Why is behaviour so hard to manage in schools? Could single child syndrome be a possible cause? Homeschooling to help?

[Paperbear]

It occurred to me today that in school today there are so many only children. In a particular class I was thinking about - almost every single one of the boys are only children. It made me wonder whether this might connect to some of the challenges schools are facing today.

After all, a classroom made up mostly of only children is very different from the classrooms our grandparents experienced, when families were larger and siblings provided natural social and learning dynamics.

Perhaps this is one reason homeschooling can offer a more natural learning curve allowing lessons to move at a child’s own pace, providing one-on-one attention, and creating opportunities for learning that feel integrated with real life, much like the learning that once happened among siblings.

Ha ha this has to be a joke. Good one OP!

Hope it is!

I agree, but lots of people see allowing children any time to be autonomous and, yes, possibly get into conflict with other children and resolve it as bad parenting. See the many, many MN threads about 'why do lazy parents let their children go around soft play without following them around?' - soft play is an environment which is designed to remove risk and people still think that it's irresponsible to allow a child (I'm not talking about toddlers) to be out of sight in it

Go and work in a school, or at least volunteer (they always need adults to come in and do supervised reads)... get real hands on experience.

Then get back to us on why the behaviour is so shocking.

You've got a lot of angry posts responding to you because your original post stinks of ignorance.

I'm an ex teacher (now out of it, thank god), I can tell you the following:

1. the poorest behaviour I saw came from a girl (who has a sibling).

2. the second poorest example came from a boy who has a sibling.

3. the state sector is completely broken (heavily due to advanced levels of underfunding causing shocking pay, SEND children with no support that as a result ruin the learning of others, nowhere appropriate to put disregulated children with SEND, unable to fund the most basic things like glue sticks and whiteboard pens making chaotic environments, clueless parents complaining about teachers instead of complaining to the government and demanding change- I can go on much more but I'll stop).

4. do you think having children prevented from going to schools for year on and as a result of COVID 19 just might've hindered some of the most important developmental years of their life?

5. screens! And parents deciding to let their children use them willy nilly instead of getting them outside to burn off steam.

6. stressed, exhausted parents working endlessly to keep up with the cost of living, putting their children into morning and after school clubs because they have no choice. As a result these children don't learn strong, values led morals at home and instead learn behaviours from other tired, hungry children in these clubs. Children are away from their parents more than ever, what do we honestly expect.

I've got 2 children for reference.

Although I’m afraid op, the one lesson our admin lady can never persuade any swim teachers to do is the homeschooling group. There’s the pool space, but no teacher is putting their hand up to take 8 kids who by the very fact they’re homeschooled, you’re basically telling us ‘these children can’t learn in a group.’

Sure, let’s assign blame to only-and-summer-born kids and their feckless parents, and not the rise of screens, loss of multi-age independent play, social media in young kids, permissive parenting with few boundaries…

There is absolutely no evidence for this. On the other hand, there are correlations - some of which I suspect will eventually be shown to be causal links - between children's behaviour and a number of societal factors.
Not in order of importance, some of those factors are: general change in expectations of behaviour/showing respect/how to socialise children effectively and what society is trying to achieve by thst socialisation; overuse of screens, over stimulation, poor nutritional value of food, lack of exercise, poor sleep patterns; lack of access to nature; the effect of these modern societal problems on all children, but ND children in particular; lack of understanding, funding and support to counter those effects.
I could go on. Obviously it's an extremely complex issue. But no, of all the possible causes, only children is not one. If anything, some studies appear to suggest some correlation between being an only child and being better-socialised into adult, ie expected societally-approved, behaviours.

If your theory were true then it would be reflected in the school exclusion figures.

That's true.

It's unmet or underfunded SEN.

The problem is because adults have no real authority over children. Kids are not scared of God/police/parents/teachers - so what stops them behaving badly?

(Edit - being fearful of displeasing someone/something doesn't mean abject fear, it means not wanting to disappoint them. This fear is lacking in a lot of kids).

What can we do when a child verbally abuses us and refuses to sit and learn? Remove them and yes that helps for that lesson, but then they come back.

My answer was always NOT to let them sit in a classroom on their own or with others also there because of bad behaviour who goad each other, but to get them to do jobs no-one wants to do i.e. clean under the desks - but unless we have the backing of the parents then it went down the pan as an idea.

I think this is a great idea. I've seen other cultures who have this kind of responsibility engrained into their schooling. It should be part of school.

The only thing that needs improvement is your attitude towards children who don't have siblings.

This has to be rage bait right? What a horrible attitude to have towards only children, and extremely disrespectful to us as parents of only children who are not only well behaved, but also well rounded individuals.

You are (rightly) going to get your arse handed to you, OP.

Yes, and a healthy dose of embarrassment does them no harm - "Hey look at Ryan/ Zoe having to cleaning our gum - yukkkk!!" rather than "lucky you, sitting in Class 17 on your phone while waiting for work to be given"

But it was never taken onboard. Now I teach kids online who want to learn. Bliss

I sit on exclusion/suspendion panels at school. Family dynamics normally appear in the paperwork. I have never sat on a panel where it had been stated the child is an only child. Problems between siblings quite often comes up. Also quite common to see the same family name but different child.

Maybe we should only have only children in schools

@JustAnotherWhinger
interesting point re grounding. It’s probably the opposite now! Grounding is the reward, the punishment is going out.

I wasn't angry when I made this post. Genuinely interested. In my personal experience, I have seen a full class of 30 students with soo many of them being the only child. Perhaps this is rare, to me, it's rare. And I personally wondered if there was a connection. Don't you ever wonder things when you experience them? There was no anger or hostility in my post. Genuine curiosity.

With all of the other factors that could be influencing the situation, you chose this? Weird take.

haha so true. Touch grass kids please!!

How ignorant and frankly insulting.

44% of families are only child families in UK. Projected to be 50% in a few years. So only children are not a rare species

I've looked at all the other factors too, this is just one of them as I hasn't thought about it before and wondered if other people had.

But don’t have any evidence on which to base your theory, do you? Yes, there’s a correlation between more single children and bad behaviour in schools, but everyone knows that correlation =/= causation.

Do better. And use your own words, not ChatGPT’s. It makes you look ridiculous and lazy.