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.

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Fangs - It's not (for most of us) about judging NT chaotic kids, it's about figuring out how to improve their lives."

exactly. i'll be honest and say i don't have any good ideas.
home start and nursery places from 2 for some kids looks good though.

I read threads like these and I really feel Iv'e failed my children. They both have diff fathers, dd (7) see's her df randomly and ds (5) hasn't seen his df since he was 4 months old. Iv'e never had a live in partner it's always been them and me. One bf they met turned violent and I ended up in a rufuge and the only other man that has come around was a brief moment of madness when I got back with dd dad.

I was only 17 when I got pregnant and 17 when I had her, I farmed her out most weekends and carried on as normal, when she was 7/8 months she went into the creche at the college I was in.

No my dc are not feral, they eat to the table with knifes and forks, been potty trained before 2 and have had a uk holiday every year, bedtimes and clean bed to sleep in there has been dark days where I didn't leave the house apart from to go shop for fags/electric/milk and lived solely on benefits

. I hated baby groups and none of my friends had dc then. Threads like these make me sad because yes I had a very chaotic lifestyle and no I didn't always put them first ( I was still a teenager and theres 17 months between them) I found it a real struggle at times, and threads like this make me wonder if I have really fucked them up for life.

There both normal, very bright, sociable, the opposite of shy, popular children in school. Still makes me think when I hear about the brain scans and such like.

Why is the point about nappies and speech being made with reading and writing? There is no expectation for reception aged children to be able to do so and to put it alongside these other issues makes no sense.
Unless the head teachers are actually reporting that on entry to nursery children have speech delay and that this means they struggle once in reception year one.

"... people are using [in their own time] to imply that children will spontaneously develop behaviours that are learned, and make time and patience to teach. It is being used to say 'don't bother'."

There is an awful lot of confusion about how children learn and how much time and help they need to acquire skills. Most skills are acquired better and faster when they are explicitly taught and when children get to practice them a lot. The "in his/her own time" ought to refer to the amount of practice an individual child needs, and to not judging a child who requires a lot more practice than others.

losingtrust It was 5 years ago and I was horrified when the head said that he didn't report until over 85% absent. I thought 8 weeks would have been more than enough to report as a problem.

hettie I just think it's such a shame that he's not going to reach his 'full potential' and there's absolutely nothing to be done to stop it happening

What I'm saying is that CAHMS weren't interested because he wasn't "at physical risk" and they ignored him more (you know what I mean) because the school had turned a blind eye too in not reporting the educational failing and absences.

Courts aren't interested because it's 'better' for the child to stay settled and the RP says "I'll change, I see I could have done better" and so they all say well, regardless of the fact that he was failing, then moved and progressed but is now failing again RP says they'll try more. Brilliant! Sorry NRP, dream on as regards custody-but on the plus side you can see him just enough to watch as he goes down the educational and emotional plughole.

Chigertick completely agree. They are two different things and also some parts of speech do not come easily to children until age 5 for instance the difference between c and t. When children are starting school just past their fourth birthday they will looked delayed although nappies, dummies, eating at tables and being able to sit etc unless of special needs is something that parents could have done before school

Inneedof. There are many people in your position. At the end of the day your are the one that has been there for them!

Trouble is, legally you don't have to have your child attend school until they are 4yrs old. So if you are not a coffee morning 'type' and aren't seen regularly by a health visitor (most children aren't) then problems as regards behaviour, concentration, speech etc aren't even identified until well in to reception year. Plus, if at that point the parents say "nope, nothing wrong here, move along" or lie as regards the reality of home life (because they don't see anything wrong with no bedtime, finger foods etc etc) the teachers, if they act at all, are acting on mis-information.

Inneedofbrandy, please don't beat yourself up. Your children sound fine. When people talk about children whose parents have chaotic lifestyles and consequently don't give them the care they need, they don't mean the ones who sit at the table to eat and have regular bedtimes. It is possible to have a lifestyle that isn't the traditional nuclear family and still give your children loving, structured care. It is clear that there are a lot of children who are very much worse off than yours x

"Why is the point about nappies and speech being made with reading and writing? There is no expectation for reception aged children to be able to do so and to put it alongside these other issues makes no sense."

learning to read and write without being able to say the words = much more to learn!!
toileting, dressing, how to hold a pen = basics for reception year, things which can occupy much classroom time if a child hasn't got them.

The children I have known in the unable-to-learn category had been through truly horrendous things, the kind of things that would be bound to set their mark on anyone.

This is how discerning teachers could use the SEN/IEP resources to help children with a difficult start- until the outcry went up that schools were mis-using labels for children who did not really have Special Needs, as if teachers were perpetrating some kind of fraud, instead of flagging up genuine problems. Remember the headlines a year back?

I would like to go back to a definition of SEN as distinct from SN, recognising that children can have special educational difficulties due to social as well as medical circumstances, that these may not be permanent, but that it is useful to be able to indicate that somebody may have an extra need of a helping hand. The little boy who had seen his dad murder his mum was just as deserving of extra support as somebody with dyspraxia or no arms; the impact on his education was at least as bad.

As for the schools not registering absence, it's the opposite around here. Dd was driven into a breakdown by the school constantly telling her off about her medical absences despite reams of evidence from medical professionals; she is still having counselling for trust issues years later. Anything short of 98% attendance was seen as a parenting issue, even if the school knew full well that the child was ill in hospital. I suppose either way it's poor management.

Chaotic in realtion to parenting does not mean different Dads, kids a bit scruffy. It means empty cupboards and no beds.

Please don't beat yourself up inneed this isn't you!

Inneed the very fact that you are thinking about your DCs in this way shows that you really care about them and that is something that some kids do not have. There are many 'happily married people' who farm their kids off or have serious issues within the family and this can also lead to kids with issues. I know of a few!

No please don't be nice to me! I feel really guilty I'm guilty of emotional neglect while they were young. I didn't realise you were supposed to speak to babies I just sat them in their bouncy chairs/travel cot playpen and ignored them apart to feed/change/get dressed up in stupid over priced designer clothes. Only reason they had bedtimes was to get rid of them for the night, it was 6 o clock bedtimes not a nice normal half 7 one, and ignored them if they were crying because it was bedtime as it was tough shit if they wern't asleep.

Only the last couple of years does it feel normal to want to be around them and enjoy their company. So no please don't be nice I really did fuck it up at first, oh and I was a care leaver at 16, seen above about care leavers so gosh it comes in on all sides!

Well, we all know the Daily Mail wants to flog: useless social workers for removing children from innocent parents and keeping them with useless parents; useless teachers for pretending normal children have special needs to explain their bad results; useless parents for causing their children's ADHD and anti-social behaviours; awful children for having no respect for authority any more and expecting everything to be offered to them on a plate; feckless mothers for breeding with useless no-hoper men; benefit claiming spongers for being thick, greedy, lazy and corrupt; evil politicians for being greedy, inept and corrupt; conniving journalists for being like politicians, unless of course they work for the Daily Mail; dastardly foreigners for trying to take away our sovereignty, abuse our NHS, bring their criminal behaviour over from inferior countries or steal our jobs; evil big businesses for not paying tax and taking work offshore and condemning everyone to useless Indian call centres; evil banks for trying to destroy the whole world order, etc, etc....

... leaving behind nice old ladies who work in charity shops and mothers who devote their lives to bringing up children with good manners (but an ability to be vindictively judgmental and thus enjoy reading the Daily Mail) as the only true paragons of virtue in this world of vice and iniquity.

I don't know if they've brought them back in now (my DD's 8 - so a while ago) but the HVs stopped doing that 2 year check in our area. Even the Bookstart people were complaining that they couldn't get the books to children, as they used to go through the HVs.
Lots health issues then arose at that check the children have in reception: hearing / eyesight etc problems that should have been picked up on earlier. So I can easily see that language / learning issues would be missed.

DD never had to see either a health or child care professional from that last time the MW visited.
It's so easy for children to slip through the net and problems not be flagged.

I dont know if I should say this but I feelthere are some wind upmerchanta around ( and its not me or Xenia or the "usual" suspects). This is a third thread I am feeling this about now.

SEN still exists doesn't it? (it did a year or so since) but unfortunately it's dependant on the parent manning up at home too-if that doesn't happen they're essentially widdling in the wind. Add social and racial overtones in to the parenting mix and it's a political nightmare.

Problem is (and it's not their fault) that teachers are often acting on mis-information and looking for a diagnosis for symptoms that aren't what they appear to be. No fine motor skills, lack of concentration, lack of speech pattern, day-dreaming all could point to dyspraxia. They also all point to a lack of sleep, too much tv, not drawing/using utensils and a general lack of parental interaction and no parent (no matter how deluded) is going to say honestly "oh yes, little Johnny is up until all hours, I only feed him red pasta and nuggets and quite frankly I'd rather him watch spongebob all night than be bothering me".

There's got to be a way to intervene, as you said cory on a 'needs the help regardless' basis but to be doing the home/background check too and more-over there needs to be a 'body' of some sort listening; so if someone's shouting long and loud that something's not right, whether that be Mum, Dad or Teacher the child gets help.

I hope you don't mean me Ronaldo I really don't want to hijack the thread and I am not a troll. Your posts and views brought up a few deeply pushed down feelings thats all.

You're the only wind up merchant I've seen here Ron

Really Ronaldo? It's you I had down as a wind-up merchant based on your 9.50 post - banning divorce and forcing mothers to stay at home for 5 years struck me as a touch extreme.

That aside, there is some fascinating discussion on this thread.

Bonsoir 'the kids dragged up by servants' type of upbringing produces worse than narcissm IMO & E in some cases they are also unable to sit down at a table to eat having been chased around with food literally put in their mouths also unable or unwilling (never having had to do it themselves) to toilet themselves.

Inneedofbrandy - it is NEVER too late to become a good parent and ALL parents have had times in their children's lives when they have been bad parents. Whatever the Daily Mail says about the ideal, your children are NOT ruined for life if you didn't talk to them enough when they were little and were happy when it was their bedtime!!!!! Yes, of course it would have been good if you had done that more than you did, and when your children have children you can do that for your grandchildren and encourage your own children to do that for their children more than you did. That makes you a good person and a good parent, because you are open minded and want to do your best and are willing to put your hands up and say you think you have made mistakes and have learnt from them. You can't get a better parent than that, at the end of the day.

Ronaldo, that has been the case for ages on MN IMO

I worry about being one of these parents who are being judged here. Dd, 3.6, has a developmental delay but it's not been diagnosed clearly and it's difficult not to feel that it must be because of my rubbish parenting. She knows her letters and numbers, please and thank yous and so forth but potty training, pencil grip and basic dressing/undressing isn't happening despite encouragement (she's also the size of an 18 month old and has been being investigated for this for over a year). We model and encourage but it isn't happening and I do end up doing a lot for her because it's so difficult not to. We have physio and SALT appointments but are not getting that far.

I worry she's like this because of me, although it I don't think I do things radically differently from other parents whose children are much further ahead.

Please don't judge too harshly; it isn't always for want of trying.

Ronaldo, I can only assume that you grew up in a happy, traditional household. Lucky you. If you'd been brought up in an environment of violence and fear but your mother wouldn't/couldn't leave "because of the children" you might have a slightly more mature attitude to divorce and lone parenting (not that I think you're young, btw).