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.

surely it’s down to Lazy parenting - weather that’s a stay at home parent or a busy working parent ! It doesn’t matter - loads of stay at home parents do all the potty training, teaching, get the kids out of daily for exercise - have them school ready! If you work and have them at nursery the nursery picks up the slack surely 🤷‍♀️

so it’s bad lazy parenting that’s to blame not one specific group

you are excused thanks. I didn’t see that comment. Someone said you specifically are breeding children for benefits ?

She said (sorry it was churning out babies not breeding):

I assume she and the generations before her claim benefits and churn out babies to stay on UC with no requirements to look for work and therefore can be a SAHM. That is why I asked the question!

Has it actually been confirmed that the children this study is talking about are the children of teenage parents? I had my son (now 22) as a young single mum and he was toilet trained, could recognise some words/numbers way before reception age. I was at home with him for the first 3 years and I taught him all of these things. You'd think parents who were at home all day have the time to do this aswell.
The biggest change I've seen is babies:toddlers in front of a screen 24/7 with parents who do the same. Also a change in attitude towards parenting, my SIL (who's 41) had a little boy 5 years ago and she's only just got him toilet trained, she wouldn't take advice from
anyone on how to do it and the support I used (health visitors/ play group schemes seem to have disappeared. (Or she chose not to use them)

If you don’t have time to potty train your child then you are not fit to be a parent and should have refrained from having them.

wtaf is this?

@Liveandletlive18

What frustrates me is that I work in Early Years, and I have seen a very, very worrying trend - not only in parents but also the schools themselves.

About 15 years ago, more progressive methods came in where we are pushed to be ‘scaffolders’ rather than teach. Any teacher showing a child a technique is deemed to be stifling their creativity.

Preschools have turned into just a mass of toys being distributed around rooms and not actually played with. Children aren’t encouraged to listen, and a lot of educators are just on their knees.

Senior managers tend to be in meetings, in offices or on a computer rather than having a full overview and leading things forward.

Data protection, bureaucracy, ‘new initiatives’ etc means that everyone is scared to move in case they do the wrong thing, so no one takes accountability.

Very young children are being pigeon holed as being this, that or the other - rather than addressing the environment they are in and the support they are given.

I work and had to take a few weeks off to potty train dc. Nursery were supportive but certainly didn’t “pick up the slack” all of the hard work was done by me in relation to it. But yeh I totally agree it’s just bad parenting whether or not the parent works or not.

Yes I agree..
The book 'young children learning' (Wizard and Hughes) is a study documenting the conversations and interactions that happened between a child and engaged caregiver at home vs the conversations at nursery. It's getting on a bit now (pre phones and screens) but was a real eye opener.

A previous poster said the “majority” of potty training was done by nursery which is probably where the response came from. But glad your experience was diff!

Oh and I’ve witnessed some absolutely appalling interactions between nursery staff and children. Toys being snatched off children by staff, staff not wanting to change nappies so leaving them wet/soiled, staff leaving children to cry because they want a longer lunch break or are just fed up.

All in a very highly regarded, top fee paying school.

@Liveandletlive18

It's something I've seen talked about in relation to ASD, sounding like you're speaking with a foreign accent. I used to get asked if I was South African as a kid, apparently I sounded like I was, lots of ND in our family. There's also the autism accent but I don't think that one sounds specifically American. My autistic kids do tend to use YouTube to zone out when overwhelmed and exhausted, but haven't developed an American accent,the odd mispronounced word, which gets corrected and that's it.

Really? I think the problem is people making decisions at every level, from governments to individuals, based on what is really little more than propaganda, rather than looking at evidence.

The Rowntree foundation's study into intergenerational unemployment, found that half of 1% of unemployed households were of two generations that had never worked, and found none that were of 3 generations. If they do exist, the amount must be even more miniscule.

Maybe there has been a breakdown, but it would seem more likely to be because of a break with the social contract by the Thatcher government; the increasing insecurity of work, housing, healthcare etc.

This doesn’t mean children are there all that time, it’s to accommodate people’s working patterns.

It’s not a school with compulsory attendance times - children arrive and depart at their parent’s convenience.

Such strong opinions, with absolutely no knowledge or experience!

@Liveandletlive18

A child choking and a member of staff not being present because ratios are not adhered to..

Wow. Defensive.

Is it? Or is it that people who are stupid and lazy are much more likely to end up un/underemployed? I don't think the working class want to claim them any more than the middle class does.

All of my colleagues with kids took annual leave to potty train. I live in Ireland and the nurseries here won’t do it. They are supportive but won’t do the work for you.

I have no experience in nursery so I cankot comment on how much they help. I’m just quoting a previous poster who said theirs did the majority.

What? I was replying to someone else who seemed annoyed that working parents are being blamed for so many children starting school without skills they need. That is annoying as it implies that parents are just dumping them somewhere with an iPad and haven’t spent time and money finding the best childcare they can afford while they’re at work. Childcare providers do a lot to prepare children for school. So do parents.

“In my world” (wtf?) my children went to nursery and preschool but I toilet trained them, taught them to feed themselves, chatted to them lots and read to them every single night. Amongst other things. And nursery/preschool supported all of that too. I never said parents shouldn’t actually raise their children and it was all down to childminders and nurseries. I don’t know how you’ve got your wires so crossed 😳

I was going off what a previous poster said….

In fairness having looked at the report it doesn't attribute most of the problem to working parents at all, and none of the specific instances reference this. Not attending nursery while being propped in a corner sofa with an iPad is the type of thing mentioned - no mention of whether either parent worked.

In the one case working parents are mentioned it is because the teachers have been specifically asked whether they think parents working long hours due to the high cost of living contributes to the problem, so it has basically been set up to get at least partial agreement.

i know. I’m glad you are glad lol.

"I don’t recall any four year old in their classes being in nappies, and we didn’t live in an affluent area"

So many statements like this on the other two threads. How on earth would the average parent or child know how many other children in a class are in nappies or having accidents?

If the data was based on more than anecdotal teacher reflections, and instead recorded over x years the percentage of children in Reception year in nappies, I think that would be more useful. It's quite hard to quantify feelings of "getting worse", and, of course, correlation is not causation.

I don't think this can be down to busy parents. Surely their children are mainly at nursery so will be exercising etc every day. Nurseries also help potty train children.

The American accent thing has been going on for years. I'm in my 30's and all my Barbie's spoke with a fake American accent (I still slip into an American accent when playing make believe with my own children!). They definitely pick it up from watching American content online, but I don't think it needs to be excessive... it can just be a convenient way to put on a character voice because it's different to their own but familiar to them.