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Symptoms of a sick planet.
Some parents must be right chatterboxes. Assuming they talk to their child for 16 hours a day they would be spouting 34 words per second, every second, to get to 50m in 4 years. Assuming m is million.
34x60x60x16x365=2.8 billion
So i think you are incorrect
I get 34,246 words per day
Which is 2853 an hour for 12 hours
which is about 48 a minute
Given that talking at 150 words per minute is apparently fairly normal that would work with them being spoken to a third of the time for 12 hours per day
Note it says addressed to child not spoken by parent
Three years ago I employed an 18 year old woman who had her issues but was very well intentioned and desperate to break away from her families usual behaviour of living on benefits.
She spoke with a very strong American accent despite 2 Scottish parents and never having left Perthshire.
She said she'd been home schooled until she was 11 and the schooling was to watch American TV all day every day.
Unfortunately she left us for another job which was definitely going to make her rich but inevitably turned into a zero hours pyramid scam.
Anyway, Reform have got education all worked out. Apparently everything can be fixed by having the Union Flag in every classroom and making the kids sing the National anthem every morning 🙄
My son is 9. I have looked after him full time since he was born. We have talked a lot. His development has slowed down significantly since he started school.
At his inquisitive peak of 4, he asked while on a visit to the UK if there were a lot of wolves in the country. I explained why there weren’t and asked what had made him ask the question. “Because all the houses are made of bricks.”
shcool just seems to wear him out. I’m pleased that it doesn’t completely piss him off that he doesn’t have any major issues.
not really sure what my point is is, but there are some wild children in his school. Interestingly, it is a pretty homogeneous school in a pretty homogeneous area. Most the children live within a 20 minute walk of the school, the only children coming from further away are the rich kids from up the hill, but there is still a wide range of abilities and behaviours amongst the pupils.
I’m dreading him entering middle school with all the children from even further down the hill!
I don’t know if my kids are typical but my 15 year old daughter is a lot more switched on in terms of current affairs around the world than I was at that age. I think the internet has opened up a lot of information (good and bad I know) compared to what I had in the 70s. Reading the back of a cereal box while eating breakfast and John Cravens newsround was all I got. She would run rings around a 15 year old me in terms of general knowledge.
My 10 year old is also way ahead of me at his age. It’s mostly numbers and football facts but he is streets ahead of a 10 year old me.
I’ve also noticed a better attitude to alcohol in teenagers. Sure they will experiment but they are much more health conscious than kids were in the 70s when it comes to drinking and smoking/vaping.
When I was doing a PGCE a name that stuck in my head was Brownlow who noted something the Guardian article misses. Kids who do really well don't just have the language skills related to their social class they master a whole lot of "registers" and can operate well in any class, equallly at ease with the sheet metal beater and the CEO. Expose your kids to people using different registers and they will develop fit-in anywhere skills. Send your kid to Eton and OXford and they'll fail to communicate effectively with most of the population as the UK's current crop of politicians demonstrate. However, do athletics with the kids from the social housing, play in a band with cultured kids, ski with the professional classes, go to a state school but some how get into an elite university that takes from every social background, do Erasmus, collect languages
I've got 5.5yr old twins just going into the second year, they were 4 when they started and never had any issues going to the toilet, they'd been using knives and forks for a while before as well, main issue was one of them being so bloody strongminded but thats calmed now, they went direct from nursery so the cuddly nature of the nursery staff to the stricter teaching staff was a bit of a shock but it sorted itself within a term. They are at a Welsh school and fully dual-lingual, the School is 100% Welsh speaking
Me and their mam split when they were 18 months old so for 99.9% of that time its always been 1:2 ratio which makes things tricky as there's no tapping in/out once your frustrations at its max.
I've never had a TV, they don't have tablets or ever watch my phone, In the last month I've succumbed to a cheapo amazon projector but I bought that for movie nights, they watch a film before bed once a week at mine, nothing more and it's a nice family activity.
To the OP, most of their friends of the same age seem ok kids tbh, one has been diagnosed with ADHD which just seems a bit weird at 4.
To my mind its the screens, I was sat in a restaurant with mine the other week, it can be trying when both are starving hungry and there's no crayons and the foods taking ages but the Mum and Grandmother next to us had a 2 and 7 year old on screens for the entire meal, throughout the whole thing they barely spoke to them and just chatted away like they werent there, the 2 year old just watching a phone on its side the whole time, just made me feel really grim, I'm no Dad fantastic (I'm a nightmare for quickly glancing at the scores ever 10 mins when my teams playing) but jeeze it's not like it costs anything to talk to them - I get that there's time when you actually need some other adult chat as a parent and times limited but..
Mine need some better manners when talking to elders, it's like they've been born a bit too cool for school, they kind of dont know they're doing it being young + there a bit cheeky to make each other laugh sometimes but I'll sort that.
Screens for the lazy parents and working every hour god sends for some of the others to keep a roof over their heads, I cant see any of this getting better anytime soon, the kids will be raised by AI soon enough
However, do athletics with the kids from the social housing, play in a band with cultured kids, ski with the professional classes, go to a state school but some how get into an elite university that takes from every social background, do Erasmus, collect languages
I suppose the money saved on sending them to a state school will help pay for all the activities.
joking aside, while good advice, how many children or parents are capable would be capable of all that?
This will be contentious, and a bit tangential, but I reckon it's social media and diet.....
...People are being fed the idea on SM that eating red meat and nothing else is good for you. But they need to eat a well rounded diet including carbs, and greens, and fruit etc...
And we need the govt to bring back surestart to support the communities where this is happening
Kids dont want red meat, it's the carbs they go for. Biscuits, sweets, sugary pop, energy drinks. Biltong is a long way down the list.
Old eggs, old sperm, micro plastics, blue light, general diminishing of intellect and common sense. It can probably all be blamed on the Boomers. We’re all doomed!