From the article: The survey is here. Something that stuck out: Yikes. I'm wondering if there is any room for misinterpretation here? Looks like it was on a five-point scale from "completely...
From the article:
The early-years charity, Kindred2, polled 1,000 primary school staff, half of whom said problems with school-readiness have got worse in the last 18 months, with schools doing more of the work to prepare children that parents would once have done.
Nearly half (46%) of pupils are unable to sit still, 38% struggle to play or share with others, more than a third (37%) cannot dress themselves, 29% cannot eat or drink independently and more than a quarter (28%) are using books incorrectly, swiping or tapping as though they were using a tablet, according to the survey.
As a consequence, school staff are on average diverting 2.5 hours a day away from teaching and towards supporting children who are not school-ready, which has a knock-on effect on pupils who lose around a third of learning time each day.
Schools say the additional pressures are also affecting staff retention. Almost half (47%) of teachers who took part in the survey said they are considering leaving their role and nearly a quarter (23%) plan on doing so in the next year.
Only 50% of parents think that they are solely responsible for toilet training.
Yikes. I'm wondering if there is any room for misinterpretation here?
Looks like it was on a five-point scale from "completely parents" to "completely schools."
Data for the survey is here. Looking at "completely parents" and "mostly parents" together, it adds up to 86%.
They've been doing the survey for five years, but unfortunately, we can't compare trends because they keep improving the survey every year. In the previous year, the question was different: "Thinking generally... which of the following do you think a child should be able to do when they start... Please select all that apply." There, the percentage was 84%.
So instead they report teachers' perceptions on whether they think things have gotten worse, which is useful but it would have been nice to have data.
Still, it seems like a warning sign of something? (I'm entirely out of touch with what's going on in primary schools in the UK.)
The most hopeful interpretation I have is that the respondents mentally lumped "schools" with childcare services like daycare or preschool (nursery school?). In which case I can agree to an...
Looks like it was on a five-point scale from "completely parents" to "completely schools."
The most hopeful interpretation I have is that the respondents mentally lumped "schools" with childcare services like daycare or preschool (nursery school?). In which case I can agree to an extent, since part of supervising toddlers in those settings is reenforcing good habits and behaviors.
Otherwise, I'm worried what else those parents would think isn't their responsibility. And I'm worried about anyone who answered "completely schools" no matter how they interpreted the question.
Yes, maybe. I can also imagine picking "mostly" instead of "completely" just because I'm somewhat resistant to binary thinking about anything. This is a common problem with surveys. Nobody asks...
Yes, maybe. I can also imagine picking "mostly" instead of "completely" just because I'm somewhat resistant to binary thinking about anything.
This is a common problem with surveys. Nobody asks what people meant when they chose an answer.
The way I think about this is that when I am asked a [true] or [false] question, but give 5 different options, everything on the left looks like [false] to me and everything on the right looks...
Yes, maybe. I can also imagine picking "mostly" instead of "completely" just because I'm somewhat resistant to binary thinking about anything.
The way I think about this is that when I am asked a [true] or [false] question, but give 5 different options, everything on the left looks like [false] to me and everything on the right looks like [true].
Also, I will often back off the top most answer just not to come off as an absolutist, which is a trait others have commented on being a negative one in me in the past.
Ooh I know this one! If you ask people y/n or Likert-type 1-5 questions for a study, it's quantitative, so you have a spreadsheet and run your tests to get your findings; if you start leaving...
Nobody asks what people meant when they chose an answer.
Ooh I know this one! If you ask people y/n or Likert-type 1-5 questions for a study, it's quantitative, so you have a spreadsheet and run your tests to get your findings; if you start leaving blanks or asking any "Why" questions that involve free-form answers, you are moving to a mixed-methods study because you've added a qualitative portion, which takes friggin forever to collate, code, compare to norms, analyze, etc. So you can ask Why? and give respondents a list of options for "why", but you're still going to miss people who had different reasons. It's tough, because those Whys can be very important, but A) often people don't really know why they're doing things lol, and B) if someone had to go through all those answers you'd be reading this 18 months from now instead of today.
I’ve never actually run a survey, but I imagine it would still be good information to have for debugging purposes? One thing I might discover is that a survey question is easily misinterpreted....
I’ve never actually run a survey, but I imagine it would still be good information to have for debugging purposes? One thing I might discover is that a survey question is easily misinterpreted. This would be a reason to beta-test the survey with a smaller number of people, giving me a chance to fix something before going on to do the full survey.
And then, for the full survey, I wouldn’t read the text responses at first, but I could if the results for a particular question seemed surprising and weird? Perhaps it could be data useful for a followup paper, if the results are particularly interesting?
It would definitely be useful to know those things, but institutional review boards for research would want to know if you were asking questions that wouldn’t be included in the reported data,...
It would definitely be useful to know those things, but institutional review boards for research would want to know if you were asking questions that wouldn’t be included in the reported data, then they’d want to know why, you may have to inform respondents that you aren’t using some of the answers officially, you’d be unable to comment on the data in your report until it had been processed… it’s a whole thing. And it has to be, otherwise you could have ten questions, pick the answers you like, and only include that data, which would help to prove whatever point but would be scientifically worse than useless, because it would be inaccurate.
Isn’t there often exploratory research (pilot studies) followed by larger studies? At some point pre-committing to a research plan makes sense to avoid cherry-picking, but you shouldn’t have to...
Isn’t there often exploratory research (pilot studies) followed by larger studies? At some point pre-committing to a research plan makes sense to avoid cherry-picking, but you shouldn’t have to pre-commit to multiple stages of research when you don’t know yet what you’re looking for.
Definitely, and you can always expand on a previous study. But if you’re trying to get a study approved, and one is going to take 3x as much work and 3x as long… it is what it is!
Definitely, and you can always expand on a previous study. But if you’re trying to get a study approved, and one is going to take 3x as much work and 3x as long… it is what it is!
I can see the value in stating ahead of time that some questions won’t be included in data analysis to avoid cherry picking, but not approving questions for QC purposes seems absurd. If nothing...
I can see the value in stating ahead of time that some questions won’t be included in data analysis to avoid cherry picking, but not approving questions for QC purposes seems absurd. If nothing else, those could be the seed for a later full-scale survey.
I wasn't saying the questions wouldn't be approved, only that IRB wants honest assessment and clean data, and asking people questions then deciding later to toss all those questions because you...
I wasn't saying the questions wouldn't be approved, only that IRB wants honest assessment and clean data, and asking people questions then deciding later to toss all those questions because you don't want to go to the bother of analyzing the data would raise some red flags; saying you're planning to do that would prob be worse lol.
To get to that later-on full-scale survey, you have to get the first one approved! So it can be tricky—and unless you're a student (and you're paying for it) someone has to pay for all this time.
I think in this case the concern would be that the researcher is asking questions that they are intending to not use data from, since that's basically misleading participants. What if you took a...
I think in this case the concern would be that the researcher is asking questions that they are intending to not use data from, since that's basically misleading participants. What if you took a ten-question survey, but then later found out that the researchers only ever looked at about one of the answers? That could affect your future survey-taking/willingness to even participate. Plus, the way accountability is maintained is by reporting the data collected, not just the analysis—if you only publish answers to that one question, then 90% of the study is just absent. There are also lots of stipulations on demographic questions, especially in protected research areas like education, healthcare, etc: if you ask someone in school if they have a disability, that's super useful for data analysis, but you are inviting all sorts of additional required "stuff" at that point. And that's just one example—really you have to pick the thing you want to know ahead of time, structure around that, then ask questions pertaining to that specific thing.
Like if you were doing a science experiment, make a volcano & add things to the baking soda until it erupts. Sure, vinegar is going to do it—but wouldn't it be useful to see what happens if you set it on fire at the end? Why not set all science experiments on fire when you're done with them? : ) That would technically be "data" but it's unrelated to the study you're conducting, and also you're increasing your chances of getting your results thrown out, starting a housefire, etc.
Fair. I don't think people finding out how many of their answers regularly happens. It'd certainly make the people who took the survey less likely to complete future survery if they found out. But...
What if you took a ten-question survey, but then later found out that the researchers only ever looked at about one of the answers?
Fair. I don't think people finding out how many of their answers regularly happens. It'd certainly make the people who took the survey less likely to complete future survery if they found out. But if the amount of allowed extra data is kept under 30% of total questions (perhaps even less for longer questionnaires)?
demographic info
That's understandably treated as sensitive by default. The spare questions I was mostly thinking of were things like "why did you select this?" or other free-form responses to accompany things like a 1–5 scale. Some people more easily hit the 1 and 5 than others. Could that have impacted effect size?
Yeah, I could see something like on online/restaurant surveys, where if you pick a 1 or a 10 they say “why did you feel so strongly about this?” or something similar. It would cut down on...
Yeah, I could see something like on online/restaurant surveys, where if you pick a 1 or a 10 they say “why did you feel so strongly about this?” or something similar. It would cut down on voluntary answers like that, but if you’re already locked in to taking a research survey it might not matter as much.
This seems like a pretty good use case for (careful, practiced, methodical application of) LLMs. Allow respondents to type free-form reasons and let the AI detect patterns that might not have...
This seems like a pretty good use case for (careful, practiced, methodical application of) LLMs. Allow respondents to type free-form reasons and let the AI detect patterns that might not have otherwise been apparent.
It's not unexpected for kids in the four to five years old range to have occasional accidents, which I would definitely expect a preschool or kindergarten to be able to handle (help the kid clean...
Only 50% of parents think that they are solely responsible for toilet training.
Yikes. I'm wondering if there is any room for misinterpretation here?
It's not unexpected for kids in the four to five years old range to have occasional accidents, which I would definitely expect a preschool or kindergarten to be able to handle (help the kid clean up, plan to have a change of clothes on hand). Is that being "partly responsible" for toilet training? It probably depends on how the question is phrased.
Ultimately, for better or worse, public education of younger children is serving the purpose of childcare at least as much as it is education. If kids in a given age range are still toilet training, then yes, I think it's eminently reasonable that their childcare take part in that process.
The question actually specifies that it's referring to whether toilet accidents happen frequently or occasionally. I can think of lots of things that schools are responsible for doing that could...
The question actually specifies that it's referring to whether toilet accidents happen frequently or occasionally. I can think of lots of things that schools are responsible for doing that could make bathroom accidents more frequent. Not letting kids go to the bathroom, having bathrooms that are too far away, having bathrooms that aren't accessible to the kids in some way.
That excerpt leaves me without words. I would be interested to learn what the root causes are and what the distribution between lack of time and energy (e.g. both parents too busy), using a tablet...
That excerpt leaves me without words.
I would be interested to learn what the root causes are and what the distribution between lack of time and energy (e.g. both parents too busy), using a tablet as a babysitter, gross negligence, etc looks like.
I’m not a parent but personally I find it difficult to imagine not spending as much time with my kid as possible in those early years. Drawing, teaching them to write their name, reading books, etc. Nothing with a touchscreen would enter the picture until they were at least 5, and then usage would be restricted to maybe 30m-1h a day. I understand that sometimes you’ll do anything to keep them quiet and out of trouble (had that experience helping care for siblings), but still.
I had my fair share of "I'm not a parent but" when I wasn't a parent. Looking and judging how parents (poorly) did, discussing with my girlfriend, agreeing on what we'd do and not do once we would...
I’m not a parent but
I had my fair share of "I'm not a parent but" when I wasn't a parent. Looking and judging how parents (poorly) did, discussing with my girlfriend, agreeing on what we'd do and not do once we would have kids.
Turns out that "having many principles" and "having kids" are two things that are very difficult to mix together. We're doing our best obviously, but we don't judge anymore.
You're really not a parent, eh? :) Firstly, yes. I do agree. But "as much time as possible" isn't quite what I suspect you think it is. Jobs are a thing, and the kid needs food and shelter and...
I find it difficult to imagine not spending as much time with my kid as possible in those early years.
You're really not a parent, eh? :)
Firstly, yes. I do agree. But "as much time as possible" isn't quite what I suspect you think it is. Jobs are a thing, and the kid needs food and shelter and stuff, so sometimes they have to go in daycare to allow for that to happen. And sure, parental leave is a thing too, at least in most countries. But kids need more than just parents can offer - they need social contact with other kids, even when they're babies. They learn from each other in ways they don't learn from parents - eg, my kid toilet trained themselves age 2, after their best friend at nursery asked why they were still wearing nappies.
They also need non-parent authority figures, such as daycare workers. Parents need social contact with non-kids - we're still friends with lots of nursery parents even though Kid has moved on) - and sure there are various clubs and so on now, but our kid was that age during covid and it was nursery or nothing. So daycare helps the kid and the parents in ways other than just occupying their time.
Also, time off is very important. Parenting is the most overwhelming, physically and mentally exhausting thing I've ever done by some distance. And it's 24/7. Plonking the kid in nursery for a day lets me rest, so the other times I'm not falling down tired and can actually engage meaningfully. We talk a lot, quite rightly, about work-life balance but it seems to be less acceptable to talk about parenting/life balance. But it's just as important.
We parent very "un-naturally" (I'm wary of using words like natural, but sitll) in the modern world. For most of human history, kids were raised by the village. Parents didn't do everything. Daycare is closer to how humans are optimised for being raised.
Nothing with a touchscreen would enter the picture until they were at least 5
There are a lot of really great apps for young kids. They're going to have to learn how to use computers, and 99% of the time I'd much rather my kid was playing games on CBeebies Playtime Island (BBC pre-school edutainment, really excellent) than watching TV when I need 20 minutes of non-contact time to prepare food or whatever.
My kid loves books, and drawing, and riding their bike and gardening and cooking and making things and and and - but they also love doing things on the tablet. It's a perfectly legit form of entertainment, which brings it's own stuff to learn. Also they've made some amazing things in Townscaper. Really good spatial awareness stuff to learn there.
Having your kid show up at school unable to use a touchscreen is not quite as bad as having them show up unable to use the toilet, but it's still putting them at a disadvantage.
Oh I don’t doubt the necessity of things like daycare and certainly wasn’t intending to exclude those things in my post. Many of the skills listed in the article however would be high on the list...
Oh I don’t doubt the necessity of things like daycare and certainly wasn’t intending to exclude those things in my post. Many of the skills listed in the article however would be high on the list of things I’d be trying to teach myself though, as opposed to leaving them to third parties.
As for touchscreens, my main concern is the negative impact that exposure can have during formative years, where people learn to interact with the real world. There’s also some danger in the nature of smart devices in how they can act as endless dopamine drips. My thought is that these risks should be reduced substantially by age 5 or so, but of course each kid is different and I’m sure many move through those phases more quickly than that.
How are touchscreens not part of the real world? Adults use them all the time. They're definitely real! :) Seriously though, learning to use digital devices and interact with digital environments...
How are touchscreens not part of the real world? Adults use them all the time. They're definitely real! :)
Seriously though, learning to use digital devices and interact with digital environments is important. Kids use tablets at school for all sorts of things - for example, last week in forest school, Kid was in the garden pointing the camera at various leaves to identify them. When we do fun stuff they often ask me to put photos on the class sharing portal so they can show their friends on the big screen at carpet time (this happened at nursery too), but having experience of basic device use is part of being school-ready. Digital devices are a life skill, albeit not one quite so basic as using the toilet.
There’s also some danger in the nature of smart devices in how they can act as endless dopamine drips.
That's where the "parenting" thing comes in. Enforced moderation. In the same way I don't let my kid sit and eat an entire packet of biscuits, I don't let them sit and play on the tablet from dawn till dusk. But one biscuit and 15 minutes of TuxRacer (current obsession is GO FAST) after school is perfectly OK. We have fun together doing it. I'm sure when they're older they won't want me there but they're not going to want me reading aloud to them either, so same same.
It looks like the question specifies that this is referring to bathroom accidents happening frequently rather than occasionally. I can absolutely see causes for frequent accidents that would be...
Only 50% of parents think that they are solely responsible for toilet training.
Yikes. I'm wondering if there is any room for misinterpretation here?
It looks like the question specifies that this is referring to bathroom accidents happening frequently rather than occasionally. I can absolutely see causes for frequent accidents that would be the responsibility of the school. Bathroom breaks not allowed frequently enough, not enough bathrooms or bathrooms too spaced out, bathrooms that the child in unable to use or feels unsafe using for one reason or another.
If I was asked that question with no outside context, I think I would also say "mostly the parents". They have to teach the kid to use the bathroom and send them to school in clothes that they can manipulate, but the school has to provide the bathrooms and access thereto.
I'm writing this during my break at a Pre-K program in the US. My site has 30 kids (aged 3-5) between two classes. Of those 30, seven are still in diapers, including a 90lb 4.5yo who shits like a...
I'm writing this during my break at a Pre-K program in the US. My site has 30 kids (aged 3-5) between two classes. Of those 30, seven are still in diapers, including a 90lb 4.5yo who shits like a grown man.
Just off the top of my head, I'd say those other figures aren't far off from my site. Most can't sit still at all, attention span are low even for their age, many are behind on their ability to dress themselves. It ain't pretty. I'd elaborate more but I've got to go break up another fight...
One time my students were reading out of their textbooks. I saw one girl move her face closer to a small picture in the book. She then instinctively put two fingers on the image and attempted to...
One time my students were reading out of their textbooks. I saw one girl move her face closer to a small picture in the book. She then instinctively put two fingers on the image and attempted to use pinch-to-zoom to enlarge it.
There was a quick moment where she just sort of looked confused at the picture that did not resize itself, then she immediately put her forehead in her hands and started chuckling to herself — the body language equivalent of “oh my God I can’t believe I just did that”.
It was a genuinely cute moment to witness. When reading books we will turn pages without actively thinking about it, and I think, in a similar way, screens habituated her to being able to unconsciously zoom in on images. I think her pinch-to-zoom action was essentially a reflex, and a genuinely understandable one. At this point, the amount of time my students have spent looking at screens far outweighs the amount of time they’ve spent looking at textbooks.
I can't throw shade, I've definitely gotten to the end of a long work week and tried to do some mundane analog task, made a small mistake, and reflexively moved the fingers that would normally...
I can't throw shade, I've definitely gotten to the end of a long work week and tried to do some mundane analog task, made a small mistake, and reflexively moved the fingers that would normally press CTRL-Z. And then facepalmed myself exactly like that girl.
Slightly similar: I do video calls on both a tablet and a laptop that doesn't have a a touch screen. I've sometimes tried to touch the big red button on the laptop to hang up.
Slightly similar: I do video calls on both a tablet and a laptop that doesn't have a a touch screen. I've sometimes tried to touch the big red button on the laptop to hang up.
About 15 years ago when I was taking physical art classes at uni, after years of spending multiple hours a day in Photoshop there were multiple occasions where I got hit with an impulse to hit ⌘S...
About 15 years ago when I was taking physical art classes at uni, after years of spending multiple hours a day in Photoshop there were multiple occasions where I got hit with an impulse to hit ⌘S to save as well as ⌘Z to undo. There was also at least one time I felt an urge to use ⌘F to find uses of a word in a textbook.
I used to draw a lot digitally, for many years. When I switched to drawing traditionally, I remember doing a brush stroke wrong and thinking "Ctrl Z," haha.
I used to draw a lot digitally, for many years. When I switched to drawing traditionally, I remember doing a brush stroke wrong and thinking "Ctrl Z," haha.
To be fair, give me a regular old monitor, and I will probably try to use it like a touch screen at least once. Daily use of a Windows tablet and Android smartphone have ingrained the habits of...
To be fair, give me a regular old monitor, and I will probably try to use it like a touch screen at least once. Daily use of a Windows tablet and Android smartphone have ingrained the habits of touch UI into my muscle memory.
Let me preface this by saying that my own kid loves books and constantly wants us to read. But we live in an age where technology is ubiquitous and those little animals are knowledge sponges. Our...
Let me preface this by saying that my own kid loves books and constantly wants us to read.
But we live in an age where technology is ubiquitous and those little animals are knowledge sponges. Our tech has been made incredibly accessible so it's natural they'll learn to swipe quickly, the screen immediately responds after all!
My own daughter often wonders what I did with my phone (usually after taking a picture of her) and immediately starts swiping at the screen. It's just action-reaction and that's how they learn most things.
I mean, the second one doesn't seem shocking to me. A young child's first instinct when coming across something new will be to try what worked with something they're familiar with. Parents are...
I mean, the second one doesn't seem shocking to me. A young child's first instinct when coming across something new will be to try what worked with something they're familiar with. Parents are unlikely to leave a child with a book until they're at least starting to learn to read, but a tablet's basic functionality can be used before that.
This is completely backwards in my experience as a child decades ago and a parent now, both in the US and abroad. Board books, “indestructible” tyvek books, plastic books, laminated books, and...
Parents are unlikely to leave a child with a book until they're at least starting to learn to read, but a tablet's basic functionality can be used before that.
This is completely backwards in my experience as a child decades ago and a parent now, both in the US and abroad. Board books, “indestructible” tyvek books, plastic books, laminated books, and regular old paper books (regularly repaired). Every infant and toddler has a bunch, both read with a parent and played with alone. I know some people use video as a babysitter for infants, but nobody* is giving their iPad to a 6mo to chew on compared to books.
There are books made of cloth, and books made of sturdy card, that you can leave with a child. And you don't need to leave the child alone with the book, you can have tiny infants sitting in your...
Parents are unlikely to leave a child with a book until they're at least starting to learn to read,
There are books made of cloth, and books made of sturdy card, that you can leave with a child.
And you don't need to leave the child alone with the book, you can have tiny infants sitting in your lap while you read a book with them, pointing at the pictures, doing the voices, asking questions.
In my country (Northern Europe) we have this thing called children's books. For ages 0-3, they come with thick cardboard pages that are easy to turn, bright primary colours and large, simplistic,...
Parents are unlikely to leave a child with a book until they're at least starting to learn to read
In my country (Northern Europe) we have this thing called children's books. For ages 0-3, they come with thick cardboard pages that are easy to turn, bright primary colours and large, simplistic, attention-grabbing pictures. Short texts are on each page, meant to be read to the child by the caregiver. Some have additional bells and whistles, such as a button you can push that makes a sound, but the basic version is popular as well.
I've never met a five year old who couldn't tell the difference between a digital device and a book.
I don't think it's a matter of not being able to tell the difference and more of just instinctively trying what they know works with other things. After all, a swiping motion in the correct...
I don't think it's a matter of not being able to tell the difference and more of just instinctively trying what they know works with other things. After all, a swiping motion in the correct direction will turn a physical page just fine. As for children's books, I would expect that the fancier ones' interactive nature would if anything strengthen the link between a book and a digital device in a child's mind. This is just speculation, though. My niece is around three years old and was raised with these books alongside touch screen devices so I guess I could check how she handles a standard book down the line.
I’ve caught myself doing something similar. I was drawing on paper and instinctively two finger tapped the paper which is the Procreate undo gesture. Makes me wonder if the kids just had a quick...
I’ve caught myself doing something similar. I was drawing on paper and instinctively two finger tapped the paper which is the Procreate undo gesture. Makes me wonder if the kids just had a quick “whoops” moment or if they sat there for minutes swiping and getting confused.
How old are children starting school in the UK? Four or five or so? It seems unbelievable that a quarter of kids that age could still not be toilet trained.
How old are children starting school in the UK? Four or five or so? It seems unbelievable that a quarter of kids that age could still not be toilet trained.
School is mandatory for kids who will turn five in that school year, starting in September. So everyone starts school age 4 but almost everyone finishes the first year age 5. Some kids will be...
School is mandatory for kids who will turn five in that school year, starting in September. So everyone starts school age 4 but almost everyone finishes the first year age 5. Some kids will be five in the summer holidays. I think those kids should start later, but it does mean some kids are barely four when they start school.
It's worth noting that EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage, which covers birth to age 5) in England (Wales and Scotland have their own, similar, thing) isn't quite the same as school proper, the curriculum and teaching style is very different.
So, this is the cohort of kids that spent a year shut inside their houses, with stressed out parents, little social contact, no access to Pre-K and no access to developmentally enriching...
So, this is the cohort of kids that spent a year shut inside their houses, with stressed out parents, little social contact, no access to Pre-K and no access to developmentally enriching activities and folks are surprised they have developmental delays?
At home you have easy access to a toilet, many kids learned to wait to the last minute because the toilet was a couple steps away. Now they have to raise their hand, get the teachers permission,...
At home you have easy access to a toilet, many kids learned to wait to the last minute because the toilet was a couple steps away. Now they have to raise their hand, get the teachers permission, then walk to the toile. What they used to be able to be with 10sec now takes 5 min so they are now learning to act when the urge starts not when you are about to go.
I'm assuming "Pre-K" is pre-school childcare, in which case kids age 0-4 in the UK did have access to that. Nurseries and preschools opened up after a few months and then didn't close again -...
I'm assuming "Pre-K" is pre-school childcare, in which case kids age 0-4 in the UK did have access to that. Nurseries and preschools opened up after a few months and then didn't close again - except occasionally on a per-setting basis if the staff had an outbreak. Schools (age 4-5 and up) took a bit longer to reopen.
My kid's nursery was emailing us suggested activities from pretty much day one, and there was loads of other stuff on offer via the library service, BBC and so on. Although I suspect the parents seeking out that kind of thing may not be the parents who weren't toilet training their own kids.
That it’s somehow pandemic-related immediately comes to mind as a possibility, but it’s not clear how that would work. Why would parents spending more time with their kids make them less motivated...
That it’s somehow pandemic-related immediately comes to mind as a possibility, but it’s not clear how that would work. Why would parents spending more time with their kids make them less motivated about toilet training?
Also, why doesn’t spending time with parents count as a “developmentally enriching activity?” There’s all sorts of things parents can do with their kids at home.
From the article:
The survey is here. Something that stuck out:
Yikes. I'm wondering if there is any room for misinterpretation here?
Looks like it was on a five-point scale from "completely parents" to "completely schools."
Data for the survey is here. Looking at "completely parents" and "mostly parents" together, it adds up to 86%.
They've been doing the survey for five years, but unfortunately, we can't compare trends because they keep improving the survey every year. In the previous year, the question was different: "Thinking generally... which of the following do you think a child should be able to do when they start... Please select all that apply." There, the percentage was 84%.
So instead they report teachers' perceptions on whether they think things have gotten worse, which is useful but it would have been nice to have data.
Still, it seems like a warning sign of something? (I'm entirely out of touch with what's going on in primary schools in the UK.)
The most hopeful interpretation I have is that the respondents mentally lumped "schools" with childcare services like daycare or preschool (nursery school?). In which case I can agree to an extent, since part of supervising toddlers in those settings is reenforcing good habits and behaviors.
Otherwise, I'm worried what else those parents would think isn't their responsibility. And I'm worried about anyone who answered "completely schools" no matter how they interpreted the question.
Yes, maybe. I can also imagine picking "mostly" instead of "completely" just because I'm somewhat resistant to binary thinking about anything.
This is a common problem with surveys. Nobody asks what people meant when they chose an answer.
The way I think about this is that when I am asked a [true] or [false] question, but give 5 different options, everything on the left looks like [false] to me and everything on the right looks like [true].
Also, I will often back off the top most answer just not to come off as an absolutist, which is a trait others have commented on being a negative one in me in the past.
Ooh I know this one! If you ask people y/n or Likert-type 1-5 questions for a study, it's quantitative, so you have a spreadsheet and run your tests to get your findings; if you start leaving blanks or asking any "Why" questions that involve free-form answers, you are moving to a mixed-methods study because you've added a qualitative portion, which takes friggin forever to collate, code, compare to norms, analyze, etc. So you can ask Why? and give respondents a list of options for "why", but you're still going to miss people who had different reasons. It's tough, because those Whys can be very important, but A) often people don't really know why they're doing things lol, and B) if someone had to go through all those answers you'd be reading this 18 months from now instead of today.
I’ve never actually run a survey, but I imagine it would still be good information to have for debugging purposes? One thing I might discover is that a survey question is easily misinterpreted. This would be a reason to beta-test the survey with a smaller number of people, giving me a chance to fix something before going on to do the full survey.
And then, for the full survey, I wouldn’t read the text responses at first, but I could if the results for a particular question seemed surprising and weird? Perhaps it could be data useful for a followup paper, if the results are particularly interesting?
It would definitely be useful to know those things, but institutional review boards for research would want to know if you were asking questions that wouldn’t be included in the reported data, then they’d want to know why, you may have to inform respondents that you aren’t using some of the answers officially, you’d be unable to comment on the data in your report until it had been processed… it’s a whole thing. And it has to be, otherwise you could have ten questions, pick the answers you like, and only include that data, which would help to prove whatever point but would be scientifically worse than useless, because it would be inaccurate.
Isn’t there often exploratory research (pilot studies) followed by larger studies? At some point pre-committing to a research plan makes sense to avoid cherry-picking, but you shouldn’t have to pre-commit to multiple stages of research when you don’t know yet what you’re looking for.
Definitely, and you can always expand on a previous study. But if you’re trying to get a study approved, and one is going to take 3x as much work and 3x as long… it is what it is!
I can see the value in stating ahead of time that some questions won’t be included in data analysis to avoid cherry picking, but not approving questions for QC purposes seems absurd. If nothing else, those could be the seed for a later full-scale survey.
I wasn't saying the questions wouldn't be approved, only that IRB wants honest assessment and clean data, and asking people questions then deciding later to toss all those questions because you don't want to go to the bother of analyzing the data would raise some red flags; saying you're planning to do that would prob be worse lol.
To get to that later-on full-scale survey, you have to get the first one approved! So it can be tricky—and unless you're a student (and you're paying for it) someone has to pay for all this time.
Why is the IRB so opposed to collecting spare data that won’t immediately be analyzed? Is it concern about not wasting the respondent’s time?
I think in this case the concern would be that the researcher is asking questions that they are intending to not use data from, since that's basically misleading participants. What if you took a ten-question survey, but then later found out that the researchers only ever looked at about one of the answers? That could affect your future survey-taking/willingness to even participate. Plus, the way accountability is maintained is by reporting the data collected, not just the analysis—if you only publish answers to that one question, then 90% of the study is just absent. There are also lots of stipulations on demographic questions, especially in protected research areas like education, healthcare, etc: if you ask someone in school if they have a disability, that's super useful for data analysis, but you are inviting all sorts of additional required "stuff" at that point. And that's just one example—really you have to pick the thing you want to know ahead of time, structure around that, then ask questions pertaining to that specific thing.
Like if you were doing a science experiment, make a volcano & add things to the baking soda until it erupts. Sure, vinegar is going to do it—but wouldn't it be useful to see what happens if you set it on fire at the end? Why not set all science experiments on fire when you're done with them? : ) That would technically be "data" but it's unrelated to the study you're conducting, and also you're increasing your chances of getting your results thrown out, starting a housefire, etc.
Fair. I don't think people finding out how many of their answers regularly happens. It'd certainly make the people who took the survey less likely to complete future survery if they found out. But if the amount of allowed extra data is kept under 30% of total questions (perhaps even less for longer questionnaires)?
That's understandably treated as sensitive by default. The spare questions I was mostly thinking of were things like "why did you select this?" or other free-form responses to accompany things like a 1–5 scale. Some people more easily hit the 1 and 5 than others. Could that have impacted effect size?
Yeah, I could see something like on online/restaurant surveys, where if you pick a 1 or a 10 they say “why did you feel so strongly about this?” or something similar. It would cut down on voluntary answers like that, but if you’re already locked in to taking a research survey it might not matter as much.
This seems like a pretty good use case for (careful, practiced, methodical application of) LLMs. Allow respondents to type free-form reasons and let the AI detect patterns that might not have otherwise been apparent.
It's not unexpected for kids in the four to five years old range to have occasional accidents, which I would definitely expect a preschool or kindergarten to be able to handle (help the kid clean up, plan to have a change of clothes on hand). Is that being "partly responsible" for toilet training? It probably depends on how the question is phrased.
Ultimately, for better or worse, public education of younger children is serving the purpose of childcare at least as much as it is education. If kids in a given age range are still toilet training, then yes, I think it's eminently reasonable that their childcare take part in that process.
The question actually specifies that it's referring to whether toilet accidents happen frequently or occasionally. I can think of lots of things that schools are responsible for doing that could make bathroom accidents more frequent. Not letting kids go to the bathroom, having bathrooms that are too far away, having bathrooms that aren't accessible to the kids in some way.
That excerpt leaves me without words.
I would be interested to learn what the root causes are and what the distribution between lack of time and energy (e.g. both parents too busy), using a tablet as a babysitter, gross negligence, etc looks like.
I’m not a parent but personally I find it difficult to imagine not spending as much time with my kid as possible in those early years. Drawing, teaching them to write their name, reading books, etc. Nothing with a touchscreen would enter the picture until they were at least 5, and then usage would be restricted to maybe 30m-1h a day. I understand that sometimes you’ll do anything to keep them quiet and out of trouble (had that experience helping care for siblings), but still.
I had my fair share of "I'm not a parent but" when I wasn't a parent. Looking and judging how parents (poorly) did, discussing with my girlfriend, agreeing on what we'd do and not do once we would have kids.
Turns out that "having many principles" and "having kids" are two things that are very difficult to mix together. We're doing our best obviously, but we don't judge anymore.
You're really not a parent, eh? :)
Firstly, yes. I do agree. But "as much time as possible" isn't quite what I suspect you think it is. Jobs are a thing, and the kid needs food and shelter and stuff, so sometimes they have to go in daycare to allow for that to happen. And sure, parental leave is a thing too, at least in most countries. But kids need more than just parents can offer - they need social contact with other kids, even when they're babies. They learn from each other in ways they don't learn from parents - eg, my kid toilet trained themselves age 2, after their best friend at nursery asked why they were still wearing nappies.
They also need non-parent authority figures, such as daycare workers. Parents need social contact with non-kids - we're still friends with lots of nursery parents even though Kid has moved on) - and sure there are various clubs and so on now, but our kid was that age during covid and it was nursery or nothing. So daycare helps the kid and the parents in ways other than just occupying their time.
Also, time off is very important. Parenting is the most overwhelming, physically and mentally exhausting thing I've ever done by some distance. And it's 24/7. Plonking the kid in nursery for a day lets me rest, so the other times I'm not falling down tired and can actually engage meaningfully. We talk a lot, quite rightly, about work-life balance but it seems to be less acceptable to talk about parenting/life balance. But it's just as important.
We parent very "un-naturally" (I'm wary of using words like natural, but sitll) in the modern world. For most of human history, kids were raised by the village. Parents didn't do everything. Daycare is closer to how humans are optimised for being raised.
There are a lot of really great apps for young kids. They're going to have to learn how to use computers, and 99% of the time I'd much rather my kid was playing games on CBeebies Playtime Island (BBC pre-school edutainment, really excellent) than watching TV when I need 20 minutes of non-contact time to prepare food or whatever.
My kid loves books, and drawing, and riding their bike and gardening and cooking and making things and and and - but they also love doing things on the tablet. It's a perfectly legit form of entertainment, which brings it's own stuff to learn. Also they've made some amazing things in Townscaper. Really good spatial awareness stuff to learn there.
Having your kid show up at school unable to use a touchscreen is not quite as bad as having them show up unable to use the toilet, but it's still putting them at a disadvantage.
Oh I don’t doubt the necessity of things like daycare and certainly wasn’t intending to exclude those things in my post. Many of the skills listed in the article however would be high on the list of things I’d be trying to teach myself though, as opposed to leaving them to third parties.
As for touchscreens, my main concern is the negative impact that exposure can have during formative years, where people learn to interact with the real world. There’s also some danger in the nature of smart devices in how they can act as endless dopamine drips. My thought is that these risks should be reduced substantially by age 5 or so, but of course each kid is different and I’m sure many move through those phases more quickly than that.
How are touchscreens not part of the real world? Adults use them all the time. They're definitely real! :)
Seriously though, learning to use digital devices and interact with digital environments is important. Kids use tablets at school for all sorts of things - for example, last week in forest school, Kid was in the garden pointing the camera at various leaves to identify them. When we do fun stuff they often ask me to put photos on the class sharing portal so they can show their friends on the big screen at carpet time (this happened at nursery too), but having experience of basic device use is part of being school-ready. Digital devices are a life skill, albeit not one quite so basic as using the toilet.
That's where the "parenting" thing comes in. Enforced moderation. In the same way I don't let my kid sit and eat an entire packet of biscuits, I don't let them sit and play on the tablet from dawn till dusk. But one biscuit and 15 minutes of TuxRacer (current obsession is GO FAST) after school is perfectly OK. We have fun together doing it. I'm sure when they're older they won't want me there but they're not going to want me reading aloud to them either, so same same.
It looks like the question specifies that this is referring to bathroom accidents happening frequently rather than occasionally. I can absolutely see causes for frequent accidents that would be the responsibility of the school. Bathroom breaks not allowed frequently enough, not enough bathrooms or bathrooms too spaced out, bathrooms that the child in unable to use or feels unsafe using for one reason or another.
If I was asked that question with no outside context, I think I would also say "mostly the parents". They have to teach the kid to use the bathroom and send them to school in clothes that they can manipulate, but the school has to provide the bathrooms and access thereto.
I'm writing this during my break at a Pre-K program in the US. My site has 30 kids (aged 3-5) between two classes. Of those 30, seven are still in diapers, including a 90lb 4.5yo who shits like a grown man.
Just off the top of my head, I'd say those other figures aren't far off from my site. Most can't sit still at all, attention span are low even for their age, many are behind on their ability to dress themselves. It ain't pretty. I'd elaborate more but I've got to go break up another fight...
I don't know what's more shocking to me... the toilet training or the mental image of young children swiping at books like they're tablets.
One time my students were reading out of their textbooks. I saw one girl move her face closer to a small picture in the book. She then instinctively put two fingers on the image and attempted to use pinch-to-zoom to enlarge it.
There was a quick moment where she just sort of looked confused at the picture that did not resize itself, then she immediately put her forehead in her hands and started chuckling to herself — the body language equivalent of “oh my God I can’t believe I just did that”.
It was a genuinely cute moment to witness. When reading books we will turn pages without actively thinking about it, and I think, in a similar way, screens habituated her to being able to unconsciously zoom in on images. I think her pinch-to-zoom action was essentially a reflex, and a genuinely understandable one. At this point, the amount of time my students have spent looking at screens far outweighs the amount of time they’ve spent looking at textbooks.
I can't throw shade, I've definitely gotten to the end of a long work week and tried to do some mundane analog task, made a small mistake, and reflexively moved the fingers that would normally press CTRL-Z. And then facepalmed myself exactly like that girl.
Slightly similar: I do video calls on both a tablet and a laptop that doesn't have a a touch screen. I've sometimes tried to touch the big red button on the laptop to hang up.
About 15 years ago when I was taking physical art classes at uni, after years of spending multiple hours a day in Photoshop there were multiple occasions where I got hit with an impulse to hit ⌘S to save as well as ⌘Z to undo. There was also at least one time I felt an urge to use ⌘F to find uses of a word in a textbook.
I read on my Kindle too much. I've definitely tapped on a real book to get the definition of a word before.
I once tried to "Save" before going down a steep ski slope. If only we could...
I used to draw a lot digitally, for many years. When I switched to drawing traditionally, I remember doing a brush stroke wrong and thinking "Ctrl Z," haha.
Probably the case for most people under 30, maybe even 40 or 50, especially if they have office jobs.
To be fair, give me a regular old monitor, and I will probably try to use it like a touch screen at least once. Daily use of a Windows tablet and Android smartphone have ingrained the habits of touch UI into my muscle memory.
Let me preface this by saying that my own kid loves books and constantly wants us to read.
But we live in an age where technology is ubiquitous and those little animals are knowledge sponges. Our tech has been made incredibly accessible so it's natural they'll learn to swipe quickly, the screen immediately responds after all!
My own daughter often wonders what I did with my phone (usually after taking a picture of her) and immediately starts swiping at the screen. It's just action-reaction and that's how they learn most things.
I mean, the second one doesn't seem shocking to me. A young child's first instinct when coming across something new will be to try what worked with something they're familiar with. Parents are unlikely to leave a child with a book until they're at least starting to learn to read, but a tablet's basic functionality can be used before that.
This is completely backwards in my experience as a child decades ago and a parent now, both in the US and abroad. Board books, “indestructible” tyvek books, plastic books, laminated books, and regular old paper books (regularly repaired). Every infant and toddler has a bunch, both read with a parent and played with alone. I know some people use video as a babysitter for infants, but nobody* is giving their iPad to a 6mo to chew on compared to books.
There are books made of cloth, and books made of sturdy card, that you can leave with a child.
And you don't need to leave the child alone with the book, you can have tiny infants sitting in your lap while you read a book with them, pointing at the pictures, doing the voices, asking questions.
We have organisations like Book Start that gives a free pack of book to every child born in England: https://www.booktrust.org.uk/what-we-do/programmes-and-campaigns/bookstart/
In my country (Northern Europe) we have this thing called children's books. For ages 0-3, they come with thick cardboard pages that are easy to turn, bright primary colours and large, simplistic, attention-grabbing pictures. Short texts are on each page, meant to be read to the child by the caregiver. Some have additional bells and whistles, such as a button you can push that makes a sound, but the basic version is popular as well.
I've never met a five year old who couldn't tell the difference between a digital device and a book.
I don't think it's a matter of not being able to tell the difference and more of just instinctively trying what they know works with other things. After all, a swiping motion in the correct direction will turn a physical page just fine. As for children's books, I would expect that the fancier ones' interactive nature would if anything strengthen the link between a book and a digital device in a child's mind. This is just speculation, though. My niece is around three years old and was raised with these books alongside touch screen devices so I guess I could check how she handles a standard book down the line.
I’ve caught myself doing something similar. I was drawing on paper and instinctively two finger tapped the paper which is the Procreate undo gesture. Makes me wonder if the kids just had a quick “whoops” moment or if they sat there for minutes swiping and getting confused.
How old are children starting school in the UK? Four or five or so? It seems unbelievable that a quarter of kids that age could still not be toilet trained.
Article seemed to be talking about kids entering Reception, which Wikipedia says starts around ages 4-5. So... Yikes.
It's surprising enough that I'd like further confirmation that it's true.
I didn't see the ages, what age does kids start school in England?
School is mandatory for kids who will turn five in that school year, starting in September. So everyone starts school age 4 but almost everyone finishes the first year age 5. Some kids will be five in the summer holidays. I think those kids should start later, but it does mean some kids are barely four when they start school.
It's worth noting that EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage, which covers birth to age 5) in England (Wales and Scotland have their own, similar, thing) isn't quite the same as school proper, the curriculum and teaching style is very different.
So, this is the cohort of kids that spent a year shut inside their houses, with stressed out parents, little social contact, no access to Pre-K and no access to developmentally enriching activities and folks are surprised they have developmental delays?
Ok but whether at home or not you still go to the toilet..
At home you have easy access to a toilet, many kids learned to wait to the last minute because the toilet was a couple steps away. Now they have to raise their hand, get the teachers permission, then walk to the toile. What they used to be able to be with 10sec now takes 5 min so they are now learning to act when the urge starts not when you are about to go.
I'm assuming "Pre-K" is pre-school childcare, in which case kids age 0-4 in the UK did have access to that. Nurseries and preschools opened up after a few months and then didn't close again - except occasionally on a per-setting basis if the staff had an outbreak. Schools (age 4-5 and up) took a bit longer to reopen.
My kid's nursery was emailing us suggested activities from pretty much day one, and there was loads of other stuff on offer via the library service, BBC and so on. Although I suspect the parents seeking out that kind of thing may not be the parents who weren't toilet training their own kids.
That it’s somehow pandemic-related immediately comes to mind as a possibility, but it’s not clear how that would work. Why would parents spending more time with their kids make them less motivated about toilet training?
Also, why doesn’t spending time with parents count as a “developmentally enriching activity?” There’s all sorts of things parents can do with their kids at home.