Children not school ready

[Tom8]

And people ask why we send children to private schools. Still, a good dose of socialism and many more will have to mix with them and teachers will have even bigger classes to manage.

[Disastrous]

Quite a timely thread for me as we have 3.5 year old and more recently a 3 month old and are going through a lot of the ‘basic skills stuff’ with the boy.

I couldn’t tell you the last time he had an accident at home, though the nursery occasionally sends him home with a bag of dirty clothes. We think he’s slightly nervous of ‘the big toilet’ there, but can’t be sure - he is happy to standing up at home though, as of recently, so hoping that solves it. Obviously he can’t reach to wipe his arse yet but assume he’ll get to that as his arms grow.

Eating - pretty messy tbh. Uses cutlery but I wouldn’t hold him up as a perfect example of table manners just yet.

iPad - this is my biggest stress. Since our daughter arrived we’ve definitely used it to buy us a bit of time here and there. Last night a prime example - I got home from work and he was desperate for food, the wee one (who is suffering from terrible reflux) was SCREAMING and needed my wife. I had to make dinner so chucked him in front of Spidey for 20 mins so I could cook.

This thread makes me feel awful guilty for it though - honestly don’t know what else you can do. My parents are both retired teachers so I’m well aware but they live 4 hours away and are in their late 70’s and my wife’s are in Bavaria. We have no other family so if we ever want to have a meal or conversation together we sometimes rely on the iPad. I hate it, but feel like we do so much in-person parenting and try to keep it to a minimum but perhaps we are doing it wrong

[BikeBikeBIke]

Tom8 said:

And people ask why we send children to private schools. Still, a good dose of socialism and many more will have to mix with them and teachers will have even bigger classes to manage.

The class above my son has one of the problem kids and at least one child from that class has been moved to a private school as a result. (Her brother in a different class without serious problem kids has remained at the school.)

So that's one two form entry primary that has lost a head due to bad kids and one good pupil. I'm sure there will be other staff members and children who have left for the same reasons. I consider myself lucky we've had two pretty good classes. (But not perfect.)

[okgo]

I remember being chucked in front of parsley the lion 30 years ago.

I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s pretty normal for kids to watch a bit of this or that whether people like to admit it or not.

[BikeBikeBIke]

okgo said:

I remember being chucked in front of parsley the lion 30 years ago.

I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s pretty normal for kids to watch a bit of this or that whether people like to admit it or not.

+1

All kids spend a ton of time on their tablets these days and for the pre school kids tablets are great to learn vocab, numbers , alphabet etc. Even general knowledge.

As long as they're getting all the good parenting stuff and adventures outside as well it's probably more of a benefit that a hindrance.

The problem is the kids who do nothing but tablet, not the kids who spend the "gap time" on the tablet.

The one exception is manual dexterity. The hours my son spends on Minecraft, I would have spent on lego. It's essentially the same game but only one trains your fingers.

Edited by BikeBikeBIke on Thursday 29th February 09:38

[Leptons]

Disastrous said:

Quite a timely thread for me as we have 3.5 year old and more recently a 3 month old and are going through a lot of the ‘basic skills stuff’ with the boy.

I couldn’t tell you the last time he had an accident at home, though the nursery occasionally sends him home with a bag of dirty clothes. We think he’s slightly nervous of ‘the big toilet’ there, but can’t be sure - he is happy to standing up at home though, as of recently, so hoping that solves it. Obviously he can’t reach to wipe his arse yet but assume he’ll get to that as his arms grow.

Eating - pretty messy tbh. Uses cutlery but I wouldn’t hold him up as a perfect example of table manners just yet.

iPad - this is my biggest stress. Since our daughter arrived we’ve definitely used it to buy us a bit of time here and there. Last night a prime example - I got home from work and he was desperate for food, the wee one (who is suffering from terrible reflux) was SCREAMING and needed my wife. I had to make dinner so chucked him in front of Spidey for 20 mins so I could cook.

This thread makes me feel awful guilty for it though - honestly don’t know what else you can do. My parents are both retired teachers so I’m well aware but they live 4 hours away and are in their late 70’s and my wife’s are in Bavaria. We have no other family so if we ever want to have a meal or conversation together we sometimes rely on the iPad. I hate it, but feel like we do so much in-person parenting and try to keep it to a minimum but perhaps we are doing it wrong

I wouldn’t feel too guilty about it, with lives as busy as they are now you sometimes need a minute to get the basics done and there’ll always be some holier than thou tosser to tell you you’re doing it wrong.

As the father of a 3 year old (also have a teenager) I can well sympathise. You cannot compare entertaining an 18 month old with a 3 year old, they are two different beasts

The fact of the matter is that some Kids develop quicker than others as has always been the case. You look back over the last 40/50 years and before tablets/mobiles it was television or games consoles etc so most of the people blaming lazy parenting were probably brought up on it themselves. Not withstanding the fact that some of the tablet/tv stuff can be educational.

Its more likely to be the parents that are glued to their phones ignoring the kids that are the problem and they’ve existed in some form forever.

[Parsnip]

Disastrous said:

This thread makes me feel awful guilty for it though - honestly don’t know what else you can do. My parents are both retired teachers so I’m well aware but they live 4 hours away and are in their late 70’s and my wife’s are in Bavaria. We have no other family so if we ever want to have a meal or conversation together we sometimes rely on the iPad. I hate it, but feel like we do so much in-person parenting and try to keep it to a minimum but perhaps we are doing it wrong

The fact you are even having this dilemma in your head shows that you are not part of the problem.

Ignore the "We only ever eat dinner as a family, let our child play with wooden toys and have a strict no iPads rule" tossers. Parenting is challenging enough without listening to holier than thou Berkshires giving you grief - social media (including PH) is rife with people presenting this "look at how perfect we are, you are rubbish" persona.

Sometimes you need the easy option, sometimes you need a break, sometimes a bit of screen time is what is needed. Sometimes chicken nuggets and beans at 4.30 so you and your wife can have a nice dinner later is the answer. Nobody is perfect - those pretending they are - aren't.

There is a very strong whiff of "back in my day" emanating from this thread - rose tinted specs go a long way to altering perceptions.

[Talksteer]

wildoliver said:

A recent trip to France was quite shocking.

Kids were not using mobile phones. A small point but, at meal times they were engaging with parents, talking and growing brains. Out and about they were looking around and seeing things and learning. I didn't see one single "foreign" family stuck face down in the glowing light. The social skills of the kids were markedly different to English kids, not to mention behaviour. English families in comparison there was more phone use, less conversation, less positive communication (more shouting than anything else). For the most part everyone off phones looked happy too, no depressed kids wondering what woe what going to affect them due to social media.

I'm convinced it's a disease and it starts at an early age when parents choose the TV/phone/tablet over parenting, if a kids main stimulus is moving pictures on a screen then they aren't getting prepared for any life other than sat Infront of a screen watching moving pictures.

Side note I've moved social media off my personal phone as I saw in these people something I'd come to dislike about myself. I'm a lot happier now my phone is a phone again instead of a constant distraction from life. It's been hard work to break the cycle, social media addiction, could do with patches for it.

What would a French visitor see if they went to the UK, I'd suggest that a lot of places where you might go as a visitor to the UK would be engaging places where there is relatively little screen time.

A brief google suggests that French screen time is on average very similar to UK screen time.

[Talksteer]

105.4 said:

Would there be any correlation between a decrease in faith and an increase in certain social standards?

• when I state ‘faith’ I’m not talking about being devout, but having a certain set of traditional, moral standards and values?

If there is a constant it is that old people have been saying that for at least the last 3000 years.

On the whole what schools offer, monitor and care about has expanded massively since the 80's so I'd suggest a fair amount is just reporting.

I did some stats that toilet training is coming later in life, this is pretty much entirely down to nappies being so much better. My 3 year old boy can wee on a potty but chooses to wee in his pants or the shower or the bath and thus has no interest in potty training.

[Talksteer]

BikeBikeBIke said:

wildoliver said:

A English families in comparison there was more phone use, less conversation, less positive communication (more shouting than anything else).

I think this was true before phones. I was always struck by how friendly and polite French teenagers were.

French adults treat kids with respect and get respect back. I think in Britain, less so.

You mean like how famously teenagers are polite to their friends parents and rude to their own......

Also the French taught in schools will make an English person sound very polite when speaking in French the same is likely true in reverse.

France has plenty of examples of places with serious poverty and anti social problems, they are less unequal than the UK which reduces the amount of serious depravation but they do this with policies which the same group who thinks people are anti-social or struggling because of moral deficiencies actively oppose.

Ergo if there is a social problem the predominant PH opinion is probably responsible,

[Talksteer]

Murph7355 said:

Parenting is fking hard work. But it's fully the parents' responsibility.

It's people with those views who are fully 100% to blame for most social problems!

Parenting has never been 100% the parents responsibility, but what is happening is the unpaid parenting from grandparents, neighbors and civil society is being reduced (due to technology, working time and other social changes). The levels of supervision have increased as have expectations about how much structured activities children do.

People wonder why we are having fewer children, most likely because it involves a massive financial hit both in lost income but also in outgoings and at the same time we are building fewer houses you now need a bigger house but have to compete for it with a greater proportion of DINKs and rich boomers sitting on big houses.

It's pretty obvious that if we want to not have the economy implode/ massive immigration we will need to give far more help to parents. As a minimum free good quality childcare, no questions asked. If chavs want to use that to lounge around its far better that the kids are with professionals.

[BikeBikeBIke]

Talksteer said:

I did some stats that toilet training is coming later in life, this is pretty much entirely down to nappies being so much better.

This is a really good point.

My kids were very early potty trained because they were at nursery, and it was kind of expected and with the Nursery helping it was also convenient.

However in the days of wet wipes and decent disposable nappies the imperative to potty train is much less than if you're eternally washing and drying Terry's nappies.

Having said all that I'm not seeing reception kids wearing nappies often and the occasional one who does has seriously bad parenting, not just mildly lazy. I suspect the quantity of the problem is overstated. (But not the seriousness of the problem.)

[BikeBikeBIke]

Talksteer said:

It's pretty obvious that if we want to not have the economy implode/ massive immigration we will need to give far more help to parents.

We've already got massive immigration. We can't stop people coming in. The one thing we *can* do to reduce the insane exponential urbanisation is to stop breeding ourselves.

[BikeBikeBIke]

Talksteer said:

BikeBikeBIke said:

wildoliver said:

A English families in comparison there was more phone use, less conversation, less positive communication (more shouting than anything else).

I think this was true before phones. I was always struck by how friendly and polite French teenagers were.

French adults treat kids with respect and get respect back. I think in Britain, less so.

You mean like how famously teenagers are polite to their friends parents and rude to their own......

Also the French taught in schools will make an English person sound very polite when speaking in French the same is likely true in reverse.

France has plenty of examples of places with serious poverty and anti social problems, they are less unequal than the UK which reduces the amount of serious depravation but they do this with policies which the same group who thinks people are anti-social or struggling because of moral deficiencies actively oppose.

Ergo if there is a social problem the predominant PH opinion is probably responsible,

Much truth in all of that.