Do parents have low expectations?

[mrz]

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/12206787/Parents-low-expectations-condemning-toddlers-them-to-a-life-of-underachievement.html

There is lots of talk of deprivation and poorly educated parents but there can also be problems with highly educated parents who both work long hours to provide the family with the very best but the children are in sub optimal childcare.au pairs , overseas live in nannies who are off out meeting their mates leaving the kids in a corner in a push chair. I am not dashing all nannies just a few. Grandparents as child care has also been critised. Some grand parents although keen to lookafter their grandkids are not up to it health/fitness wise and against their better judgement link them in front of the TV for hours. Isolated families mean that if you don't have time to go to mujm and toddler groups its hard to know what's normal. You think your child is doing well and actually falling behind norms. Over protection and a desire to keep them babies fgorf as long as possible is also a problem

Would there not be a lot of children who are below average for no apparent reason without it being a problem whirlwindhugs? I'm not a playworker so I defer to your knowledge if that's not the case, but didn't think that being below average was necessarily in itself an issue.

Why is knowing the number of words the toddler ought to know crucial to their development (unless to spot SN)? I am sure I didn't keep a tally, and that my mother and grandmother didn't either: we just talked to our children because we enjoyed it. Between us, we have produced a fair number of academically high achieving children. You wouldn't have learned anything useful about our children's environment by asking how many words we thought they ought to know,

www.bestbeginnings.org.uk/talking-singing-playing-with-your-baby

Hmm, there's a coincidence - 'we produced a fair number of high achieving children' - and they were all related - goodness! couldn't it be because your were a brainy family!!
My brainiest child (academically) probably got the least of my time and attention, being the middle child.

Adults with low self esteem I would think have lower expectations of their DC.
Also the problems can often be parents with addiction problems, there is no easy or quick solution to that.

But I think all parents/adults should be taught some basics about what is best for your DCs. It wouldn't take long, a few evening classes maybe, then there's less excuse for those who can't be bothered, don't have the time, or don't care.
Just stuff like exercise out doors x times a week. Reading to or with them x times a week. Spending time with them with screens off. Feed them veg and fruit. Does that cover it?

Surely this kind of research was why they invested so heavily in Children's Centres over the last 10 yrs or so - before, of course, then reducing the funding so much they have nearly all shut down - and was the reason they introduced the Early Education Funding (as it is most recently called....NEF, or FEF in previous lives). It was all supposed to be to 'reduce the gap' between different children starting school, and to give those dc that weren't talked to / listened to / interacted with a year (or more) of Nursery before they started school. It's hardly a new revelation.

Interestingly neither CCs or EEF have had a significant impact.

Bloody Hell I knew I didn't like the Telegraph or Save the Children.

"47 per cent [of parents] believe their children ought to know about 100 words or fewer by the time they are two and a half. In reality an average child’s vocabulary would be six times that size by that stage in their development."

The HV actually TOLD me that 50 words at just over 2yo was fine. All of my kids were extremely below average talkers, it seems, at age 2.5yo. What was I supposed to do about it????? Someone should write a scientific article about my amazing children who then progressed to get L3s in their KS2 SATs.

Where's that BULLSHIT emoticon that the Archers fans thread intends to petition for??

As Harlot hinted, mathematics is clearly not a key area of interest for whoever wrote this report.

Because you don't need a mathematical vocabulary ...more/less big/little on, in, near, behind, in front etc children with poor language skills can struggle with accessing the whole curriculum

Assume you mean level 3 in KS1

Children's centres and preschool aren't the answer for the most deprived. The funding isn't there for supporting the actual causes. If you've got pnd, parenting classes at the local sure start aren't going to fix it. If you're a struggling teen mum who was dragged up yourself what helps is a few months in a residential setting for teen mums learning stuff most of us take for granted, not someone telling you to sing to your baby at a weekly session.

Yy mrsz

I'd love to see how that question about the number of words was asked. I'm not sure they've come anywhere close to showing that not knowing the number of words a child should have at 2.5=low expectations=children being held back. I'd bet even fewer parents have actually counted the vocabulary of their 2.5 year old.

YY to the question about averages. There's a huge difference between the 'average' and normal range of development in all areas at this age. Quite a lot of the below average children won't have any issue at all.

I'm not sure they are the answer for anyone.

Sod that, I'm just going to run him over with one of the trucks. I'll take Daniel too.

Damn, wrong thread. Just ignore that.

I think the important thing about developing language is the one-to-one interaction between child and adult, and it needs to be consistent and to a certain extent repetitious. I also feel it must be easier to talk and point out things when the child is in a pushchair facing you.

The point I'm getting at is that it's well known that a poor vocabulary and speech is a problem and can lead to children being behind their whole lives. And yet the acceptable average is set very wide so unless your childrens problems are really dire you get no more help than to be told that you need to read more/talk more with your child. And as long as your child manages to hobble along just above the minimum number of words, no matter how unclear your child is deemed typical and you are left to it.

If 20% of children are actually massively underperforming verbally the fact that so little is expected by the NHS/HV/SALT isn't exactly helpful is it? Or has the NHS got it right and actually it doesn't matter as much as Save the Children are saying?

I agree with you lljkk!

And rafa I have similar questions myself. Initially I underestimated how many words my DS had.

I think I had my bad science reporting head on rather than my education one when I read the BBC article this morning. My 1st thought was it was probably more to do with the people being asked not really knowing what a vocab of 100 words looked like in reality. I don't think it necessarily means that they wouldn't spot an issue in their own child. Is anyone actually still counting their child's vocab by the time it is 100 words?

I'm really not sure what Save the Children's point is supposed to be, but that might be the reporting. The acceptable range is wide, but that is the same for most areas of development in very young children. Think about walking. The average age children start to walk is about 13 months. The normal range of development is anywhere from 10-19 months. Walking at 19 months is later than average, but perfectly normal. And at 4/5 years it's unlikely that you would be able to tell which children walked at 10 months and which at 19 months.

The same will be true of speech. What would be useful to know is what at 2.5 years would indicate an issue that will need help rather than one that is just a sign of where their development is now and will rectify itself with age.

Save the children are talking about an average child having 600 words at 2.5, but anyone (like me) who has asked for help with their 2yo will have been told figures of 50 or 100 words being the minimum average. So I can absolutely forgive 47% of parents who were asked picking out that kind of number when asked about averages. It doesn't reflect how well their child actually speaks.

I know when I first asked the HV for help (DS was 2.5) she asked if he knew 50 words. Yes I guessed he did, but less than 100 I thought (again a guess). Over the next week we write down every word he said or we could remember him saying and it was more like 150. So much better than we thought.

The SALT was much more interested in the way he spoke than how clearly or how many words - but building up vocabulary was supposed to help. I felt a lot of the SALT intervention was really about looking for physical problems, like autism - which is fine but if, as StC are saying poor speech in children who are NT/noSN is a problem it seems like SALT should be discharging those children to direct non-medical support, not just deeming them within average and telling the parents their child is fine.

However in our case it hasn't actually made his speech any clearer and his vocabulary is still not that great even though we do and have always done everything we could to encourage him. I have two girls that speak extremely well.

I'll be honest, I do think it's unfair to blame parents for being uneducated and not stimulating their child correctly when it's very possible they have likely been reassured along the way by HCPs that their child is fine.

*wrote

mrz Wed 30-Mar-16 18:20:22

"Because you don't need a mathematical vocabulary ...more/less big/little on, in, near, behind, in front etc children with poor language skills can struggle with accessing the whole curriculum"

no, I meant because they don't seem to understand how an average works

Thing is those children probably are fine. Either this is being badly reported or Save the Children might have lost the plot slightly.

The trigger point for identifying children who may have a speech delay is different to the attainment of the 'average' child. It's perfectly reasonable for HVs to be using that as a yardstick to identify children that need help and to point that out to parents.

It would be very unreasonable for anyone to insist that all children with a vocabulary of less than 300 words at 2.5 needed intervention.

Vocab at school entry is a reliable indicator of how well a child will do in school. I think it's a bit less clear cut at 2.5. Purely because development isn't linear and happens in fits and spurts and often in different areas at the same time.

Yup, I agree Rafa! The report is very muddled.

DS is 4 now, and in many ways it's not noticeable that his speech has not been the best but he does still struggle to retain words and switch them around a lot. (he was muddling triangles and squares today for example) and I do wonder how he will get on at school. I hope it's not the case that he will always be behind but if he is it's not because we're crap parents that ne er bothered to read, sing or talk to him!