Growing number of children 'don't know their own name' when starting school

[mrz]

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8668117/Growing-number-of-children-dont-know-their-own-name-when-starting-school.html

I didn't know my own name until I was seven. I had two very affectionate parents and we would count as middle class.

Thing is, everyone called me by a nick-name. I had no idea my real name was XXX.

Wonder whether the people busy claiming thousands of children don't know their own names would have included me in their stats?

(Actually I seriously wouldn't recommend what my parents did - finding out I wasn't who I'd thought I was was a huge shock and very upsetting. My Mother says 'Honestly, I'm sure we mentioned it' but I certainly hadn't retained the information.)

Hmm... I tend to think of school as teaching essential skills, but that anything fun or interesting has to be either taught by me/DP or subcontracted out (and paid for) by us.

BalloonSlayer, if you were in the US you would have had to pay for the compulsory immunisations or face the prospect of your child being excluded from school (school meaning kindergarten at age 5ish) and you would have to pay for any childcare or preschool up to that age. Now there are compulsory dental exams in some states.

Remus I tend to agree with you. Though I do think that swimming is an essential life skill.

Notenoughtime and Mrz I'm sorry to hear that you had PND. I had no intention to upset you and I have also suffered with it although not diagnosed, which is why I understand withdrawing and how difficult it can be sometimes to know how to talk to a baby, especially with a first. Clearly it is how the depression is managed, not just whether you have it and other aspects of parenting combined which will determine speech and language development in a healthy baby with no SEN/ hearing impairment.

Really?? The Telegraph has a tendency nowadays to exaggerate. What then does the parent call the child when they are being told off? (You know how people used to say, "the only person who ever used my full name was my mother when she was scolding me") Or to get their attention? Let's hope it's not a derogatory term. That said, I wonder how much of it is down to the parents using only nicknames when addressing the child.

When DS2 started school he - and all his friends with names of more than one syllable - renamed themselves so that it was easier to call out their names when they were playing football. Although we continued to call our sons by their "real" names, they would only answer to their "school" names.

thecaptaincrocfamily thank you for your concern but it was my ex colleague who suffered not I although I completely agree with what you are saying. The Telegraph report is too simplistic in "blaming" deprivation as the cause.

kipperandtiger IF they tell off their child they use the "Oi you" method or more colourful terms...

I believe it totally as a reception teacher for many years I have experience it first hand.

I believe it, not because I have (yet) experienced it directly but because given the family lives of some of the kids I teach I can easily see how it could arise. Yes, these are family lives I would have found hard to imagine had I stayed in my first career as middle management in a multinational company, and just came into contact with my own children and friends from families in my own area. However, though these lives are hard to imagine, it doesn't mean that they don't exist...

Very large families, born to very young women / girls from different fathers, living as extended multi-generational groups in which few if any of the adults are fully literate or have any kind of qualification, where older kids look after younger ones and where grandmothers look after the children of their daughters as if they were their own, where kids 'play out' in packs and fall asleep in whichever house and whichever bed they might find themselves near at midnight, and where if the kids are noticed at all as individuals it will be as a 'hey you' accompanied by a slap around the ear ... neither the Daily Mail nor the Telegraph has invented these families I can assure you ....

Isnt it the correlation between single motherhood and poverty/lack of education/poor housing/ill health etc?

But this isn't something (as the article appears to suggest) restricted to one section of society. It is just as likely to occur in a middle class two parent family

Really? I struggle to imagine a situation where a child from a middle class 2 parent family (or an ordinary working class family) is never referred to by name, never goes to playgroup or nursery, never plays with other children, never has a nanny or babysitter or grandparent who talks to them. It strikes me as being more of an effort to avoid using a child's name than to just use it.

I can just about see the situation arising in large, chaotic, neglectful families but cannot imagine it is widespread.

I'd struggle to imagine it in any but the most chaotic and neglectful homes.

.

I think most children know their name surely? I have only ever known one child who has not known her name but thet was only due to her mother calling her something else (by her 2nd name) sinse she was a few months old.

Dd2 has Autism and severe communcaition problems but knew her name when she started school (probably knew it from the age of 2), seems a bit odd that a child would not know their name by this age given the amount of times a parent would have called out their name, shouted at them ect..

IMHE the children I've encountered (real children) have been from busy 2 parent families.
A little girl dropped off half asleep at a day nursery where low paid unqualified staff spent more time chatting to each other or texting friends than doing their jobs (fortunately this place is now closed) and only after she arrived in school with huge behavioural issues did the parents discover she had been spending large parts of her day ignored on the "naughty step" A little boy whose parents were so wrapped up in the family business they only communicated by phone or email.

No one at the nursery ever used her name? How did they differentiate her from the other children? Sounds a little unlikely to me - if she had behavioural issues then maybe not responding to/knowing her name was due to an SEN. And the staff can't have all been unqualified.

It may sound unlikely to you Rita but as I was one of the people who had to pick up the pieces I can assure you child didn't know her own name.

swallowedAfly,

I apologise if you see me as steroetyping or group-bashing. I was trying to describe - without identifying details - a couple of families from my personal knowledge. I appreciate that this could have come across as a 'sterotypical' image, though I assure you that the families are real. Mrz has different personal knowledge, and she describes different families who I am sure are equally real. Both of us are just trying to say 'yes, it is true, though not common' to those on this thread who think it can never happen.

Ok.