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Is it time to tune into your toddler?

26 Aug 2007

After ten years spent working in private banking, followed by a career break to have two children, Liz, 36, decided to retrain as a primary-school teacher. Having spent all that time with male bankers, she thought she'd seen everything in the way of bad behaviour, yet her first year in the classroom has been, she says, 'absolutely shocking'.

In her nursery class of 30 three-and four-year-olds, most could not sit still, many had no idea what a knife and fork were for, some were not fully toilet-trained and many could, in her words, 'barely speak'.

"It wasn’t just the children from deprived backgrounds. This is a school in a fairly affluent area, yet they had obviously only ever eaten with their fingers," reports Liz. "There were parents bringing in four-year-olds who regularly wet themselves. I couldn’t believe it. By four years old, every child should be toilet-trained and know how to sit down for a meal; but, for whatever reason, these children don’t."

Yet the depressing reality is that Liz's disbelief is being replicated in many of Britain’s primary schools. In December, a group of professors of early education reported that children enter reception classrooms with poorly developed speech, attention deficit and minimal social skills, and that, consequently teachers now spend most of the first year teaching children these basics, rather than how to read and write.

Meanwhile, the UK's shocking last-place result in the recent UNICEF report on children’s wellbeing in 20 developed countries has revealed that many British parents don’t make time to talk to their children; and a family meal eaten together is rare.

All-day television, the demise of the family meal, and ever longer working hours have 'alarming implications' for behaviour in the first few years of primary school, says the Basic Skills Agency (BSA). Sue Palmer is the author of a booklet, published by BSA, that encourages parents to talk to their children in order to improve their behaviour and listening skills. Palmer confirms that 'in ten years as a travelling literacy specialist, I've talked to tens of thousands of primary teachers around the UK, and all over the country they've told me the same thing: children's speaking and listening skills seem to be deteriorating year on year."

A survey of UK head teachers by the National Literacy Trust found that 74 per cent agreed with this, and I CAN (the children’s communication charity) found that 89 per cent of nursery workers thought that children’s basic skills were deteriorating.

The fact is, our ever-faster, ever-more-convenient lifestyles are often achieved at the expense of the slow, one-on-one time that children really need.

It's ironic that all this is happening at a time when we take our parenting ever more seriously; but are all those baby-music classes and toddler-tennis sessions actually a way of avoiding the real demands of parenting? Do they come at an expense of 'talking time'?

"All the childhood innovations of the recent years have been about parents' convenience," explains Liz Attenborough, manager of Talk To Your Baby, a National Literacy Trust initiative. "Forward-facing buggies that fold easily may be convenient but they stop parents talking to infants when they’re out and about. Velcro-fastened shoes (instead of lace-ups) and pull-on nappies mean a child barely has to stop to be changed. When these things take longer, natural opportunities to talk occur, but they are gradually being whittled away."

Development psychologist Margaret Donaldson has meanwhile, issued the stark warning: "It could be that parents are talking less to their children than at any time in human history."

A friend revealed to me that her three-year-old falls asleep in front of a video every night. But she wasn't telling me this because she was worried or ashamed. She was simply explaining why his night-time routine was no trouble for her.

This would seem scandalous to our mother's generation, who read stories to their children every night. But to our generation, it's not that unusual. Recent figures from the National Literacy Trust reveal that at least 40 per cent of British under-fours have a television in their bedroom: this is the new normal. When Jamie Oliver opened our eyes to the school-dinners scandal, many of us wondered how the situation had become so dire without anyone saying anything. It's the same with social skills. Eventually someone is going to say: three-year-olds with their own TVs – this is crazy, isn't it? Liz Attenborough believes 'we need to be braver' about speaking out, to admit the consequences of the way we live with our children.

Recently a friend saw a small child ('no more than two years old') standing in front of her pushchair in a café watching cartoons on a DVD-player strapped into the seat of her buggy while her parents drank lattes next to her.

A new report has spelt out 15 health risks for children who watch excessive amounts of TV – which is deemed to be more than one hour a day for over-fives. The risks include premature puberty, attention deficit problems and obesity.

Child development specialist Dr Martin Ward-Platt of the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle says, "Anything that reduces exercise in young children, is, broadly speaking, not a good idea. Anything that allows calories to accumulate week after week means that a child could end up with a weight problem. Children need to be active as early as possible."

Julia, 30, is an experienced reception class teacher in a London school who believes that modern life is letting children down. "We get five-year-olds delivered to school in a buggy – their parents won’t let them walk. We held a one-and-a-half mile sponsored walk, and quite a few parents complained that it was too long. Some of the parents are merely overprotective – afraid to let their kids take any risks. But with others – if the kid demands to ride in a pram, the parents simply give in."

Meanwhile, new teacher Liz says, "I began to understand the priorities in some homes when, during a school trip, when we were building a den with the kids in the wood, a four-year-old boy complained, 'but I’ll get my trousers dirty.'"

Of course walking with a two-year-old means delay for the adult. Yet the hanging about, along with endless repetitive conversation (being just as excited with the 41 st duck you see in the park as the first) may well be the most important part of the parenting job.

Fiona Kemp, deputy head of the Robert Owen Early Years Centre in Greenwich, London, says, "When a child with speech and language problems is visited at home by a therapist, we often find the TV is on loudly all the time. When children have trouble eating, very often you will find they have never sat down round a table with the family to eat. It should be a nice peaceful time, not a rush hour."

A government minister recently suggested that schools could put plasma TV screens in the school dining-room to encourage school-dinner take-up. Thankfully, school food tsar Prue Leith objected, saying that children ought to be talking to each other over lunch. But the point of this story is that a politician came out with the idea and he wasn't dismissed as a lunatic, which just shows how acceptable this new 'normal' is.

Dummies are another example of how convenience has become paramount. Experts say that they shouldn't be used beyond the age of one because they inhibit speech, yet no one blinks at a four-year-old chewing on one. The dummy can calm a small baby, but should cease to be used, if possible, by 12 months.

However, change is in the air thanks to a series of new initiatives. A pioneering project called Stoke Speaks Out is on of many educational programmes under way nationwide. Speech therapist Janet Cooper organised the first comprehensive survey to measure the extent of speech delay among three-and four-year-old children in the Stoke area. Some 272 were tested with a number of verbal tasks, ranging from simple (such as, 'Make Teddy jump') to more complicated (such as, 'Put the longest red pencil in the box'). The size of the problem became apparent when not one of the children passed the test; and, out of a possible total score of 45, quite a few scored zero. "Some were incapable of communication," says Cooper. "They had no vocabulary at all."

Cooper is anxious that the Stoke Speaks Out project is not to be regarded as an exercise in branding parents as failures. Many parents have poor literacy themselves, but nevertheless want the best for their children.

Cooper has instituted a multi-agency solution, so now in Stoke there is support for children even before they are born. Anyone who has professional contact with pregnant women, babies and children (psychologists, police officers, midwives, health visitors) is part of a joint, consistent approach to make parents better informed about just how important it is that they talk and play with their children. For, despite all the parenting information we’re bombarded with, unhelpful myths are still rife.

For example, says Cooper, many people think that children say their first words at two, so there is no point talking to them before that. In fact, most babies say their first words at 12 months. People believe that babies can’t hear before six weeks, and so many parents don’t try to engage with them when they’re very small. And some people believe that too much attention will ‘spoil’ a baby.

The opposite is true. In her book Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain psychotherapist Dr Sue Gerhardt explains that cooing over newborns is vital cognitive fuel that activates the communicative part of babies’ brains, which is underdeveloped at birth. "Positive looks are the most vital stimulus to the growth of the social, emotionally intelligent brain," writes Gerhardt. Positive communication with an 'attuned' adult releases pleasure hormones in a baby, which helps the brain develop. Children can be given books to look at and hold from as young as six months.

The Stoke Speaks Out project is already seeing success, says Janet Cooper, with many parents being encouraged to talk with their children, to read them stories and to enjoy free, unstructured, quiet time where their children take the lead. "Many parents said, 'I've never thought about it before, but singing a nursery rhyme rather than switching on the TV has improved our relationship.'" Speech delay among children in the programme has dropped from 78 per cent to 58 per cent since the beginning of the project.

"The best toy your child can have is you," says Cooper. Not the educational interactive learning tools, the computer games, the karate club. Nothing is as important as hanging out together and talking to each other. It’s that simple.

(You Magazine, Mail On Sunday, 26 August 2007)