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.

Sometimes the kids scream and scream, (maybe additional needs?)
So parents give them the phones to shop in peace

If you google the report it says that “1 in 4 children starting reception class are not toilet trained, according to teachers.”

directly below that it says “90% of school staff report at least one child in a 2023 reception class who is not toilet trained.”

those are two very different numbers given most reception classes have 25-30 kids? The study does not make sense.

Whether it's true or not I just find it funny a poster on the first page of this thread tried to blame teen mum's for this recent issue. Um maybe they should look at some statistics and you'd see there's never been less teen mum's than now and the average age to have a child has gone from 23 in 1970s to 29 now. And still posters want to blame young mums 🙄

The poster was reacting to a seemingly strong (negative) opinion on SAH parents. I do have sympathy with her view as, equally, some parents simply believe they are paying a nursery to socialise and potty train etc etc their children so they do not have to.
The truth is there are parents who will or won’t take responsibility for developmental tasks across all strata’s of society whether working or not.
I don’t think you get to demand to know a posters circumstances simply because you are both on a forum; it’s anonymous for a reason.

I did this too and DD was and continues to be an excellent and enthusiastic reader. It was easy to teach her and she really benefited from the additional confidence.

Sometimes we use a trip to the supermarket as an opportunity to talk about meal planning and healthy eating, let DD have input, convince her that blueberries are a better idea than biscuits and quiz her about money.

Sometimes we've been out all day interacting with my daughter, she's tired, we're tired, and then we remember that we need to do a "big shop" and want to walk around and get the stuff we need without having to spend the whole time chasing her because she's wandered off, trying to stop her climbing in and out and in and out of the trolley seat and negotiating with her about donuts, chocolate and fish fingers.

So if you see me in a supermarket and my daughter is sat in the trolley seat watching Gabby's Dollhouse, and you judge us for it, I'm absolutely OK with that.

I used to take mine to a Surestart centre and came across the same situation. Great activities and supportive staff but was only attended by better off /well educated professional parents

Teachers who find children are in this state should immediately report parents to Social Services. This is an unacceptable level of parenting and the parents need investigating, training supporting and monitoring. Society should regard this parenting failure as a form of abuse and show that we are not prepared to allow parents to act like this. What sort of future can those children hope for. It is not the job of teachers to fix such issues. Such children should be held back from education entry till they are capable of doing basic activities. Parents who continue to fail despite help warrant stronger action. Good to hear that this is a minority of children, let's deal with it before it gets worse.

So you are suggesting that children who are failing to thrive at home, should stay longer at home, and fall further and further behind their peers? That is not the answer, why should the children suffer even more because their parents, for whatever reason, are unable/unwilling to meet their children's needs (for the children who are delayed due to social rather than medical reasons).

I absolutely agree though that parents should receive support first, and then if no improvement, there should be consequences, although it is hard to impose consequences on the parents which don't also negatively impact on the children.

Social services are overstretched and also often pretty ineffective, health and education professionals can be calling and emailing them ever day with concerns about a child, and their response is that we need 'try harder' ' do more' and we should be social workers as well as being teachers, nurses etc.

This is why universal free/cheap pre-school education is so important and such a huge social good.

I’m in South Africa and we only get 4 months maternity leave, so - after 6 months of an extremely expensive nanny arrangement - my 10 month old child attends a small daycare. You would not believe the judgement from people both in person and online about choosing to do this instead of having a nanny or being a SAHM.

At daycare he is happy, learning so much and developing his motor and social skills in leaps and bounds, and comes home well fed and tuckered out from playing and chasing around all day. I would struggle massively to provide him with the same kind of stimulating environment as the key thing is the social interaction and what he is learning from the slightly older kids.

There are no screens at daycare. We have only shown him screens for family video calls and for taking photos - he can’t get enough of the selfie mode on the camera. When the time comes they will help with potty training.

It’s awful that more people don’t have access to this sort of resource. But there’s also an attitude problem among the upper middle classes and mumsnet types which sees daycare/nursery as a necessary evil to enable mom to work, or even a failure on mom’s part, rather than an incredible resource for child development.

Hi. I'm a parent who failed "despite help".

My son is actually held back from receiving an education despite being enrolled in a school.

Thankfully the law does see not being toilet trained by age 5 as a disability in and of itself, and we've not been referred to social services.

In my sons case it is because he has got a disability but I would actually love to know what the "help" is you believe we receive that we should be referred to social services "despite" it.

We received additional speech and language appointments to understand my sons communication needs. We received referrals to the school nurse who referred to occupational therapy who... sent me a youtube video to watch. Yes. A youtube video. We were signposted to ERIC whom I've already discussed on this thread gave conflicting information and has not worked. We haven't yet had acknowledgement that we're even on a waiting list for the children's continence services.

We've had home visits where they have seen our set up to show we're not depriving DS of opportunities to go to the toilet. They've seen that none of us can actually go to the bathroom in peace so it's always modelled to him. They've seen we speak to him.

We haven't actually had any practical help. We've had a lot of judgemental comments such as "children with autism can still learn to use the toilet, so yours should too" and "just SPEAK to him" which we do till it feels like we've vomited a dictionary but it just shows they don't understand what a social developmental disability actually can present like.

My son was 4 before he could use the stairs. He's almost 6 and still needs to hold a hand. He has no risk awareness and will happily throw himself down. His legs work fine. He has poor proprioceptive recognition and doesn't understand spacial processing the same way you do. We are torn between letting him go down the stairs alone and risking falling and hurting himself and then having to explain to A&E and school he fell down the stairs or just carrying him because it's the safest option.

We let him practice climbing in a safe and controlled environment but no amount of practice will account for his neurological differences.

But I'd love to know what help we should have received to prove that despite that we are still abusive and neglectful and should be on the social services radar.

Absolutely! In the uk children from low income families get 15 hours state funded childcare, and thete is always such up uproar about 'why do the parents need it when they aren't working'. The answer is 'the parents don't need it but the children do'. If we invest in early development and learning we will have happier healthier higher-achieving children and adults which is good for society and the economy.
All the evidence points to nurseries being really important from 2 years old, they really need that social environment to learn the skills needed for school readiness. We were fortunate that I could go part time and we had family help,but we paid for nursery 2 days a week from 2nd birthday for the benefits it brings.

Really!?! I used surestart regularly and I always thought the thing it did brilliantly was bringing community together young and old rich or poor. Not having a professional job or a lot of money doesn't make you a bad parent. Letting your 4 year old sit around in nappies watching YouTube all day does, whether that 4 year olds home has a white picket fence or is on the 12th floor of a council tower block doesn't matter.

I completely understand.
I handed my son my phone when he was younger too.
He hated town!
He now enjoys going town so it's not forever

If it really is only occasionally, it is fine. But lots of parents use phones and ipads much more often and for longer with their children than they would admit or perhaps even realise.

I suppose I can’t know it from experience as I don’t work there. (Although I did see the repercussions of it, there were two staff flailing around in PPE every day and despite still being fully staffed, the level of actual attention the kids were getting was VERY different with my second child. it wasn’t their fault, I like the nursery and I like the staff and I could see they were trying so hard to keep on top of it.

But I was told by a staff member when I expressed shock that she would be allowed to start as I’d expected she wouldn’t be.

I was told that she counted as toilet trained, and was among only seven they could call trained, and they had 53 kids starting who were still in nappies.

I was absolutely aghast at how much screen time is in nursery now as well - several we looked around would put on an episode of something at the end of the day to "calm children down" (keep them quiet so workers can tidy up and do paperwork) and for "education" - number blocks etc. I just don't think it's at all needed.

There was zero screen time at my son's nursery (this was eight years ago). The only place that really took the piss on this was the holiday club run out of (but not by) the school. We did that one half term and DS came home and said he'd watched three films.

I used to go to holiday club and we were allowed to do pretty much whatever we wanted as long as it was safe. Some kids chose to watch films all day, I was more interested in playing. It's holiday club so they don't have to provide education, just keep the children in one piece until home time.

My daughter's nursery used to put yoga videos on for the kids to do yoga which I thought was cute. I think screens have their place, just should be used appropriately.

That is terrible. When I looked around nurseries many years ago only one nursery did this, ironically the most expensive. The rest did traditional calming down methods such as reading a story to the children.

And a holiday club should not have a TV. There is no need.

The staff are earning minimum wage and the job you are paying them for is to keep your kids happy and out of your hair until you finish work. That's it.

I went to loads of them as a kid, one was super fancy and the whole morning was doing activities like baking, pottery, art etc., and because of that it cost a fortune.

If you are paying £30 a day for them to go a to portacabin on a school field somewhere they'll just give them access to toys and TV and make sure they are safe. If your child chooses to spend the day in front of the TV, that's not their problem. They aren't the parents.

Yeah I mean I didn't complain or anything but I didn't send him again.

I worked in holiday clubs when young. Ours was cheap and there was no TV. We did lots of activities. Games, baking, arts and crafts, etc.

The qualifications of the staff in these places is often at odds with the marketing of the play/holiday schemes. They advertise days of sports, games and crafts, but really got a bunch of teenagers keeping them safe.
I could have paid a 6th former (less) to come to my home and sit with my sons if I wanted them to watch films all day.

The schemes attached to after school clubs and sports camps rather than holiday schemes that just pop up were much better (thought the sports ones are very expensive).