If your child was starting Reception in September, would you be concerned if...

[Ripeberry]

He or she did not know their numbers 1-10, got colours wrong, could not tell you what a square was?
I help out at pre-school and quite a few of the children are like this, especially the boys.
And they all seem to be from the big famillies. Its as if their parents don't have time to teach them anything.
Lots of friends have said they don't spend so much time with 2nd or 3rd DC, what hope is there for DC 7 or 8?
Just wondered if anyone else has come accross this as well?
AB

Ta Oblomov. That is a really useful thread. Ds starts in Sept and really need to put a few of these issues in motion!

Lol. You are joking aren't you, Ripeberry. I've got 9 children. No3 couldn't write his name and didn't give away much else that he actually could do when he started in reception. He is now (y10) and ace-ing every subject. No8(8y)lags behind in most academic things at this point but is great with practical stuff. No9, my youngest(4), writes her name, does her numbers, alphabet, colours, shapes and will perform for anyone who asks.
So make of that what you will and stop judging. 3-5yo is not very old at all and they do all develop at different rates in different areas.

ct64 has given the extensive and highly appropraite list.
Aim for thos ethings and for gods sake don't worry about the rest.
Don't teachers prefer it if children can't read
seriously , some, I think, like to teach their own way, rather than undo what another nursery ha done.
I couldn't give a jot if ds can't .... write his name, count to ....

• juule you have 9 children

Nope! Not concerned at all. It will come. It's not so much that we don't have time to teach them (though we don't have time to teach them) it's just that prying them out of the heap of bodies that passes for siblings can be rather exhausting.

Irrationally, yes I'd be worried - only because ds1 and ds2 could do these things.

Don't know what big families have to do with it - ds3 has done everything much earlier than the other two and I thought a lot of this would be down to copying them and joining in when they were learning letters and numbers etc.

It is true, Juule has 9
Bet she ignores the last 8
All parents have more time for their first child. That is why they are reffered to as a PFB.
But after that, I mean, come on !

DS2 is starting reception in Sept and he knows most of his letters, can count to 100, knows all shapes, colours etc. But i just think he's bright and has learned from his big brother. I'm sure it's nothing I did. He's 4 in June btw.

Oblomov - shhhh, don't tell everyone

sorry Juuule, is it a secret ? I was well impressed when I first found out.

I meant the bit about ignoring the last 8 Wouldn't do for that to get out would it?

Don't you just lock them all in the shed and let one out every now and then ?

Oh darn it. And there's me thinking it was a secret. Tut.

I worried that I spent so much time teaching these things to dd1, but hadn't really had time to do the same with dd2 (now 2.9) Turns out her big sis is an excellent teacher, or cbeebies is doing something right, because she can somehow count to 10, knows all the colours and shapes, and can somehow say "hello" in Swahili!!!!! All without my input!! Can't help feeling a bit redundant!

As to the OP- I wouldn't be worried. dd1 refused to learn her numbers for ages, and then suddenly one day could count to 30!!! they seem to suddenly be able to do things when it is the right time for them to do it, so I don't worry now! Once they get into a learning environment (dd1 is at nursery- which is probably equivalent to your reception, I think??) they seem to learn on a really quick learning curve.

Just to add that the 'learning environment' doesn't necessarily have to be nursery/school. My youngest child hasn't been to either (home-ed) but can still do all the things I mentioned.

MNA lines up to stand in awe of Juule next to FAQ....Wow!And you have time to MN! You must be much more efficient than me who barely copes with 1 some days!!

I find the OP quite odd - what was your reason for posting OP??

Totally concur that in big families the little ones learn from older siblings more and therefore this cancels out a lot of the 'less attention from parents' effect.

Ds can do these 'learned/ academic' things already because he seems to pick such concepts up easily and is interested and he isn't 3 til the summer but gosh he has so much to learn in other areas - can't dress himself etc. I thought that's all the sort of stuff they go to school to learn and I reckon it would be MORE useful for me to focus on his independence and bum wiping at this stage.

Haha, this reminds me of our first CM trying to persuade me that ds had problems with his language development because he did not know the word for a baby goat!! If I had not been so completely over-awed by the woman, I would have pointed out that since there is a shortage of goats on our suburban streets, an ability to identify the common garden birds (which ds had) might be an almost more useful accomplishment. And that neither has anything to do with language development; it's simply about what things your family happens to talk about.

When dc's were preschoolers, I am almost certain that our dinner table conversations were not to do with squares, so they probably didn't know about those. But they were fairly informative about life in the Viking Age, the habits of orangutans or the doings of their imaginary friends.