By Elaine
From a report in the Evening Standard: Poverty report targets early years (quoting ‘poverty tsar’ Frank Field MP).
Government action to tackle poverty should focus on supporting children during the first five years of their lives, the Labour MP commissioned by David Cameron to carry out a review of the issue
But Frank, parents are the supporters of children, if some are getting it wrong it is because they do not have experience of parenting.
He said the pre-school period – from conception to age five – should be renamed the Foundation Years and be viewed as part of every child’s educational life.
But Frank, children are learning from the first breath and at no stage does it stop.
In a speech at Haileybury School, Herts, Mr Field said: “This isn’t rocket science. It is where hard evidence comes together with common sense. Good parenting and home learning environments matter most to young children’s eventual life chances, more than extra money and more than schools.
Look, it is there!
Good parenting and home learning environments.
Again then Frank, it is the parents who need experience of parenting.
The proposed Index would measure children’s social and emotional development, cognitive and language skills, communication skills and well-being – the indicators which make the most difference to long-term development – he said.
No, Frank!! That is not the way forward some children utter their first words before they take their first steps, others are too busy exploring their world and do not feel a need to branch out into verbal communication until age 3-4, and yet ten years later they will be level pegging on a tick box chart somewhere so ‘indexing’ would be extremely damaging.
All children need to grow in a stimulating environment and the parent’s need to be able to provide that, it doesn’t cost money it only needs experience. Children need to grow naturally and not be segregated into age defined peer groups, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ .
Many parents today have no previous experience of toddler tantrums, feeding babies, reading stories, bathing grazed knees etc and they should have!. The system (State) is at fault, for decades it has focused on ‘education’ in purely academic terms ignoring the need for social development, hence Frank’s contention that
the pre-school period – from conception to age five – should be renamed the Foundation Years and be viewed as part of every child’s educational life
Can they not see that children need to grow amongst children as opposed to age peers? Can they not see that parenting is a skill learnt not at a desk but by living? By living amongst children of all ages and interacting with them.
It isn’t children who need monitoring and cataloguing, it is the state’s unwarranted and damaging interference in their lives.
If Cameron swallows this arsenic, then he is truly master of his own fate.
