The invention of smartphones and tablets has devastated early childhood development.
bureaucrat_chaos on
Economically deprived areas that don’t have access to good childcare and early years education has been an issue for years and isn’t really addressed. We’ve done well at expanding the access to free childcare, but when places run out and some existing places aren’t of good quality, it’s another crisis that needs solving.
bahumat42 on
Yeah you should all have experience of Englands largest town.
It is foundational knowledge.
NGeoTeacher on
Children absorb knowledge at breakneck speed. If you go into a reception class at the beginning of the year compared to the end of it, the progress children have made is phenomenal.
The issue then is that if you fall behind, it’s extremely hard to catch back up. New learning requires pre-requisite learning, so if a child hasn’t fully grasped those pre-requisites, they’re going to find it really hard to access the new learning. That compounds throughout life.
Primary schools have more (but not unlimited) tools at their disposal to help children catch up, but if children haven’t reached a baseline level of knowledge and skills, they’re going to be lost in secondary where they’re required to be more independent. This is what lots of secondary schools are seeing – increased numbers of children arriving in year 7 without sufficient numeracy and English skills.
condosovarios on
As someone who has gone through fertility treatment for years this breaks my heart. I dream about being able to read to my children.
Spamgrenade on
Parents who need to be warned about this are not going to listen.
BeardMonk1 on
Smartphones and technology is partially to blame but we don’t talk enough about the fact that our society does everything possible to destroy and dismantle the family unit. Parents are not allowed to parent. Your forces back to work as soon a possible, young children put into pre-school nurseries and day care because their parents need to go back to work to pay the bills. We don’t seem to value the benefit a child gets in normal circumstances by being brought up by their parents.
I also think that many of the issue we are seeing kids and young adults develop is because they didn’t experience that family unit growing up. Look at the set up in many of the Scandinavian countries with the levels of leave given to the father as well as the mother and that countries lower levels of mental illness in children and teenage in that country.
Invest in families so families have the space and ability to carry out the essential task of raising their own children
brigids_fire on
Its insane that almost 50% of kids are starting school without being read to. We’ve been reading to our baby since he was born, and hes only 12 weeks. This past week he’s started really engaging with the books. He was already trying to hold them, but now hes started lifting the flaps on the flap books. Yesterday, he told his dad off for not turning the pages quickly enough. It makes me sad to think so many people are missing out on this.
I know books can be expensive, but just go to local charity shops. Yesterday, we hit 5 in a row. One was doing a deal of 4 for 1 pound and the others had loads of childrens books for 1 quid. Almost all look brand new.
LateFlorey on
As a mum of two little ones, this breaks my heart as I absolutely love reading stories with them.
My 3 year old was asked at preschool what is favourite thing about me to put in his Mother’s Day card, he said “I love my mummy reading me stories” and my 1 year old “reads” stories by mimicking the rhythm of Tabby Mctat.
I know there’s probably a lot of social economics that will play a part of this but libraries are free and often have things on for children and should be encouraged more. Children should have access to books and parents should be reading to them from early on.
It’s a hard cycle to break though as these children won’t enjoy reading themselves, so won’t pass that onto their children when they are older.
terrorsquid on
Sorry, but there’s no excuse for this! We’ve read to our three year old daughter every night before bed. This is just shitty parenting!
RoyalJacko on
Some children are not even toilet trained and are on tablets 24/7 on top of being behind peers; it comes to a point where the state can’t do everything and parents need to start looking at themselves.
Walton_paul on
It is a shame that many Parents and their offspring are losing out by the digital parenting.
West-Ad-1532 on
Ah, well, most Brits end up at the level of a 9-year-old anyway.
PhilosopherSea217 on
How do you have a kid then not put the minimum effort in like reading to them? Why bother having a kid?
SoggyWotsits on
Frustratingly, deprivation is often blamed for things like this, but books cost next to nothing, and are free from libraries. We probably all know someone whose children have iPads, but very few books.
Being read to before bed was a highlight for me. As was going to the library to get some new books. There seems to have been a massive shift in what parents think is their job, and the state’s job though. That includes things like learning to eat with cutlery, and toilet training.
BuckfastAndHairballs on
How many parents actually read books themselves though? If that’s not a part of their life then they probably won’t think it’s a necessity to read with their child
readbooksmore on
My Goddaughters are definitely iPad kids and it drives me mental. I buy them books and playsets and colouring books for every birthday and Christmas and their tablets are not allowed when they come to visit my house. The eldest is seven and by the time I was her age, I’d already read all of Roald Dahl’s books and was making my way through Jacqueline Wilson, Cathy Cassidy and the Chronicles of Narnia. I would imagine they couldn’t tell me a favourite book if I asked them.
tb5841 on
Obviously. If you start school not knowing any letters and others start school able to read, that gap is never going to close.
Dapper_Otters on
So, blame arguments aside, how do we improve this at the macro level?
plawwell on
Most parents are pretty terrible parents who don’t do right by their children. A parent who lets a typical kid start school without being able to read is not parenting.
FornyHucker22 on
I mean obviously. Failed as parents set their kids up for as much too
Pixelnaut on
Are children not held back a year any more? I don’t mean in a punitive way but if they can’t keep up/catch up and aren’t ready for the next year can they not be kept back?
TheL0wKing on
I always have mixed feelings about these kinds of articles because they tend to blend several different statistics and problems into one, despite the fact they have different causes.
So firstly you have the statistic quoted in the article that 1 in 4 teachers report children trying to swipe physical books. That sounds bad but actually has nothing to do with literacy; you can read on a kindle, tablet or phone these days, often more conveniently than physical books. Its a raises a potental issue in the rise of technology but doesn’t say anything about reading experience.
Secondly you have the statistic about 50% of children not having been read to. Again, this sounds scary, but that isnt a new problem and it often is tied to poverty and the literacy of parents than anything else. Parents who don’t read much, whether due to interest, time or ability, are unlikely to read much to their children. It is entirely possible that those parents are doing other things with their children instead and has no direct link to technology, a family that plays board games every evening would also fall into this catagory.
Thirdly, you have that only 1 in 3 young people read in their spare time regularly. This is the biggest decrease of all the statistics, and the most related to technology. However, this is not inherently a bad thing, the modern world simply has more things to do, so of course if you pick one activity less people are going to be doing that one thing. That doesn’t mean they CAN’T read, just that they don’t do it regularly for fun. Plenty of things other than reading can be intellectually stimulating, I doubt we would criticise someone for doing Sudoku in their spare time rather than reading.
Finally you have the statistic that isnt quoted in the article, which is overall literacy. The reason this isnt often used is that the UK literacy rate is one of the best in the world (and west), with a minor decrease amoung adults but generally improving. It is definitely something we can develop and improve further but it is most definitely not a crisis. It really highlights that articles like these are not about literacy, they are about “traditional reading” and more general issues with the impact of technology on society.
MeckityM00 on
Electronics aren’t the problem. I went to school in the 1970s and 1980s, and there were plenty of kids who didn’t see a book at home, and didn’t have parents who would spell out names or count with them. And, yes, they started out with a disadvantage.
Plus my primary school education was the experimental stuff so most kids didn’t learn basic reading skills until they were nine or ten and I have *never* had a proper grammar lesson. Fortunately my parents and grandparents taught me to read and count with some basic sums. Otherwise I would have been way behind by the time we reached secondary school. I’ve never caught up with maths beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Back in those days, the equivalent of leaving kids on electronics was ‘don’t bother me now. Go outside and play. Come back for dinner.’ Or, ‘go play in your room, I’m busy.’ There wasn’t a fraction of the children’s books then as there are now, and books were much harder to buy, especially if you didn’t live in a big city.
There were probably a lot of preventable accidents, and not all kids were in idyllic suburbs with woods to hang out in. All kids were warned about ‘Bad Men’ but ignored a lot of the warnings.
Electronics and social media *are* a potential problem in the way that they can affect attention span, allow online bullying, and encourage some harmful mindsets. It can foster passive behaviour.
Still, at least my son is great tech support for his poor old mum.
Neonexe on
I thought that they meant we should be teaching them to read at home.
But many kids aren’t being read to at all?? That’s tragic, to be honest.
Astriania on
Those parents would be really concerned if they could read the article
Choice-Boat-1051 on
Well the world has completely changed in the past 50 years. It used to be that one parent was dedicated to taking care of the home and the children. Today both parents have to work to make ends meet and they are both constantly on the verge of burn out, with not enough energy left for attending to their kids.
R400TVR on
Well, they are. Just the same as those poor children sent to school still in nappies as the parents haven’t bothered toilet training then.
Teaching your child to read and write should be a priority at home. It’s a great way to spend time and interact with your child. The levels of literacy and grammar in the UK are falling disgracefully.
gborato on
We need people to flip burgers and others to push buttons to get coffee.
The other kids can be the one creating and controlling AI bots.
Running-With-Cakes on
You have to be a pretty lazy dead beat parent to have a kid starting school unable to read. How they heck are they going to know how many minutes to microwave the pop tarts for if they can’t read the instructions?
Hour_Surprise_729 on
What counts as reading expiriance, knowing the letters, their sounds and other Sesame street level stuff, or reading novelettes? this is either reasonable expetations or forced helicopter parenting dystopia (they wonder why nobody wantsa have kids)
speedyspeedys on
It’s easy to blame tech but there’s nothing really stopping a parent from setting up their phone/tablet to only allow educational content.
Kids only know about games because that’s what parents choose to give them.
kank84 on
If those parents could read they’d be very upset by this
Ok-Trainer3150 on
So parents bring them to school doing the job that the education system is supposed to do?
impablomations on
A friend of my parents teaches primary school. She says there’s more kids starting school that aren’t properly toilet trained, don’t know how to use a knife & work or other simple life skills they should already know.
_Ghost_07 on
Maybe parents should actually parent their children?
DCorsoLCF on
Do children normally learn to read before primary school? Google says 5-7 is the normal age when they learn. I started primary school age 4, and remember learning various words.
I’d be surprised if I’d done much before that.
Edit: The article is about being read to by parents.
Chunk3yM0nkey on
News @ 10 – children with lazy parents struggle in school.
btredcup on
We have experienced the opposite of this. My son started school knowing how to read and knew the alphabet. He was neglected in favour of the other children who were behind. The school refused to give him a harder reading book so he was very bored. Unfortunately this resulted in him misbehaving. When we addressed this with the school, they said they can’t give him anything else to do and he needs to do what’s been given to him (even though it’s several reading levels below).
I’m not one of those parents who excuses misbehaving but I think there should be accountability with both parties. He needs to learn to behave but the school need to recognise that boredom can cause misbehaving. Basically it seemed the school only cared if they are bang on average or behind.
RevStickleback on
People blame tech, but it’s no different to parents who just sit their kids in front of the TV.
20 years ago, a friend of mine had a girlfriend who had two terrible kids. She didn’t bother to teach them to read or write because, in her exact words “that’s what school’s for”.
The schoolwork was understandably poor, and their behaviour was atrocious, because they were just allowed to run wild, doing whatever they wanted. Her attitude was “they’re just being kids”, oblivious to how bad they were. I actually liked her as a person, but she was a terrible parent.
It’s like how you hear of kids arriving at infant school who are still wearing nappies. There are parents who either can’t be bothered to train their children, or somehow just don’t grasp how important it is to do so.
Silver-Appointment77 on
My grandson went to school with a basic knowledge of letters, but couldnt say anthing clearly, but that was because we never realised he couldnt hear properly. He had gromits put in, and his hearing went back almost straight away. But it was his speech that was terrible.
Luckily reception was great and did speech therapy with him, and I just read to him more. So not all of children not being able to read isnt through Lazy parents. Some have problens which hasnt been picked up.
Otherwise-Clue-1997 on
Call me lazy but watching everything subtitled helps.
Ohh and for me an my kids manga comics and webtoons/comics and anime subbed turned our reading development up soo quickly from about 3years old onwards. They get older you introduce em to novels find that one genre that hooks em an your set.
Worked for me amd worked for my kids too.
Ohhh and playing adventure/platforming games too like crash spyro mario ratchet and clank jak an daxter and sly coopers an oddworlds too.
I dunno if that lazy parenting.on.my.part and my parents part with me but soo far none of us have been academically slowed down.
DaysyFields on
When I started school, my mum was scolded for having taught me to read.
frappefanatic on
I thought the point of school was to teach children?
atmoscentric on
These children don’t know any better, they’ve probably never seen a book. The emphasis should be on their parents, they truly are second class citizens in failing their children.
Wobblycogs on
Maybe it’s a little controversial, but all the kids end up being second-class citizens. The kids with parents who are engaged with their learning end up borded out of their minds waiting for the other kids to catch up.
JBSven on
Parents need to be held way more accountable for teaching their own children basics.
47 Comments
The invention of smartphones and tablets has devastated early childhood development.
Economically deprived areas that don’t have access to good childcare and early years education has been an issue for years and isn’t really addressed. We’ve done well at expanding the access to free childcare, but when places run out and some existing places aren’t of good quality, it’s another crisis that needs solving.
Yeah you should all have experience of Englands largest town.
It is foundational knowledge.
Children absorb knowledge at breakneck speed. If you go into a reception class at the beginning of the year compared to the end of it, the progress children have made is phenomenal.
The issue then is that if you fall behind, it’s extremely hard to catch back up. New learning requires pre-requisite learning, so if a child hasn’t fully grasped those pre-requisites, they’re going to find it really hard to access the new learning. That compounds throughout life.
Primary schools have more (but not unlimited) tools at their disposal to help children catch up, but if children haven’t reached a baseline level of knowledge and skills, they’re going to be lost in secondary where they’re required to be more independent. This is what lots of secondary schools are seeing – increased numbers of children arriving in year 7 without sufficient numeracy and English skills.
As someone who has gone through fertility treatment for years this breaks my heart. I dream about being able to read to my children.
Parents who need to be warned about this are not going to listen.
Smartphones and technology is partially to blame but we don’t talk enough about the fact that our society does everything possible to destroy and dismantle the family unit. Parents are not allowed to parent. Your forces back to work as soon a possible, young children put into pre-school nurseries and day care because their parents need to go back to work to pay the bills. We don’t seem to value the benefit a child gets in normal circumstances by being brought up by their parents.
I also think that many of the issue we are seeing kids and young adults develop is because they didn’t experience that family unit growing up. Look at the set up in many of the Scandinavian countries with the levels of leave given to the father as well as the mother and that countries lower levels of mental illness in children and teenage in that country.
Invest in families so families have the space and ability to carry out the essential task of raising their own children
Its insane that almost 50% of kids are starting school without being read to. We’ve been reading to our baby since he was born, and hes only 12 weeks. This past week he’s started really engaging with the books. He was already trying to hold them, but now hes started lifting the flaps on the flap books. Yesterday, he told his dad off for not turning the pages quickly enough. It makes me sad to think so many people are missing out on this.
I know books can be expensive, but just go to local charity shops. Yesterday, we hit 5 in a row. One was doing a deal of 4 for 1 pound and the others had loads of childrens books for 1 quid. Almost all look brand new.
As a mum of two little ones, this breaks my heart as I absolutely love reading stories with them.
My 3 year old was asked at preschool what is favourite thing about me to put in his Mother’s Day card, he said “I love my mummy reading me stories” and my 1 year old “reads” stories by mimicking the rhythm of Tabby Mctat.
I know there’s probably a lot of social economics that will play a part of this but libraries are free and often have things on for children and should be encouraged more. Children should have access to books and parents should be reading to them from early on.
It’s a hard cycle to break though as these children won’t enjoy reading themselves, so won’t pass that onto their children when they are older.
Sorry, but there’s no excuse for this! We’ve read to our three year old daughter every night before bed. This is just shitty parenting!
Some children are not even toilet trained and are on tablets 24/7 on top of being behind peers; it comes to a point where the state can’t do everything and parents need to start looking at themselves.
It is a shame that many Parents and their offspring are losing out by the digital parenting.
Ah, well, most Brits end up at the level of a 9-year-old anyway.
How do you have a kid then not put the minimum effort in like reading to them? Why bother having a kid?
Frustratingly, deprivation is often blamed for things like this, but books cost next to nothing, and are free from libraries. We probably all know someone whose children have iPads, but very few books.
Being read to before bed was a highlight for me. As was going to the library to get some new books. There seems to have been a massive shift in what parents think is their job, and the state’s job though. That includes things like learning to eat with cutlery, and toilet training.
How many parents actually read books themselves though? If that’s not a part of their life then they probably won’t think it’s a necessity to read with their child
My Goddaughters are definitely iPad kids and it drives me mental. I buy them books and playsets and colouring books for every birthday and Christmas and their tablets are not allowed when they come to visit my house. The eldest is seven and by the time I was her age, I’d already read all of Roald Dahl’s books and was making my way through Jacqueline Wilson, Cathy Cassidy and the Chronicles of Narnia. I would imagine they couldn’t tell me a favourite book if I asked them.
Obviously. If you start school not knowing any letters and others start school able to read, that gap is never going to close.
So, blame arguments aside, how do we improve this at the macro level?
Most parents are pretty terrible parents who don’t do right by their children. A parent who lets a typical kid start school without being able to read is not parenting.
I mean obviously. Failed as parents set their kids up for as much too
Are children not held back a year any more? I don’t mean in a punitive way but if they can’t keep up/catch up and aren’t ready for the next year can they not be kept back?
I always have mixed feelings about these kinds of articles because they tend to blend several different statistics and problems into one, despite the fact they have different causes.
So firstly you have the statistic quoted in the article that 1 in 4 teachers report children trying to swipe physical books. That sounds bad but actually has nothing to do with literacy; you can read on a kindle, tablet or phone these days, often more conveniently than physical books. Its a raises a potental issue in the rise of technology but doesn’t say anything about reading experience.
Secondly you have the statistic about 50% of children not having been read to. Again, this sounds scary, but that isnt a new problem and it often is tied to poverty and the literacy of parents than anything else. Parents who don’t read much, whether due to interest, time or ability, are unlikely to read much to their children. It is entirely possible that those parents are doing other things with their children instead and has no direct link to technology, a family that plays board games every evening would also fall into this catagory.
Thirdly, you have that only 1 in 3 young people read in their spare time regularly. This is the biggest decrease of all the statistics, and the most related to technology. However, this is not inherently a bad thing, the modern world simply has more things to do, so of course if you pick one activity less people are going to be doing that one thing. That doesn’t mean they CAN’T read, just that they don’t do it regularly for fun. Plenty of things other than reading can be intellectually stimulating, I doubt we would criticise someone for doing Sudoku in their spare time rather than reading.
Finally you have the statistic that isnt quoted in the article, which is overall literacy. The reason this isnt often used is that the UK literacy rate is one of the best in the world (and west), with a minor decrease amoung adults but generally improving. It is definitely something we can develop and improve further but it is most definitely not a crisis. It really highlights that articles like these are not about literacy, they are about “traditional reading” and more general issues with the impact of technology on society.
Electronics aren’t the problem. I went to school in the 1970s and 1980s, and there were plenty of kids who didn’t see a book at home, and didn’t have parents who would spell out names or count with them. And, yes, they started out with a disadvantage.
Plus my primary school education was the experimental stuff so most kids didn’t learn basic reading skills until they were nine or ten and I have *never* had a proper grammar lesson. Fortunately my parents and grandparents taught me to read and count with some basic sums. Otherwise I would have been way behind by the time we reached secondary school. I’ve never caught up with maths beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Back in those days, the equivalent of leaving kids on electronics was ‘don’t bother me now. Go outside and play. Come back for dinner.’ Or, ‘go play in your room, I’m busy.’ There wasn’t a fraction of the children’s books then as there are now, and books were much harder to buy, especially if you didn’t live in a big city.
There were probably a lot of preventable accidents, and not all kids were in idyllic suburbs with woods to hang out in. All kids were warned about ‘Bad Men’ but ignored a lot of the warnings.
Electronics and social media *are* a potential problem in the way that they can affect attention span, allow online bullying, and encourage some harmful mindsets. It can foster passive behaviour.
Still, at least my son is great tech support for his poor old mum.
I thought that they meant we should be teaching them to read at home.
But many kids aren’t being read to at all?? That’s tragic, to be honest.
Those parents would be really concerned if they could read the article
Well the world has completely changed in the past 50 years. It used to be that one parent was dedicated to taking care of the home and the children. Today both parents have to work to make ends meet and they are both constantly on the verge of burn out, with not enough energy left for attending to their kids.
Well, they are. Just the same as those poor children sent to school still in nappies as the parents haven’t bothered toilet training then.
Teaching your child to read and write should be a priority at home. It’s a great way to spend time and interact with your child. The levels of literacy and grammar in the UK are falling disgracefully.
We need people to flip burgers and others to push buttons to get coffee.
The other kids can be the one creating and controlling AI bots.
You have to be a pretty lazy dead beat parent to have a kid starting school unable to read. How they heck are they going to know how many minutes to microwave the pop tarts for if they can’t read the instructions?
What counts as reading expiriance, knowing the letters, their sounds and other Sesame street level stuff, or reading novelettes? this is either reasonable expetations or forced helicopter parenting dystopia (they wonder why nobody wantsa have kids)
It’s easy to blame tech but there’s nothing really stopping a parent from setting up their phone/tablet to only allow educational content.
Kids only know about games because that’s what parents choose to give them.
If those parents could read they’d be very upset by this
So parents bring them to school doing the job that the education system is supposed to do?
A friend of my parents teaches primary school. She says there’s more kids starting school that aren’t properly toilet trained, don’t know how to use a knife & work or other simple life skills they should already know.
Maybe parents should actually parent their children?
Do children normally learn to read before primary school? Google says 5-7 is the normal age when they learn. I started primary school age 4, and remember learning various words.
I’d be surprised if I’d done much before that.
Edit: The article is about being read to by parents.
News @ 10 – children with lazy parents struggle in school.
We have experienced the opposite of this. My son started school knowing how to read and knew the alphabet. He was neglected in favour of the other children who were behind. The school refused to give him a harder reading book so he was very bored. Unfortunately this resulted in him misbehaving. When we addressed this with the school, they said they can’t give him anything else to do and he needs to do what’s been given to him (even though it’s several reading levels below).
I’m not one of those parents who excuses misbehaving but I think there should be accountability with both parties. He needs to learn to behave but the school need to recognise that boredom can cause misbehaving. Basically it seemed the school only cared if they are bang on average or behind.
People blame tech, but it’s no different to parents who just sit their kids in front of the TV.
20 years ago, a friend of mine had a girlfriend who had two terrible kids. She didn’t bother to teach them to read or write because, in her exact words “that’s what school’s for”.
The schoolwork was understandably poor, and their behaviour was atrocious, because they were just allowed to run wild, doing whatever they wanted. Her attitude was “they’re just being kids”, oblivious to how bad they were. I actually liked her as a person, but she was a terrible parent.
It’s like how you hear of kids arriving at infant school who are still wearing nappies. There are parents who either can’t be bothered to train their children, or somehow just don’t grasp how important it is to do so.
My grandson went to school with a basic knowledge of letters, but couldnt say anthing clearly, but that was because we never realised he couldnt hear properly. He had gromits put in, and his hearing went back almost straight away. But it was his speech that was terrible.
Luckily reception was great and did speech therapy with him, and I just read to him more. So not all of children not being able to read isnt through Lazy parents. Some have problens which hasnt been picked up.
Call me lazy but watching everything subtitled helps.
Ohh and for me an my kids manga comics and webtoons/comics and anime subbed turned our reading development up soo quickly from about 3years old onwards. They get older you introduce em to novels find that one genre that hooks em an your set.
Worked for me amd worked for my kids too.
Ohhh and playing adventure/platforming games too like crash spyro mario ratchet and clank jak an daxter and sly coopers an oddworlds too.
I dunno if that lazy parenting.on.my.part and my parents part with me but soo far none of us have been academically slowed down.
When I started school, my mum was scolded for having taught me to read.
I thought the point of school was to teach children?
These children don’t know any better, they’ve probably never seen a book. The emphasis should be on their parents, they truly are second class citizens in failing their children.
Maybe it’s a little controversial, but all the kids end up being second-class citizens. The kids with parents who are engaged with their learning end up borded out of their minds waiting for the other kids to catch up.
Parents need to be held way more accountable for teaching their own children basics.