School Readiness

[MissLead]

So on the news this morning it was reported that 37% of kids going to school in UK are not deemed ‘ready’ often lacking basic speech and not being toilet trained.

Assuming these kids have no medical conditions - there must be some bloody lazy parents out there!!

Yes, but when they are getting all the support and it puts off the target group, it's not a good use of money. There are lots of opportunities for parents with money. Free services are few and far between. The difficulty is, though, that if you restrict those opportunities to parents with limited means, they won't use them because of the stigma. So you end up with nothing because no matter what you do, they won't use them.

More funding for organisations like Home Start would be a better use of the money. We had Home Start because DD1 has SN and I needed an extra pair of hands. Our volunteer (35 years older than me) became a friend for life and was such a good grandmotherly figure for the children. She gave no judgement, just practical help and wisdom.

It will vary, but I agree the SEN isn't necessarily a barrier to potty training. DD1 has significant learning disabilities and I literally said "It's time to say 'bye bye' to nappies now" when she was 2 years and 5 months old. There was a thread on MN where we compared progress.

Day 1 - two wees in car.
Day 2 - two accidents (both my fault)
Day 3 - one accident as she fell off a slide in the park.

Our only problem then was that we lived in a house with only an upstairs toilet, she couldn't get upstairs to use it (SN) and she was a very sensory child so if she used the potty and I didn't watch her like a hawk, she would tip it over.

It's the parents and the system. Parents of children that don't have an SEN and some parents of the ones that do. Not every child with an SEN will toilet train later.

There weren't a lot of 'Yummy Mummies' at the Sure Start near me. There was however a healthy smattering of mothers (some more comfortable, and some poorer) who clearly loved their children but were not up to the job of preparing them for school or life. I suspect that group of mothers has grown a lot over the last few years.

I think politicians and other people who defend this behaviour under the 'all children are different' nonsense are almost worse than the actual parents. We need a better system than the current one. We need something which puts scaffolding in place to stop parents and lazy politicians from settung these children up to fail, whether that is through good intentions, incompetence or laziness. That is especially true for children with ADHD.

Always excuses never reasons. There were cliques on both sides.

I feel though all this talk of ‘extra help’ is a red herring, we’ve entered an age where people of lower intelligence are mainlining conspiracies and ‘advice’ on the internet and are now massively withdrawing from any form of help offered.

Look at ‘unschooling’. So many parents pulling their kids out to homeschool with a big 🖕🏻 to ‘the system’, not because their child has high level SEN and they can’t be accommodated, but because ‘schools are a damaging hothouse to create capitalist stooges’.

Look at anti vaxxing. All the ££ thrown at public health campaigns has made no difference. They follow stupid insta accounts peddling absolute bollocks, and tell themselves they’re far too clever to ‘fall for big Pharma lies’.

Homebirth - the massive rise in women having unadvised home births (in many cases due to fear of hospitals, which is valid, but also due to a pride in being ‘out of the system’). When I was on the postnatal ward with DS, one mum had been virtually dragged in after a homebirth as she had Group B strep (yet had chosen to stay home anyway) and her baby was showing red flag signs for infection. They were begging her to stay and at least let them run some tests but she discharged them both as ‘I don’t like hospitals’.

I regularly see posts urging people not to let health visitors cross their threshold, or to ignore suggestions their child needs help as ‘they’ll do it when they’re ready’.

I’m don’t think I’m a yummy mummy but a few of us were encouraged to go to ours as they thought we were a ‘good example’. That people were more likely to engage with their children if they saw others doing it.

Charity shops have books for 50p. There are usually swap boxes in various towns , parks etc around the country.

If you rely on charities for food, basics etc they will often have children’s books available.

I agree that buying endless books for children is a expensive but getting your hands on one or two to teach to read is manageable for anyone

I agree.

My point was that it isn't always that simple (or free) to go to the library.

Given that nursery hours are available from 2 years - for some children - there are no excuses.

My son also is SEN and trained at 2 years 3 months. He had a lot of accidents for days and didn’t crack it till day 8, but we persevered. It takes up to two weeks, I know many people who give up really quickly.

One of mine wouldn't even entertain the bloody potty for almost a week. I knew they were ready because they'd wait for that split second I had my back turned and wee on the floor! It was messy and frustrating but I knew I'd had enough of changing nappies so I made myself continue.

I know if I'd wanted to stop I'd have had no trouble finding plenty of people telling me that they "weren't ready" though.

SEN and medical needs tend to be the main reason children leave us at nursery in nappies. However we are getting more 3-4 yo in the preschool room still in nappies. Partly, for a typically developing child, it could be due to busy parents unable to work with the first training window the child shows. We have seen many children we consider ready to start around 2.5yr but the parents aren’t able to support the process at that time and then it can be harder to try later on until the child wasn’t to cooperate again.

Children may be having less opportunity to be active, sitting on screens more when out and about. For example in supermarkets, in the past parents had no choice but to keep them entertained by ‘helping’ - now more children are sat in the trolley with a phone.

Society is changing, two parents are expected to work with young and younger children meaning more tired parents and more children in group care rather than one to one with parents for large parts of the week.

It is something we do need to look at quite seriously as a society because the system is failing many needs of young families.

"Partly, for a typically developing child, it could be due to busy parents unable to work with the first training window the child shows. We have seen many children we consider ready to start around 2.5yr but the parents aren’t able to support the process at that time and then it can be harder to try later on until the child wasn’t to cooperate again."

I'm sorry but that a pathetic excuse. If parents aren't able to support their child "at that time", they're not fit to be parents. Children's needs can't be tucked away neatly until convenient. You either support your child with their needs or you are neglecting them.

Deprived areas of inner city London in the seventies generally had two parents working full time and still managed to toilet train their children. They couldn't afford to keep them in nappies, it wasn't considered normal either.

Whilst we need to look at the system, we also need to look at why there is such a lack of accountability from parents these days.

Nope, it’ll just be another thing that teachers will not only be responsible for teaching, but will be held responsible for when children haven’t learned.

Up there with ‘why has little Bobby got 7% in his test, what support have you put in place to help him achieve, have you done an intervention’, ignoring that little Bobby has his head on the desk and refuses to pick up a pen, for the 40% of lessons he actually turns up to, and writes only when you stand over him. No one seems to want to face up to the fact that some kids don’t want to work, and some parents don’t want to parent. More support isn’t a cure for a devastating lack of motivation, ambition and energy.

IMO it is time to name and shame parents who can't be bothered to parent.

I'm a nursery teacher and have been for many, many years. My currently class has 10 children moving up in Sept
1 high needs SEN going to SEN school
1 SEN summer born, will defer - learning and language delay. Only using handful of single words.
2 more Speech and Language funded children
3 that have good vocab but atrocious attention and listening skills - disinterested in learning. Can't answer a question, will just talk at you
1 new to English, very shy cries everyday
1 reasonably on track child - at risk of being removed by social services.
Oh the 10th was amazing but they have just moved house and no longer attend. They have been replaced by a just turned 3 who throws them self on the floor screaming if they can't get what the want the minute the see it. No spoken language, just gibberish.

So yeah....not school ready at all. However they are all toilet trained even the SEN children. This is something we've had to push for before starting as one year we had over half in nappies. No SEN, parents just hadn't bothered.

It is something we do need to look at quite seriously as a society because the system is failing many needs of young families.

This. Turns out parenting in today's society is so hard that not many people want to do it and apparently many of those who do have children are failing them.

We have to make parenting easier and give parents better support if we don't want our society to die out completely. Tempting as it is just to blame parents, it's likely to prove counter-productive.

Parents should be held accountable.

Stop making excuses.

I'd like to know what are the estimated rates of FASD especially post Covid. It is massively underdiagnosed, often misdiagnosed as ADHD etc. I believe the ND movement did a massive disservice to the condition by hardly acknowledging it at all. I'm hoping I will live to finally see a public information campaign at some point.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjw7g1zjwpeo.amp

I think the government should allow mothers more times to nurture their children before parents put them into nursery. Some go in from babies and it plays a huge role in this. Most nursery workers are barely educated teenagers with little interest and leave small babies crying for hours. I had to go through 3 nurseries to find a decent one and even that was subpar. My sons education stalled and where he had once been happy and confident he was now sad due to aggressive children and absent adults. He stopped progressing in all areas and actually started to become disinterested in learning at the weekend. He started school potty trained and able to eat but with little more educational knowledge than when he started nursery 3 years prior. I know 100%, if I didnt have to put him into nursery so young and we could have continued to spend that quality time in the day learning together, he would have been very well prepared academically. I think nurseries should hold some accountability when they have the children for the entire day 5 days a week from as early as 6 months old. Thats 5 days out of 7 when the whole day is spent with them and it is imperative to repeat potty training consistently for many days more than 2 for a child to get it. Same with using utensils. This should be a combined effort from parents and the caregiver who looks after them during the day.

This is very sad.

Most people don’t want to put their babies into nurseries. There is something wrong with a society that is crying out for more babies to be born but not putting the conditions in place to allow parents to raise their children well.

How about an income tax discount for anyone choosing to give birth and taking extended time off to raise the babies. Then that financially incentivises more babies to be raised by their parents. And we might have children much more school ready by age 5.

You can take this attitude if you want, but don't be surprised when less and less people want to become parents and soon there are hardly any children at all.

I think that this is already happening somewhat.

My son is like the second child you have described. Minimal language, likely autistic. Yes he is nearly four but neither us nor preschool see that he is ready yet so I do feel a bit 🙄 at comments like yours trying to shame. Yes I do want to get on with it and have him trained but if there is no awareness what is the point of me rushing?