To be shocked at ‘school readiness’

[Copyandpastry]

2 weeks into this school year with a new class of reception children who 90% are utterly unequipped to be in a classroom. This is a list of things that come to mind the children are unable to do.

-put on their coats. I don’t mean when they struggle to get their arms in or don’t know how to turn a sleeve from inside out. I mean completely unaware of how to even attempt to put on their own coat.
-Recognise their own name.
-They walk away while you are actively talking to them

-Nor a single child has used manners, pleas or thank yous, without being prompted to do so during the whole 2 weeks.
-take their coats to their pegs. Children are taking off their coats at the door, dropping them to the floor and walking away.
-close a toilet cubicle door or pull their pants up before they walk back into class (our toilets are directly off the classroom)

This is not even mentioning the running away or out the classroom when asked to do something they don’t want to do like sit on the carpet, children outright saying no or screaming at staff.

These are not SEN children who are developmentally delayed. Covid babies are no longer an excuse. I’m absolutely baffled how parents have neglected to teach their children basic skills and expectations of behaviour, I have never had a year group like this.

AIBU to be shocked at the lack of school readiness

Absolutely agree with this.

I do behaviour training and 1 thing I always say is that when you’re watching a child with emotion that is not the time to be trying to get them to talk about it. They need to experience it and you can comfort them to help them feel safe. But if a child doesn’t even learn they can be sad but make themselves happy we set them up to fail.

Our job is to teach them how to manage emotions - especially big emotions - not avoid them or make them disappear.
Life itself will present you challenges that produce big emotion - through childhood and adulthood. You need the skills to deal with that.

I spend a lot of time talking to Allen’s who say they think their 2yo has send because …. And 9/10 times the child is developmentally doing what you’d expect.

I now run parent groups on managing behaviour and we start off telling them developmental norms. Many are surprised what their child could and should be able to do at a certain age and that if they kept to boundaries they see that.

That’s not a generalisation to the whole population but to those who don’t get it but actually do seek to engage.

I believe a big part of this is related to the reduction and decimation of sure start etc.

It’s not a class issue. It’s a societal issue. There are many working class parents that have amazing children. My neighbours little girl is 2.5, she’s highly intelligent and competent. She has her mother at home.
Western society is so busy, time is of the essence, many have a mindset that it is someone else’s problem, children should know better, the schools crossed the line into parenting years ago, children were not expected to bring a pencil case, packed lunch, everything is catered for.
School nowadays have a lot of children who don’t speak English, they have a lot of children who have SEN, they’ve a lot of children whose parents are too busy to parent and don’t discipline. Gentle parenting, they have entitled children whose parents complain about everything.
It is a wonder that they learn anything from school either. It’s like a mad house of low expectations.

One issue is “ gentle parenting “ , which seems to be interpreted as never saying no to a child or expecting then to do anything they don’t want to.

I have many friends who are caring for their pre school grandchildren so their fathers can work full time. They are issues with a long list of instructions, such as no screen time, no sugar in any form ( so no fruit or milk then ? ) and never saying no or giving any instructions or directions.

So if the toddler doesnt want to get in the buggy or the car seat after the appropriate explanation , the GP are supposed to sit and wait until the child feels like complying . Of course the Gp are also expected to get places on time .

Most of the GP end up ignoring it. Or refusing to do any more unpaid childminding .

It’s because the government want the mummies back at work to give them taxes!

Countries where kids start school later have better educational standards later on and much better mental health in their general populations.
(Those are also countries where there are high levels of parents looking after their children, so your nursery point doesn’t really stand!)

They teach this on early years degrees and teacher training but then our government don’t follow it, because they are money grabbing.

Homeschooling has taken off in our town and I must say, those kids are worlds apart from the school kids when they come to community events etc. Manners, maturity and independence.

My concern is 1 - how a teacher would post this and be an expert on every child’s SEN needs by the second week of term! That’s ASTOUNDING!!!!! Many of those kids could be on waitlists for all sort of diagnosis!!

2- as this poster suggests, people are shoving their kids into nurseries when they are tiny. They ask, how is it different? The answer is, it’s not. Both are equally damaging.

When we know so much about the brain and developmental issues with bonding, why are we as a nation surprised our children are struggling??

Are the children failing or are we as a nation failing them?!

WHY do we need Surestart though? It’s not a deprivation issue. When I was young (70s) even in deprived areas children still had independence skills from a young age. It was just expected by their parents (and grandparents, neighbours, the whole community).

What has changed? It can only be lower expectations by some parents who don’t see the need for their children to possess these skills. That’s the crux of it. The children ARE capable, it is purely down to parental expectations.

I remember taking my daughter to her induction days at primary school and the head teacher telling us not to bother with whether they can write their name or count to ten, but it would help if we could encourage them to do the simple things you describe- use toilet independently, change for PE, follow simple instructions.

Some of this stuff I suppose could be stress/overwhelm rather than not actually being able to do it. I’m assuming most or even all of these kids should have been at nursery so why weren’t they learning it there?

Other stuff yeah, manners have gone out the window with a lot of adults never mind children. That and what parents think gentle parenting is (letting them get away with murder) but actually it isn’t.

I wouldn’t completely rule out a hangover from covid. So these kids are 4/5? So they may have been babies in 2021 or a bit later when life was just starting to get back to normal. Lots of people seemed to lose basic social skills and consideration for others- manners, patience, boundaries mattered less when we were all locked down, parents and children were even more attached to devices, doomscrollingbecame prevalent and all this has affected society in so many ways, including the parenting of the generations of kids that came after. It’s also directly contributed to the cost of living crisis, which has many parents stressed out their box and struggling to prioritise good parenting.

I think kids continue to be spoon fed through out their early lives, parents continue to support, they live at home into their 30s and that is the new normal. So it’s no surprise that they are not doing stuff for themselves aged 4. That unfortunately continues. And if you suggest that a young adult needs to behave like an adult and take some responsibility- you’ll be put firmly in your place. Parenting has become a more subtle lifetime activity.

It’s not a goady post though is it? It’s the experience of someone who works in that setting, reporting her observations. You may disagree with those observations and you’re entitled to say that but a post you disagree with isn’t “goady”. I just do understand why anyone would seek to minimise or deny this issue exists (at least for the OP, and it seems many others).

I think there are many reasons. Like I said earlier, dh and I worked ft. I was often working at weekends and after dc went to bed. But we both took pride in the fact that our kids were doing the right things, because we based it on our own (v wc ) upbringing.

I think a lot of parents (including my cousin) are very much:"why should I? My kidz my rulz" and don't see having children as part of a wider, collective responsibility to societyat large.

And screens. I lose count of how many kids i see in shopping trollies glued to a screen. It's a supermarket! Why do you need a screen? There's loads to see and do when you're a kid.

In their own mind I suspect its frankly unbelievable that 90% of children dont know their own name when even dogs understand their own names hell even my cats know their names

In France it is 3 years old, to quote ‘reduce social inequalities and give all children early access to foundational learning’ and is free. School starts about 8.30 and finishes 4.30, however times can accommodate children. There is also after school activities for parents who work but these are not free.

My DS did this too!
I was a reception teacher so made sure that he could put his coat on and off including doing up the zips, get dressed independently, put gloves on himself etc etc. before he started school.

I got called in as he wasn’t doing any of this and they wanted me to help him be more independent! 🤣 They were amazed the next day when he could suddenly do it all…

Having said that, as I said… I WAS a reception teacher. The OP has laid out a few of the reasons why I no longer am!!!

Its goady because its exaggerating bullshit

Aren't those skills part of what reception should teach?

6 is school age where I am, 5 is compulsory pre-school year which is mostly about aligning the skills with school expectations. 3&4 is play-based nursery which majority of children attend, pre 3 are creeches and mini groups.

We expect quite a lot from the 6 yos, but there is a pre-school year to teach the missing bits.

Do the nurseries in the UK teach the skills to 3yo? I know parents should parent, but with your very long nursery days, the nurseries and childminders play a significant role in child's skills.

I hope parents are being made aware if children are going around unprovoked hurting others. That has made me really concerned for mine who has just started nursery, not even reception yet! What you’ve said sounds awful! Although I’ve not been made aware of any major issues and the class seems fairly ok so unless teachers are hiding this very well. It does sound like my reception aged child though who is SEN. And he is only allowed in 2 hours a day still as he is struggling with the structure of having to sit etc. Which I am fuming about! So I can’t imagine a mainstream classroom like this at all. That’s mad! My nursery child (nursery in a school) isn’t great at listening sometimes but he definitely knows his name and actively wants to put his coat on etc. They also said he had to be potty trained before starting. He wasn’t quite there when he started so had a couple of accidents the first 2-3 days but is now absolutely fine. So hopefully your class adjust really quickly. I often think it’s the other way around. Good as gold in school and then unruly at home!

All these posters saying they don’t believe the OP obviously don’t work in a primary school…..

This has got to be screen time related.

This. Yes, gentle parenting would definitely
not recommend just waiting indefinitely till the child needs to get into the buggy. It would recommend holding the boundary with firmness and empathy while acknowledging the child’s feelings eg

’I can understand you are having a hard time getting in the buggy because you want to keep playing with the lego. But you need to get in so we can go to the shops. You can do it yourself like a big girl or I’ll help you, you choose’. Then if they choose not to, you physically put them in. If any parent wanted me as a grandparent to do anything other than that, I’m afraid I’d be telling them to find another babysitter.

Edited: sorry this was meant for another poster!

I admit I'm shocked at all this. Have these children been in any kind of nursery?
While I feel it's parenting failure I'm surprised this wasn't addressed in nursery.

My kids were in reception 25 years ago. They didn't do pre-school but went to a nursery twice a week. There was one child in the class who wasn't school ready, my kids could do all those things plus read and write some basic stuff.

It's all very well planning to ban phones for children, seems like parents' phones are causing more damage.

Says they person who is being classist. I think this thread is a poorly veiled attempt at having a go at MC families. If you don't like working with children, retrain, OP.

My mother taught in the 60s and it sounds like it wasn't very different then either. I'm sure this gets said every year. Maybe it is just what children that age are like. By the end of reception their teacher has done a marvellous job with them all and forgets what they were like on day one.

Not rtft but I would imagine some of these children are as young as 4. Babies really.

4yos aren't babies. Babies can't walk or talk or use a toilet or feed themselves. A 4yo (with no disability) should be able to do all those things.

I don’t think we should start formal education until age 7.

OP isn't talking about formal education. She's talking about life skills. Do you think children should not learn how to use a toilet or dress themselves until they're seven?

Am I reading this correctly? A teacher is expressing here the experiences she has encountered with children starting school.

The parents are saying that she isn't correct, their children are all well behaved, able to do tasks that are expected (dress themselves and sit down and recognise their own name written on paper). All their children have been parented appropriately.

Personally I would believe the teacher and these children are the budding criminals because their lies are believed.

Ah The annual school starters are still shitting themselves thread. I suppose there’s also the annual comment blaming teen pregnancy buried in here.
Fact is teen pregnancy is down massively since twenty years ago. Had mine at 16 and 18 with no family help were out of nappies at 2 and could read before all other kids in their school class.

So you’ll have to blame someone else for this one

Lots of these countries also have children in kindergarten from 4 months and the children learn through play right up until they start school at 7 when they already have years of routine behind them. Being at home for years without group socialisation and a range of caregivers is most unusual.