Parents of 5th graders - let’s talk

[Anonymous]

My kids are a little older - middle school. My 8th grader took it all in stride. My 7th grader - not so much. He’s struggling a lot with all of the online stuff - I know he would have been better off with paper, writing stuff down, physical books, etc.

He tests well so knows the material - but the Canvas and Clever and Google Docs and whatever is just a lot for him to manage. He would have been fine with notebooks and paper.

[Anonymous]

Your age group was probably the best group with the least impact. I know that is not the answer you were looking for.

I think parents with kids who are behind always want to find a reason. Most kids your kids’ ages are doing fine with no issues.

[Anonymous]

Mine are in 6th and 8th grade now and are accelerated 2-3 yrs ahead. I think it is a direct result of pandemic. I homeschooled them for a year and a half. It made me realize how little public schools actually do. They are back to school, but we still heavily supplement at home. If you leave 100% of your child’s education up the school system, you will likely be disappointed. Including recognizing disabilities or learning problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine are in 6th and 8th grade now and are accelerated 2-3 yrs ahead. I think it is a direct result of pandemic. I homeschooled them for a year and a half. It made me realize how little public schools actually do. They are back to school, but we still heavily supplement at home. If you leave 100% of your child’s education up the school system, you will likely be disappointed. Including recognizing disabilities or learning problems.

My kids are in 7th and 9th and I also realized how little they learned. They were in 3rd and 5th when school shut down.

OP’s kids were probably in first. I have a current first grader. She is reading early chapter books and easy math. All OP needed to do is get books from the library, order some math workbooks online. This is a very easy fun grade.

[Anonymous]

I just reread that OP has a child with learning disabilities so I apologize. I have friends whose kids were flagged and get supports and it is still frustrating and difficult for them. If it makes you feel better, the kids got little to no support during the pandemic. My friend’s daughter has speech therapy online, which was just hard for my friend since the child had no attention span. Then they went in person with a mask so also unhelpful.

[Anonymous]

Socially/behaviorally, I think the issues are a result of the screen generation of parenting. Some kids are totally and completely screen addicted at shockingly young ages. Parents can't run into Target for 15 minutes without handing the kid a phone. The amount of kids using their computers at inappropriate school times is high. Defiance/ignoring of teachers is also high.

I work in an ES across multiple grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Socially/behaviorally, I think the issues are a result of the screen generation of parenting. Some kids are totally and completely screen addicted at shockingly young ages. Parents can't run into Target for 15 minutes without handing the kid a phone. The amount of kids using their computers at inappropriate school times is high. Defiance/ignoring of teachers is also high.

I work in an ES across multiple grades.

Agree

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Socially/behaviorally, I think the issues are a result of the screen generation of parenting. Some kids are totally and completely screen addicted at shockingly young ages. Parents can't run into Target for 15 minutes without handing the kid a phone. The amount of kids using their computers at inappropriate school times is high. Defiance/ignoring of teachers is also high.

I work in an ES across multiple grades.

Yep. My kids (8th graders) call these ipad kids (generally 4th and below).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I see fewer effects in my 5th grader’s class than in my 8th grader’s class.

Same. I think the younger ones are more mature than the older ones where at the same age.

[Anonymous]

Learning disabilities are not generally flagged by schools till 2-3. If you knew your child was struggling you need to get them help. We taught at home long before Covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach that age-group and yes; the changes are profound. Not in every kid, but in a very significant cohort.

My child didn’t get the multiplication table memorized. It was started and just got lost in the whole mess. What can you suggest to strengthen this?

NP. I am not a teacher but I taught my kids multiplication anyway. Just buy some flash cards and some math multiplication card games (sold on Amazon). Quiz your kid in the car on the way to soccer. Has to be fun and consistent - and it can take a concerted effort for some kids.

I am a sub. I am always surprised when I sub for 5th and 6th grade classes and they still don’t have their basic math facts down cold (including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). It makes math so slow. I agree, flash cards and they also have online math facts games. If they just spent 10-15 minutes a day….

Schools don’t teach spelling, grammar, math facts. Parents have to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like every parent who has kids with issues attributes them to the lockdown; whatever the age. I don’t see how staying at home for a year can alter every generation of kids so much. And if it was lockdown, why is it your kid and not all the kids in your kid’s grade?

I think that when we are seeing immaturity and learning difficulties across age groups it has as much to do with parenting, copious screens at home, and copious screens in school. Many parents think they’re “on” their children’s behaviors, but they aren’t. They let many many MANY things go and favor their children instead of the good of the group. If we went back to the school days before smart boards in the classroom and chromebooks in every hand, we would see better behavior. If kids weren’t handed iPhones at the store and iPads at restaurants to keep them quiet they would be better off. I don’t think it was the lockdown, I think it was the shift in parenting that came with it and that hasn’t gone back.

The bolded is an argument in favor of Covid having a significant impact, in my opinion. It was a major stressor event for some (but not all) parents, similar to a job loss or divorce, so heavily impacted how some people parented. And it causes many kids to be in screens much more often during the duration of school closures/hybrid schedules than they would have been otherwise -- some kids were using screens for school, entertainment, and socializing for the duration of social distancing, which for some places lasted a full year. If that happened during a key developmental time, I could see it having a long-term impact. Especially if combined with parents having their own mental health crises (these spiked during Covid).

I think my own kid weathered this ok but can understand why many kids might be struggling.

I agree that covid necessitated more screens at the time. But kids have been back in school for 2 years now, longer than the covid shutdown. And kids are screen obsessed. And they are on them a lot. At home and school. I am a teacher and I’m anti-screen. I do as much as I can on paper. But when 5th graders have their own phones and have tik tok and YouTube and constant access to social media—it’s destroying their mental health and their ability to sustain their attention…yet parents are afraid to take the phones away. There’s also a victim mentality culture right now (amongst adults), which feels exacerbated by social media. We complain about work being too much, we complain about the weather, we complain how the past changed everything. Teachers (and like I said, I am one) are complaining more than ever. Is it hard? Yes! But I feel like the complaining is making it worse. And we need solutions, not more complaining. Same with people who feel Covid messed up their kid. Sure there are some who were more profoundly affected than others. But please don’t discount the screens and lax parenting and shift from unstructured play to structured activities and sports teams being the focal point of many kids lives. And…nobody knows it their child would have had these same problems had Covid not happened. Depression, anxiety, learning disabilities, etc all existed before Covid.

It’s time to move on and stop blaming and start thinking of solutions. What can we do to get kids back on track? How can we hold boundaries so they feel safe? How can we have high expectations of them, while also letting them play and be children. My first suggestion is to take away their phones. And stop the chromebooks in school except for special occasions.

You are very wise. I agree with you 100%.

We still have relaxed expectations in my public school district due to Covid. Why?

I am a parent sitting on district committees and nobody can quickly summarize the degree to which we are still impacted by the pandemic learning loss.

The chromebooks are 100% now but the kids aren't learning more/better and the teachers are very inconsistent with the learning management/grade portal. And there is epidemic use of phones in class for non-schoolwork purposes.

As a parent, I've allowed too much screen usage. But not sure what to do about it. My kids are doing reasonably well in school. I just wished their free time was better spent.

[Anonymous]

My DS is in 5th and for him I think his handwriting is the only thing that has suffered. He wouldn’t have otherwise been using a laptop to do work in 2nd grade when that skill was really developing. We supplemented from the summer after 1st through the middle of 3rd with small group tutoring, I think that made a huge difference and has paid off in his math and reading.

I think a lot of the issues, regardless of grade, is that parents and adults were greatly affected more than we realize and it’s trickled down to kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Learning disabilities are not generally flagged by schools till 2-3. If you knew your child was struggling you need to get them help. We taught at home long before Covid.

It was really hard for current 5th graders to get testing in 2nd or 3rd because of Covid. Schools weren't doing testing or IEPs. Totally not legal, but that's what happened where I was. Private testing was hard to get too and tutoring was virtual or with masks. A lot of parents didn't have the skills to help their kid. It was a mess.

[Anonymous]

My 5th grader and her friends seem largely unaffected. It hard to know for sure of course, but they’ve been amazingly resilient.

My 1st grader (turned 3 in Feb 2020) who missed 18 months of preschool has behavioral challenges and the teacher says there’s a lot of it in their classroom. Again, hard to know for sure, but the shutdown seems to have a bigger effect there. It was also hard to know if delays (potty training, speech, focus) were typical absent peers so we didn’t really flag some of her problems until later.