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.

I disagree. At £30 per day, I do expect more than just letting my child watch TV all day. I don't really mind one film, but for the rest of the time I expect the TV to be off and some inexpensive activities provided...maybe rounders, a scavenger hunt, a craft activity. I went to council-run holiday schemes as a child and they were cheap as chips, but they were still good fun despite there not being a TV on the premises!

That's £5 an hour you're paying and you really think they should be doing enriching activities all day even if they don't want to? That's way above a holiday worker's paygrade. If you want that, a nanny is about £18 an hour.

Yes, I do expect them to do that. The difference between a £5 per hour holiday club and an £18 nanny should be obvious though - a nanny would only have my children, where as holiday club will have 13 per worker. That's £65 per hour. Obviously you have cost of materials and sometimes hiring a venue, but still, holiday clubs are not short of money. I pay £30 for a forest school holiday club, no screens, trained staff, enriching activities all day. So clearly possible.

Well, yes. Presumably it's not just my child they're entertaining. I believe the ratio of non-teacher adults to children aged three and above is 1:8, so that would be £40/hour - considerably more than the price of a nanny! With that level of investment (and yes, I know they also have to pay for premises hire, insurance etc - but staff wages are the biggest part of their expenses) I do expect holiday schemes to put in slightly more effort than pressing "play" on a remote control.

The OP left out children trying to turn pages in books by swiping them (too much device use and no books) and unable to use plasticine or hold pens/pencils/crayons due to no tensile strength in fingers. (this from a friend whose worked in nursery class for over 20 years)

Yes that is just neglect

The swiping is unusual but having difficulty with plasticine/grip/pen control is very common for hypermobile children.

71% of children under 8 have hypermobility in their joints. The majority of children entering reception will experience this. But children who have had the chance to practise fine motor skills will have better fine motor skills.

That may be true @JoyousGreyOrca but in reality hypermobility like ASD is on the rise in the population and there are more severe cases. Assuming the particular difficulties listed as a result of neglect is a bit blinkered.

I think not providing opportunities for your young children to develop fine motor skills is neglect.
Very young children mainly have hypermobility in their joints. It is part of being young. Not an excuse.

@JoyousGreyOrca I think you are unaware of the numbers of young children struggling with rather more mobility in their joints than just being a bit bendy because they are young and talking from a place of ignorance. These children don’t need to make excuses any more than those with language delay, dyslexia or hearing impairment do. I am sure there are children who don’t use their hands as much as others but I would imagine the prevalence is due to disability not neglect.

The Nappy thing or not being to sit properly does seem really odd. But is the occasional American word or pronunciation really a big deal? - a lot of kids say truck rather than lorry for instance, it’s made it into mainstream adult vocabulary too.

Maybe I’m sensitive to it as my almost 3 year old prefers educational toy videos on You Tube to stuff like CBeebies if I let him. Usually I watch them with him so I can correct it (“It’s Zed not Zee”) but I suspect the odd word is going to make it into his vocabulary.

But surely this isn’t just a really recent thing - I remember getting corrected in primary school for writing “parking lot” instead of car park and this was over 30 years ago! The UK has been becoming more Americanised for a long time.

But how do you know which out of that statistic is neglect or the child having struggles despite the parents making an effort?? My son is 5, started reception in September. His teacher has commented on his weak grip but also knows we already do all the recommendations with him like threading, play doh, drawing, even baking as fun ways of getting him to use his hands/fine motor skills but he's still struggling a bit more than others in his class. She's very kind about it and says "keep doing what you're doing and it should keep gradually improving" but technically we'd probably be in that statistic!

My friend feels similar about the toilet trained statistic. Her son had terrible digestive issues from a baby right up to about 3.5 when he eventually had to have a small procedure done to help. Until then he'd been on medication, different diets etc and the Dr recommended holding off on potty training until things had settled. He is toilet trained to a degree, but still struggles with both knowing the feeling of needing to go and being very reluctant to go, possibly because it's always been a big issue for him. School are now flagging possible Sen that was maybe overlooked/masked by his other issues at first. So she's in that statistic and feels awful about it even though they're doing their best.

I definitely think it's worth looking in to why so many younger children are struggling now in ways maybe not as many were before. Absolutely. And I know there are Some parents out there that are just shite, but that's always been the case unfortunately. I just don't know about the current leaning that apparently MOST parents "these days" are as feckless as a lot of here are (gleefully in some cases) making out? Especially given that according to this thread and many, many others on MN, "all parents these days" are useless - except literally every single one who happens to post on here...