Please don't 'baby' your children

[pineapple95]

Where do I start?

Parents of my y3/4 class routinely carry their children's bags in, take their lunch bags to the hall, hand in letters and money, put their reading diaries and spelling books in the right places on the right days, linger in the corridor chatting ... for goodness sake MAKE YOUR CHILD LOOK AFTER THEIR STUFF!

7-9 year olds can carry bags and remember books. Don't baby them. Even 3 year olds can carry their bags - don't be that parent who mollycoddles their children.

I think the uk system of trying to teach 48m old kids to write is comp wrong. Many just can't do it. Causing frustration. Some just cannot push the pencil in the diagonal etc. Dd still does 1 letter backwards now but i think if she had started this year she would have done better from the start.
Reading you certainly can learn very young but
It is very unfair to those who get behind because they were ready. With the stupidly named 'ability groups', when in fact many are just a whole year older.
And is it beneficial to the good readers as because of the age they all go through it slowly, wasting their time.
However reading well young does give an advantage, they can be independently reading and learning new things.
The uk definitely relys too much on parents doing reading etc with kids. A 4yo should not be spending all day at school then having another 20min reading because it cant be done at school.

For some that will be well before school and for some that will be when they have been in school for many years.

This is not correct. Reading and writing should not be framed as skills to be acquired in isolation of other skills, nor in isolation from the expectation of the wider cultural context.

There are developmental milestones that are common to all human children in all cultures. Children who are developmentally normal all reach these milestones just by virtue of interacting with other, more experienced humans.

There are skills that are culture specific and need to be taught.

You are confusing the two, zzzzz, and extrapolating from one to the other.

No, that is not my point. Reread my post.

You didn’t understand it.

user - who says all children need formal instruction in order to learn to read and write? My children learned to read by interracting with me - a more experienced human who enjoyed reading them stories. I had to teach my ds1 formally how to roll over, crawl, transition from lying to sitting, sitting to standing, and walk, however, as no amount of learning by example, putting him on his tummy, leaving toys out of reach, taking him out and about to interract with nature, taking him to playgrounds, etc, appeared to work. I had to be taught how to teach him by a paediatric physiotherapist. I have had to teach him quite a lot of stuff that is supposed to come naturally to children in the normal course of development, so it always rankles a little bit when people talk about "normal" development, especially as, to look at him now, he appears to be quite normal, so you could hardly claim he has a serious learning disability. Thankfully, my second child did not have any of these issues and developed more "normally" ( although likewise had no need whatsoever for formal phonics instruction, or any other formal methods for learning to read). So I can see why zzzz is slightly annoyed by your comments, as you are refusing to acknowledge, and therefore assist the development of, a substantial group of children who do not follow your norms.

Reading to a child is part of formal reading instruction and, indeed, will often suffice for those children who are engaged and systematic. The risk with this approach is that it misses an opportunity to teach spelling, which in some languages is a significant disadvantage.

No child learns proper penmanship without rigorous instruction, however.

Any child who needs physiotherapist interventions to learn to sit/crawl/walk is not developmentally normal. My niece was like that: she is a very athletic teenager so there is no long term negative impact.

My children have exemplary spelling - some people have an ear for it and can pick up the phonics "rules" without deliberate instruction. It takes all sorts to make a world... and it was a godsend for my ds1's self-esteem that he could demonstrate his ability at something in Reception, whilst otherwise being left to flounder in some areas where he needed formal instruction, but children were expected to "pick it up as part of normal development." It also helped him socially that he was not solely identified as the physically incompetent, shy child.

Anything too rigid - like insisting all children start formal phonics instruction at 4, or insisting it is bad for them to be learning so young, is pretty unhelpful and harmful to someone. I find it particularly obnoxious that there is so much concern for the self-esteem of children who are late in learning to read, but apparently bugger all interest in the effects on self-esteem of children who are late physical developers. When it comes to social skills and confidence, I would say the naturally early physical developers are already at a significant advantage, without needing to rub it in the noses of the children who are developing "abnormally."

Ps no child learns how to shape a flint spear without formal instruction, either. Writing is a sophisticated fine motor skill, not an aberration. Some children are ready for it sooner than others, just as some are ready to learn to walk earlier than others, and some are ready to read earlier than others. I find the implication that reading and writing are somehow unnatural before a certain age, whereas pretty much anything else is "normal" is a tad odd, tbh.

“I find the implication that reading and writing are somehow unnatural before a certain age, whereas pretty much anything else is "normal" is a tad odd, tbh.”

You are missing the distinction between human development (that which is common to the whole species, across the world) and cultural skills.

Where do "normal" human skills end and "cultural" skills begin, then? Is hunting with sticks a normal skill, but using flint tools or guns a cultural one? Or eating with fingers a normal skill, but using implements a cultural one? Or grunting suggestively a normal skill, but complex speech a cultural one? Or drawing pictures a normal skill, but writing words a cultural one? Surely all of it is about communication and survival in the world around you, with the norm being that all humans have to learn to adapt as quickly as possible to the environment around them, which in most cases involves having to learn to read and write. Why claim writing and reading are different from other skills human beings acquire when there is virtually no human society left on the planet where reading and writing are not considered a normal human accomplishment within the grasp of pretty much all human beings?

You will find the answers to all your questions if you read some serious anthropology and psychology texts!

😂 zzzzz - you think other people are fluffy???!

Rather a lot more than you, as I have a PhD in it!

Child development is most definitely integral to it, yes.