then in the free form comments someone has mentioned climbing stairs, which has been quoted. But it doesn't say that lots of people also mentioned this in their comments. It could be only one person said anything about stairs.

The benefit of this survey is it asks the same perceptions for 5 years now, so it seems to show a decline in skills.

Link please? What kind of study and which journal was it published in?

My experience of this children are that they’re of the permissive parenting “they’ll do it when they’re ready” variety.

there was a thread yesterday from a woman who’s 3yo was still in a cot and couldn’t climb stairs. The consensus seemed to be that he was being babied.

To be fair one of the things picked up at for my child at nursery were the fact they weren't comfortable going up and down stairs. But it's purely because in our house we don't have stairs and most places we go are all on the same level so it's one of those things that they weren't sure because hadn't been around them much. My child however constantly wants to go upstairs whenever we get a bus etc so I had never really noticed it much.