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

But What the, you were saying that giving your child would be poor parenting, but teaching them phonics was good parenting. Giving DS a snail was definitely NOT giving him phonics. You are making a false dichotomy - to 'give a child mud' or to 'teach them phonics'. The truly educational experience is to play with, and discuss, the mud together.

Agreed teacher X 100

The point is - mrz may help me here, she's more of the expert on phonics - is that there is no such thing as really 'reading by sight', unless we can only read a very small number of words, those we have been explicitly exposed to and taught.

'Learning to read by sight' is a limiting strategy - to read a word, we HAVE to have been shown and taught it before. There is no method, in 'reading by sight', to learn new unfamiliar words.

So even though those of us who were taught to read in the 'by sight' era may THINK we learned to read by sight, we ACTUALLY worked out the 'rules of reading' - phonics - from the words we were taught that way, and applied them to new words. That is how we read an unfamiliar word - if we genuinely only read by sight we would be unable to approach a truly unfamiliar word at all.

I know that EXPLICITLY from DS - because he was exposed to phonics so very shortly after teaching himself to read, the fact that he already knew the phonic rules could be directly tested. However i believe that research has shown that it is true of all 'read by sight' readers - and it is why explicitly teaching phonics is so much better as a strategy as it cuts out the necessity for the learner reader to work out the code.

I would like to see at what stage the division between the average happens. is it in the higher levels (after age 12-13 when math physics and chemistry) are beyond what the parents can teach.
is it at at 15-16 when some children might be more interested in a hands on type course (auto mechanics, carpentry etc.)
maybe then the information could be used in a meaningful way.

teacher what I said was that to give my dd, or my ds come to that, ONLY mud to play with would have been very poor parenting. I was responding to English's very extreme statement that Kids of 4 and 5 should be playing in the mud. Nothing else.. I fail to see how anybody could possibly think that a child, any child, of 4 or 5 playing only with mud every day, all day (which is exactly what English says is all they need) would be quite neglectful.

(I think DD is a weaker speller than DS, btw, because she was taught phonics mostly as a method for DEcoding. Her spelling has always been phonically regular but non-standard. DS has two 'points of reference' when spelling - phonics and also, in a large number of cases, a visual picture of 'what the word looks like', and that has helped him to select the correct phonic alternative. I believe DD could have been taught phonics-for-encoding better, but as both my children are teenagers now, I think that they were relatively early in the current phonics era and thus perhaps didn't get teaching that was as expert in this area as it might have been)

If they are going to improve life for these children then they also have to have the support services (mainly SALT) to deal with them....and they currently don't. I had to take my DD privately to have her to adenoids out as they were completely blocking the drainage from her ears, rendering her deaf. NHS refused to do it after a 6 month battle. The op made her hear again but she had no speech at all at 2. Again, another battle to get her into SALT followed by weekly battles to get regular SALT. Finally it took getting her assessed by a specialist centre in London to get her into a speech and language unit. A year later and she no longer needs an ECHP (another battle). Luckily I had the knowledge (education professional), the money, the tenacity and the time (SAHM) to get my DD what she needed. What chance do vunerable families have in navigating this maze?

WhatTheActualFugg, the course at sure start was for the children flagged for some speech difficulty. My ds was suggested to go by nursery. All the children had some minor/major problems already. But many decided not to turn up, which I really couldn't understand from parent's point of view.

And (off topic slightly) why us "read by sight" ers always have words that we mispronounce when we have learned them through reading them, not hearing them. We have applied our self taught phonics rules.
I mispronounced Hermione, segue, many more - because I encountered them first in print and applied my self taught phonics rules

Disagree Susan.

Phonics rules are frigging esoteric, to say the least in English.

So what you are doing with a word like Hermione, is incorrectly applying correctly learned phonics rules.

I hear you by the way, I was about 24 before I realised it was Herr me yone....

Sorry to digress - but what I did to the word 'automobile' at the age of c. 8 in front of my class still brings a blush to my cheeks...

I help run a toddler group.
There are many children of dd2s age 2.5-3) who can barely talk. And quite frequently they are the children of the mums who are constantly on their phone. Or the kids are always strapped in buggies with a biscuit or juice or phone to keep them quiet. I am often envious as I am run ragged by both DDS and they never fucking shut up, but I invest my time in my kids.
I live in a fairly poor area of a city, and I see these mums around and about and outside the school gate, so I'm not talking about just toddler group behaviour. Abd I'm also a supply teacher, and see their older kids. I find it very sad.

Surely that would be her my on ee?

Oh my goodness there are so many words I still have to stop and think about before saying them out loud! Because I've been mispronouncing them for do long inmy head.... And yes, the embarrassment

No, I totally thought Hermione was pronounced Her-mee-yone.

I read a lot and wasn't taught phonics... hence the stab in the dark pronunciation.

And incidentally I am a supply teacher, because when I was a permanent teacher -my own dd1 was that child in long days if childcare, then stuck in front of cbeebies or a tablet while I got on with marking and planning...

I so regret that 12-18 months of her life and swore not to repeat that neglect with subsequent children. But we had to move and downsize to be able to afford a SAHP. Not everyone can

Sorry I have re read my post and obviously that shouldn't be wasnt rather than was...

I agree with Susanand binky regarding mums and phones in front of their children. It might not be harmful but it certainly won't help speech development.
I was informed in a supermarket once by a chap who said my baby 'doesn't understand' so why am I talking to her! If this is an attitude then it isn't suprising some kids have issues.

I have no idea why, English, but Hermione is definitely Her my on ee. I used to work in a call centre years ago and Hermione popped up on my screen as Hermione said "Hello". I replied with "Can I speak to herm-ee-own.....

Kennington that is exactly my point!! I clearly didn't make it very well. From what I have seen, yes, British people have low expectations of young children.

They assume babies can't understand so don't talk to them, they assume toddlers can't understand numbers so don't count to them, they assume pre-schoolers aren't able to read so don't point out familiar letters.

If anyone commented on me being on my phone rather than talking to my child I think they'd have to have it removed from their arse under general anaesthetic. As a single parent I interact too fucking much with my child, thanks. Sometimes a half hour of FB on my phone saves my sanity.

EnglishFern - oh absolutely! MN or FB is a real sanity life line sometimes - but I'm talking about parents whos children are wailing or otherwise desperate for their mums attention - and mum is CONSTANTLY on the phone.
So eg dd2 at toddler group is happy playing with the sticklebricks. I get on FB and browse for a bit. She shows me her creation and I enthuse about it. She returns happily to her game, and I to FB.
The mums I am talking about will ignore interaction like this. Consistently. And in fact the children give up trying to get their attention... Or misbehave to get it.

If I'm on my phone in the company of my ds it's to find the combine harvester video he likes to watch. Or the one about how to make apple juice. Or how paper is recycled. Who knew you tube could be so educational?

Hermione is pronounced like that because it is derived from Greek.

Actually, I don't even mean derived. It is a Greek name, I think.