Children arrive at school incapable of learning

[Brycie]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2222176/Chaotic-homes-creating-children-incapable-learning-says-Gove-Teachers-report-year-olds-nappies-speak-sentences.html I wonder what people think of this. Is this child abuse?

What kind of intervention can be offered? On a school thread the other day one poster was talking about how long it can take to teach a child to ask to be excused for the toilet. It seems nuts not to start intervention earlier. Can these children in danger be identified for special programmes from say age 2? How can a programme be created which "discriminates" against children from better organised families to prevent the Surestart problem (ie being overtaken by the enthusiastic parents who don't really need it as much). There must be lots of social workers here who have an opinion but other people too.

[Pleasenomorepeppa]

helpyourself That is reassuring!
MrsCan't I totally agree. This is why sure start centres are so good. It's the getting people who need to use them through the doors. I found then to be v supportive. (I had PND). Unfortunately lots of people don't give them a second glance. My circle of friends & I used them because we knew it was important for us to get a support network & socialise both us & our children.
It was people like this that went to them, not really the people that they're aimed at??

[fuzzpig]

Threads like this scare me. Our DCs' early years have been ruined by our health problems. Chaotic is exactly the word I would use to describe our lives. I am so scared that we've damaged them and they'll never catch up with their peers because all we can manage is to get them fed, dressed and to school.

I don't think anyone could dispute how much we love them but that doesn't seem like enough.

[Ronaldo]

I don't really understand your comment. Do you think children who attend pre school are dirty and unsocialised?

No. However, I do thinka lot of children are sent to pre school/nursery too young. What they need is mothering not child care.. There I have dared to say it.

[FellatioNelson]

There have always been families like this, but unless it is my imagination there do seem to be more in recent years. Certainly, anecdotally, early years education professionals do seem to think so.

Hully is right about the cycles of neglect, commonly the lack of good parenting will go back two or three generations. I like the idea of successful, self-sufficient families mentoring vulnerable families, but I'm not sure in practice it would work. I think it would work well for the borderline cases; those people who are struggling to keep it together but who have, and always have had the basic right ideas in place, but frankly they would have a fairly good chance of coming right in the end anyway.

The ones I'm not convinced about are the completely chaotic families - I think they view any kind of well-meant intervention as middle-class meddling by judgemental snobs who just want to look down on them and criticize. I don't see that family mentors would be welcomed with any less suspicion than social workers and teachers etc currently are.

Hoever, that's not a reason not to try it - especially if it were voluntary and part of Dave's Big Society, so it need not be expensive to put in place. But is that not what the volunteers at Sure Start do anyway?

[EdgarAllanPond]

is there not a general change in ethos, in that encouraging children to do for themselves is seen as 'pushy; and people now will say 'they'll get it in their own time' about everything, even those things which may require plenty of assistance and encouragement for a child to learn?

people also have smaller families, which means younger children may not have an older model to learn from (and parents will be under less pressure to get them to do as much as possible for themselves)

thinking of the job i had getting DD1 to use knife and fork, and do her coat buttons - it was drawn out, required encouragement, she wasn't going to get it by herself if i carried on doing it for her. DD2 has been determined to do it all for herself, like DD1 though....

that wouldn't hold back the learning of children from better off backgrounds, who would just pick up quickly on entering school, or nursery, but it might for the less well off - having not been stimulated in other ways and being less confident in their general ability to learn.

[piprabbit]

I love Hully's idea of adopting whole families. I'm guessing that the original Sure Start scheme (volunteer parents going into the homes of people who needed extra support on a regular basis, to help out and to act as a role model) was trying to do a bit of this.

The problem is that the most chaotic families are the ones that seem to be hardest to reach and are most likely to walk away from any support that is offered to them.

[OddBoots]

I assume you mean parenting rather than mothering specifically Ronaldo?

[OddBoots]

fuzzpig, health problems happen and they do create some degree of chaos in the family home but it's not an absolute that it is entirely damaging, a lot of children of parents with health problems develop more empathy and independence.

[MrsCantSayAnything]

fuzz cmoplicated health problems are another kettle of fish entirely. You shouldn't worry about that...your DC are looked after.

I also like Hullys idea...it's a bit like that charity who send a helper around to families who are struggling....can't remember what it is called though.

Felatio I agree that there have always been families like this but....I grew up in a very poor area...lots of unemployment and deprivation.....BUT this was the 70s and there was still a strong community and families were very proud and instilled their DC with basic skills and manners.....there was a pride in ensuring the DC were well dressed and worked hard at school.

The area is nothing like that now and it is full of families who struggle...loads of social problems....why? What happened?

[Ronaldo]

'Making' mums name the dad so he has to pay his share towards the baby (I bet that'd have quite a few more blokes pulling on a condom, if they knew that child support was coming out of their dole/wages for the next 18 years!). You'll say 'but what if he's violent? What if there's domestic abuse?' And I'll say 'Why have unprotected sex with him?' And why do it again 18 months later?

Rather than now churning out a long list of provisos and exceptions, I'll wait to be flamed then answer each one in turn, OK?

You wont get flamed by me , I agree.

Although I dont think all the children who are so under socialised are from "poor" families on council estates.

I would add the folowing to your list:

a) make the b*ggers get married before having families.

b) lets stop divorce - you marry it and stay with it until they are grown

Too many females seem to think that its Ok to have a series of fathers for their children. It isnt that they find one violent and leave, they dfind another and have another child and then another by a different man ..... Its serial fathers and boyfriends.

c) Make men ( opr let them) father their children.

and this will really let the flames out

d) Make mothers stay home for the first five years of childhood and bring their kids up rather than delegating the responsibility to "child care". Bring back the family wage.

We did not have this level of problem before working mothers and single parent families being a norm.

Even in Victorian times it was lack of familes that led to ssocial problems.

If amything has gone wrong here its the Frankfurt School of sociology being applied and Ayn Rand style feminism.

Now flame that.

[OddBoots]

"We did not have this level of problem before working mothers and single parent families being a norm." Oh yes we did! And working mothers have been the norm for many many families since the start of humanity. Have you ever watched programmes like Who Do You Think You Are? or studied social history?

[ReallyTired]

Many socially deprived children have medical problems which cause their learning difficulties. The difficulty is that the parents are often not articulate enough to access the services. There is nothing wrong with their basic parenting skills.

There is a little boy in dd's class who has fragile X syndrome. (A condition similar to Downs) He is still in nappies and has no speech. The little boy did not learn to walk until two and half years old. Health professionals assumed the little boy's developmental delay was down to poor parenting inspite of the fact that the family other four children all had normal development. What is shocking is the delay that this little boy had for getting speech and language theraphy and he had no child physio. It look a long time before the paediatrian would do any medical tests and actually diagnose the real problem.

My son had developmental delay as a toddler. I believe the fact that we are reasonably well off, don't smell of ciggerate smoke, our child was well dressed and were articulate meant we got ds the help he needed quickly. Middle class families whose children have special needs are much better at getting treatment from the NHS.

[losingtrust]

Ronaldo not even going to go there! As a single parent whose husband opted out of parenting, your comments are offensive to those who wanted the above.

Sibling I think your points are very good. Thinking back to my own children, I learnt more and spent more time with my siblings and am shocked by some of the behaviours of children whose parents do everything for them. They are spoilt as this to me is a much bigger problem than whether they can read or write when they start school which at 4 is way to young. Learning manners, socialising, independence and how to eat properly and healthily is really what parents should be concentrating on.

[Hullygully]

I think it's Homestart (where they go into homes). But it's much too little. I have a friend who fosters mothers and babies, it really helps, but it is only for newborns. The scheme needs to cover whole families and really be a proper long term paid committment. Only then is there a chance for families to move on.

And it's always been like this, in fact worse, at least now there is a welfare safety net of sorts, however inadequate. Not so many kids up the chimneys.

[dysfunctionalme]

Ronaldo, don't be shy, I am genuinely interested in why you say this. What is it you think happens at pre schools that is so damaging?

[fuzzpig]

MrsCantSayAnything the charity you're referring to is Home Start - it's brilliant. Ours has a waiting list but we are getting a volunteer assigned to us next month.

[piprabbit]

You might be interested to read about Magic Breakfast who are working to ensure that children actually have some food in their bellies before they get into the classroom.

I know that sometimes it is lack of money that prevents children getting a proper breakfast at home. But it is also sometimes due to parents simply not realising or caring that they should be providing breakfast and ensuring their child eats. Either way, it makes it hard for the child to concentrate and learn.

[Hullygully]

But it shouldn't be voluntary, people should be paid. It should be an investment in the future and would also provide jobs as a bonus.

[MrsCantSayAnything]

fuzz that's it! Thanks....I'm glad you've got a volunteer coming...apparently they're amazing. I have my Mum who helps me...she's like my homestart volunteer! She comes and washes up when I'm working!

Hully yes...the government needs to invest money in a scheme like Homestart where helpers can assist families in a practical sense.

[CouthyMowEatingBraiiiiinz]

It's funny - I had a DC that was unable to dress/undress themselves, and fit the 'chaotic family' heading, I guess.

The difference was, he had dxd physical problems. They were only dxd before school because he wasn't my first DC with these issues, as we have a genetic disability that runs on our family.

He was able to use the toilet himself, but needed help to do things like do his coat up, and get changed for PE, as it took him longer than the other DC's.

It's not that he couldn't get changed for PE - it's that he took longer than the time alloted for that task due to his disability.

I would imagine that this soon into the start of Reception, quite a few of these DC's will have undxd SEN's.

Not all, mind you. But if you revisited those DC's that CAN'T do these things at 4/5yo when they were 8yo and 14yo, I'll bet that a significant percentage of them have been dxd with SEN's.

As well as the two DC's of mine that have SEN's, I also have one who has just sat the 11+, and looks set to gain a place at the local superselective school that takes just the top 96 pupils from all over the SE of England, with people travelling from London to attend there.

I didn't somehow teach my DC2 differently to my DC1 or my DC3, it's just that DD and DS2 have SN's and DS1 doesn't.

[FellatioNelson]

Ronaldo I do think the majority of children who show communication, social and developmental delays of the kind we are discussing here, (brought on through apathetic or neglectful parenting, or just through poor education and ignorance rather than because of some unavoidable special need) probably DO have mothers who are at home for the first five years of their lives, and probably the next five or ten as well.

I really don't think demonizing working mothers of toddlers is fair or appropriate in this debate, and is something of a red herring, and I say that as a stalwart SAHM.

A working mother needs routine, discipline, organization, motivation, self esteem and all the things that these families lack. I think that other than for a relative handful of cases you are barking up the wrong tree entirely.

[EdgarAllanPond]

couthy the percentage of kids with SEN/SN hasn't increased though has it? and this is a trend on the rise.

[FellatioNelson]

Oh yes, it was Home Start that did the volunteer visits, not Sure Start. Are Home Start still going then?

[colditz]

It's also worth remembering that children with developmental delays behave almost identically to children whose development has been delayed.

Ds1 couldn't talk, or use a fork, or sit at a table at three. But he has clinically measurable delays. I know that now, but six years ago I was ripping myself to pieces about my clearly shitty parenting.

[HeathRobinson]

Interesting thread.

Here's the Homestart ethical trade shop if anyone fancies buying something and contributing to Homestart at the same time.