To wonder why screens aren’t investigated as a cause of childhood behaviour issues?

[Peony1897]

We now know that screens, and in particular tablets, have really horrific effects on young children and their emotional/social development - in particular speech, regulating anger, sensory issues and how they interact with their peers.

So why is it whenever we see a thread where a small child has some or all of the above issues, and the OP clearly mentions tablet use or ‘all they are interested in is screens’, the answer is nearly always an autism assessment rather than removal of screens?

Genuinely curious as to why such a clear risk factor is never picked up on.

Very few, as very premature babies (pre 28 weeks) only make up 0.004% of births.

DH and I both went to grammar schools in the 70s. We never heard of SEN or special schools. I have no doubt, all the children with SEN like dyslexia, possibly ADHD, autism, etc just ended up in secondary moderns, and nobody thought anymore about them.

DS is in his late 30s. There was a boy in his year 7 with ADHD. The other children knew they could wind him up, and he’d explode. After one particular incident, he was expelled.

DD2 is in her early thirties. When she was in year 7, there was a particularly naughty boy. She didn’t know of any SEN, but it probably hadn’t been identified? He has a managed move to another secondary, where he lasted about a term. Afaik, he never went to school again. He lived on our estate. We all saw him regularly riding his bike around the town, kicking fences down, etc.

I’ve just had a look and in 2005 there were some 90,000 children in SEN schools. Now that number is 160,000, with huge waiting lists. Even accounting for the increase in population, that seems quite a steep rise to me?

When books and newspapers first became easily available, some people complained that it was causing people to stop interacting with each other in public places.

in the 80s/90s, there was a lot of talk about video games/computer games causing kids to be more violent. It was a big worry for some people and discussed in the media a lot because these were new games that hadn’t existed before.

Screens are the latest big worry for kids.

Please could I have a link?

I do think there has been a real rise in SEN, particularly of children with severe disability (non verbal etc). I just also think this runs alongside a perceived rise (more visibility in community and mainstream schools).

Just off the top of my head the 'real' rise could have many factors, including:

• Increased average parental age.
• Population growth (although % would stay the same, there will be a higher total number of children with needs to support and the schooling system has not been prepared for this, particularly with the closure of special schools).
• Even though SEN support is often still dire, it is largely better than it was before the 2000s. Where some of those children have had access to better support, they might be more likely to have children of their own, then there's the strong hereditary link.
• There are certain health conditions that are far more prevalent in neurodivergent population, for example epilepsy. We now have much better treatments for these conditions and therefore more neurodivergent people are surviving.
• Environmental factors that we don't know enough about yet.

"I’ve just had a look and in 2005 there were some 90,000 children in SEN schools. Now that number is 160,000, with huge waiting lists. Even accounting for the increase in population, that seems quite a steep rise to me?"

I think there are more independent special schools than there used to be but these aren't necessarily taking the most complex children. Certainly the school my son used to attend has moved away from taking those with complex needs.

Although on looking, only around 4000 children attend independent special schools.

Like PP I think there is an actual increase in pupils with special needs.

But one thing I have noticed, working in a mainstream infant school is, the mainstream offer has got progressively worse over the 13 years I've been in school and the curriculum also got more intense at a younger age and this pushes people into the SEN category, who would previously have been supported in the ordinary offer.

I can see we are getting pupils with a high level of need who we didn't get allocated when I just started. They went elsewhere.

We also can't support pupils with a 'lower' level of need effectivly anymore. When I first started, every class had a full time TA. We had a staffed nuture room, there was a trained play leader in the playground, there was a reading support teacher who came in two mornings a week, there was also a 3 day a week senco. We also had a visiting speech and language therapist each week.

That's been decimated and it's a class TA only in the morning, no nuture room, no reading teacher, no play leader, senco day a week, no salt. Unsurprisingly more children the need a special school.

Yes, I would agree with all of this.

I didn't just mean the pre 28 week babies. I meant all the premature babies, ones with severe genetic disorders or complicated health conditions. Survival rates for all sorts of conditions are rising hugely due to progress in medicine and surgery etc. So this naturally means the proportion of children with complex needs will go up, and less severely disabled children will get bumped up to mainstream.

I thought this was a thoughtful post on a FB page I follow, I think the woman in question is a ND clinician. This specifically mentions autism rather than generalised SEN but still thought it was worth sharing.

I think these things are all true but I feel there has also been an increase in actual prevalence.

I'm really not sold on the screens argument though. If screens are impacting increase in either neurodivergence or neurodivergence-like behaviours (pseudo-neurodivergence?) I don't think their impact is the leading cause.

I wouldn’t call it thoughtful as such, it’s 5 bullet points.

2005 is a bit late to look at special school places - a lot were closed in the 90s. I also tried to find numbers last night but didn't manage and then it got too late.

Very very roughly, because I need to take DC out in a minute, the timeline seems to go like this in my understanding. Apologies for any errors as I'm pulling this from memory and haven't fact checked.

~60s/70s > special schools fairly hidden (e.g. most people unaware of this as Blue says), and pretty much unregulated - disabled children may not have been educated at all. Lower ability or difficult to engage pupils not really bothered with, disruptive behaviour discouraged with physical violence/intimidation of pupils by teachers. School leaving age changed to the summer that pupils are 16 in 1972 - previous to this pupils could leave at any of 3 points during the year as long as they had turned 15.

~80s/early 90s > Shift away from physical discipline, questions being raised about the education offered to SEND pupils, aim to raise standards in these areas, but still not a huge amount of standardisation - some teachers still v intimidating/bullying towards pupils even if not officially allowed to physically punish. Towards the mid 90s you see a rise in official permanent exclusions which seems to be a question mark why is this happening/how to tackle this.

~ Mid 90s/00s > More accountability for schools (which meant more paperwork for teachers) - OFSTED, digitalisation/central records mean more focus on issues like truancy. Many special schools closed, inclusion policies and new guidelines about exclusion. It seems this was a very brief "golden age" for services like CAMHS as they experienced more funding. Seems like things like speech therapy and assessments were available to meet demand during this time. More awareness and diagnosis of things like dyslexia, less tolerance of children being left behind. Beginnings of awareness/diagnosis of (what was then) Asperger's Syndrome and ADHD. I get the impression there was positivity during this time about the prospect of inclusion for SEND children in mainstream schools, although this wasn't always shared by teachers who were already struggling with paperwork and expectations from higher up.

~ Late 00s/early 10s > Massive cuts to services due to austerity policies which seemed to start off the "snowball effect" mentioned before. Schools struggling with funding deficits as well as increased expectation to handle children with higher levels of need.

~10s to now ish > Hugely increased demand for services completely overwhelming capacity likely because services have been cut, but also demand increases due to school funding cuts + increased expectations meaning schools are less able to cope with pupil needs/behaviour. Plus parents have more awareness and more likely to push for referral due to information found on social media/parenting forums/wider discussion of these issues in the media.

I could only share a snippet of it… there was more.

Yes, exactly. I think some parents must wonder how on earth we parented young DC before the advent of screens. Someone told me that all they need to occupy their 4 year old on a flight was an iPad. Mine used to love their holiday treat bag with a new comic, small Lego set, new book. No screens needed.

I have DH, who clearly has hyperactive ADHD. I had 3 DC. Two of whom had SEN. I have two DGC, one of whom is on the pathway for assessment with ADHD and she’s clearly hyperactive.

If I sit down to play with her, she might say

”Let’s do a jigsaw!”

I haven’t even got it all out of the box, before she’ll say

”Let’s play I Spy!”

I say

”I spy with my little eye”

She’ll have wandered off to get her Barbies! Or, she’s bouncing around on the settee and her parents; and running around until her face looks like a tomato! Meanwhile, her younger brother is playing quietly by himself with the Duplo!

With that kind of inattention, endless energy and hyperactivity, there isn’t a great range of activities in a restaurant like there are at home, the garden and the park! She will watch a program or play a game for a while on a screen. Knowing she also struggles with loud noise (and hand dryers send her into a panic), I’d rather give her a screen in a restaurant to keep her quiet and I am no believer in giving screens to children!

Despite my experience of nearly 40 years with DH and 30 plus years of my own DC, I had no conception of what a hyperactive child with endless energy could be like!

Yes Blue I get this with DS2 all day. I try to point out that we were getting the jigsaw out whatever ready and keep his attention on that one thing or at least get him to help me clean it up. Some days though like yesterday it was total madness - I start something off and leave them to it so I can get the next stage ready, and then they request a drink or something else and while I'm getting that they lose interest in the first thing or are just squeezing glue randomly all over.

He has no concept of time so he'll do something like ask for a drink and then not give me time to physically walk into the kitchen before he's huffing and puffing that he wants a drink NOW. Of course we explain that's rude etc but it doesn't go in.

But how do you know the screens haven’t caused the lack of attention?

DS and family live 10 minutes away from us, and we help them out with DGC all we can. I know because DS doesn’t believe in screens any more than I do! He’s the sort of graduate professional parent, who was playing Mozart to her in utero, and pushing books, arts and crafts, construction toys, etc as soon as she was able to participate. Even now, she does all the after school clubs and only allowed to watch one hour of TV after school. She started language school on Saturdays and swimming on Sundays, at the minimum age. (She’s being brought up bilingual). I tried to suggest to DS at 4, that he should look for a school with good pastoral care. He told me academic excellence was all that matters!

He accepts now academic excellence is not the be all and end all. Its about helping DGC to keep up, and not suffering MH problems later.

Even now, Mozart helps her calm down, which other music can’t!

@Peony1897 I could see a clear difference in my son’s behaviour as a baby and toddler at baby groups. He screamed more than other babies and when I took him to something like a music group he would be wandering off investigating behind the curtains or banging windows while the other children his age were watching the music or dancing and joining in. At that point he had never watched screens.

We (including a GP) could all see it in DGD, except her parents, when DGD was 2, before she’d seen screens!

"We "know" do we? "Horrific effect" Really 😱😂 "Clear risk factor" are they? Give me a break!
The links you've made are ridiculous and the reasons for less screen time for asd and add, adhd are not for the reasons you've conflated.

Please educate yourself before you post spurious and completely unsubstantiated nonsense 🙄

I thought that was just parent life!

No, my own DC and DGS aren’t like that - although DD2 has inattentive ADHD and may have wandered off into a daydream; but she didn’t flit between 3 activities in 5 minutes. She didn’t bounce around the room like a human whirlwind either!