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.

Wow what a sweeping statement 🤣🤣🤣

I suggest you reread what I said. I did not say or imply that all children who stay at home until school cannot do those things. I said the children who cannot do those things are more likely to have been at home with inadequate parents - once they have outside influences (including school) they pick it up.

no i mean the expectations that parents should go to work from day 1 rather than be at home. but as my next point raises, if they are going to work, then the nursery needs to improve.
either way, blame the parents!
i am not sure if parents are lazy but so many now are ineffectual and do not take responsibility, or know how to parent
bring back health visitors

Could I ask genuinely why you think this happens if it’s not actually do to with screen time itself?

Because to me children just naturally speak the way they hear things the most. I can understand them not being bothered about saying things like everyone else, but equally a lot of autistic (and non autistic) children just learn by mimicking. So you mimic what you hear. If you hear British accents 90% of the time surely it’s natural that’s how you’ll speak?

My friend has an autistic son. He was non verbal until 5. He had a LOT of screen time in his early years - especially YouTube. (I’m not blaming her here. She was a single parent who really struggled and her son was incredibly violent and screen time helped her cope). He had an American accent when he first started to talk. He’s now 16 and has a mainly British accent. His screen time was reduced to hardly anything by age 8 and it took a few years but now he sounds British.
With his autism when he was young he would repeat words and phrases from things he enjoyed. So I can understand why he was repeating things from YouTube much more than say mum asking what do you want for dinner etc. He was much more likely to repeat a line from the Lion King 100 times a day than repeat put your shoes on.
But surely this still proves the point his accent WAS from screen time rather than being autistic? If he had never heard an American accent he wouldn’t have one. If his screen time had only really been people with Indian accents he would have had an Indian accent surely?

I’m amazed at how you have such a detailed view into the lives of the many working parents you know. Have you installed spy cameras into their homes 😂

There is no expectation in the UK to go to work from 'day 1' though.
Health Visitors still exist (though seem to get a lot of stick on MN tbh).
Also, what do you think nurseries need to 'improve' on?
I don't understand what point you are trying to make.

Children copy each other so the accent is probably playground rather than YouTube. Not being potty trained early is commonplace now and is imo mostly to do with expectation. If you so much as suggest potty training is possible earlier, my impression is you are seen as a baby bullying monster.

I personally think that potty training is hindered by not changing nappies as soon as they are wet/soiled and multiple carers or settings. If you are taught to buy disposable nappies that can last for many hours without leaking and to slather the skin with barrier creams rather than to keep your child dry and clean then of course that child is not going to toilet train easily.
The stairs thing is interesting. I rarely climb stairs outside of my home so perhaps it is a rare thing for children now?

Which demographics would be that be?
Why do you believe those demographics are parenting lazily?

And why does private school= ‘non-lazy’ parents 🤔

Extremely. But some of the excuses are bonkers. How can your child not learn to climb the stairs if you’re in lockdown?? How can you not potty train? They spent more time at home. It’s the perfect environment for some of these aspects. Some things of course I get, to WFH people needed more screen time so the learning aspect may be behind / language but some of the things in the list I just don’t buy.

And I never said it wasn’t hard for me thank you. I was one of those who had to sit on a post natal ward alone with no one answering the call button and my husband not allowed in.

but we’re 4 years on. We have to move on and surely the reception co hort of September 2024 can not be potty trained because of a pandemic 4 years ago!

Very unlikely to be kids whose parents work and use daycare.

Kids tend to develop fine, or quicker, in daycare, as they follow the lead of older babies and children. And they don’t sit them in front of screens.

It’s more likely to be kids who’re cared for at home or by a childminder who doesn’t follow best practice.

I blame the nappy industry for delays to potty training, actively marketing products to much older kids (I’m not suggesting they shouldn’t be available to kids who need them for longer).

You have to just go for it with potty training: ditch the nappies, anticipate when they need to go, keep getting them to have a try on the potty rather than wait til they’re bursting and take a potty and lots of spare clothes when you go out.

But pull ups are so comfortable now, I can see why there’s little incentive for both parents and kids. And keeps people buying them.

Wow.

Read the previous post I quoted. Think it sums it up what people are thinking!

Important to note that while people can make value judgements about covid impact, duration and excuses, nobody cares what they think. If there's a wider ranging impact on children who were babies and toddlers during lockdowns, that's happening regardless of whether anyone thinks it ought to.

If this is a recent survey, presumably it's for babies born in the 2019-20 academic year or perhaps the year earlier. Who would've been babies and toddlers at a time when we shut down much of society. There's no statute of limitations on the impact of that.

It's not the fault of State education though, it's the fault of lazy parents

Something's changed and the only thing I can think of is 24/7 children's TV, streaming and smartphones. There have always been inadequate and neglectful parents. But now there are more of them due to overuse of these things.

All the other factors mentioned on this thread have always been there.

https://kindredsquared.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/School-Readiness-Survey-January-2025-Kindred-Squared.pdf

that’s the research if anyone is interested. The stairs thing is a comment by one person.

With the toilet training, I honestly think that the advice here changed to say, no rush train at 3 or beyond. So people are only starting to think about it at 3. But -partly because the nappies and pull ups are so comfy and absorbent, and partly because kids get set in their ways at that age - I think people are missing this potty training window and then are running into trouble with older kids who are happy in their nappies.

I've worked in primary schools and there are lots of kids who routinely use American language such as diapers.
I can't ask them if they've seen a film as they don't understand. I have to say movie.
So many kids never go anywhere over the weekend and stay at home gaming or watching YouTube.
Most of the children over 8 don't even watch tv and it's just YouTube or gaming.

Well, some people don't have stairs at home, and access to many other buildings was limited/restricted, or potentially unsafe if you live in a high rise.
I think that all parents can attempt to potty train, of course, but then some developmental issues would have gone more undiagnosed/unsupported perhaps during Covid.
You didn't say it wasn't hard for you, I stand corrected, but you still judged others because their experience might have been a different type of hard than yours!

I disagree that Covid can’t be part of the reason. The children that started reception in September were born between sept 2019 and August 2020. Their infancy was affected by lack of services, and I would not be surprised if the parents mental health also suffered. The children were also potentially exposed to Covid in the womb or as a newborn.
My DC2 is in this age group, and is still dealing with a health issue which was never properly addressed as a baby because all health visitor appointments were over the phone, it was next to impossible to see a GP and no one would see him in person.

It much more likely that children are being prevented from climbing stairs because it's seen as dangerous

Did the study have any sex differences recorded ?

Personally I’m not bothered by an American accent. Many Europeans speak English with an American accent as they’ve had so much exposure to US TV programmes. A Danish friend’s little sister, who was 6 at the time, learned English from watching the movie Grease. A lot of well-heeled Southern European families at my child’s school are the same, as are some from Israel / UAE. They are definitely more of a US accent than a British one.

There's this, but also the more mundane things went too, the backdrop of ordinary life. As it turns out, some people relied on the collective norms and cues of everyday life to parent properly, more so than others. These customs and behaviours are not light switches that can be switched back on in a second.

Implying that parents of children at state schools are all lazy. Labour wants the 'non lazy parents' to put their children in state schools with them , as YOU say. Shoe horning VAT on private school fees into everything 🙄😂

Haha no, they tell me very openly and proudly. In fact it a running joke amongst them how much the nursery and grandparents will do for them so they don't have to get their hands dirty. Quite an entitled and disappointing attitude imo.

As a working mum, where both parents in the household work full time, I would say it’s more down to parental attitude than working hours, although of course that features in it.

Putting the TV, iPad, games console on etc is choice. Are parents too, addictive to their devices?

Potty training a child before 4 isn’t delayed due to work.

Giving your kid an iPad on a journey when they can look out of the window and chat isn’t due to work.

Putting the tv on instead of reading them a story isn’t due to work.

Having said all that, parents need support. Whether that’s each other, a grandparent, good friends or financial support for quality childcare. I feel for single parents, it must be bloody hard and I can easily see why a screen would feature heavily then.