Tickboxes 4 Toddlers: A Comment

Responding to this piece, CiF commenter Megan Rorke:

"I remember taking the youngest of my second set of triplets to a local clinic to have her hearing and general mental alertness checked. For the final test, the health visitor showed little Amelia some pictures. The first was of a man with a straw in his mouth and wellies on his feet, leaning aginst a gate behind which some cows milled about.

'Who's that?' demanded the nurse.

'Farmer,' quoth Amelia.

Nurse frowns. 'Try again. Who's that?'

'Farmer,' quoth Amelia, triumphantly.

Nurse tuts. 'Last time. Who's that you see?'

'Farmer?' quavers Amelia.

I peer over nurse's shoulder just in time to catch her putting an X in the box against picture 1.

'Why've you marked her down on that one?' I enquired.

'She got the answer wrong. She said "farmer".'

'Well, what should it be?' I enquired.

'Man.'

Unbelievable. Almost.

Comments

[Littlebear]

Okay, I give, that’s way crazy. Yet, I can’t agree that well-child screenings are a bad thing overall, but I concede on a couple of points. First, this kind of screening would best be done by the pediatrician as a normal part of the well-child visit. A good GP can pull it off without the child or the parent even realizing it’s happening - mine did. Secondly, the ‘test’ itself has to make sense. Finally, how that data is used and kept should be a matter of medial record and private (just like any other medical record) – not placed in a national database. I just hate to see an *important* problem missed when time can be of the essance.

http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/yourchild/devmile.htm

[Littlebear]

or like you said -

The biggest problem with this latest ruse, as with the great, clanking, apparatus of Every Child Matters, is that it imagines that some centrally-controlled, universal performance-assessment system will reveal those in need of help more effectively than would improving the training and funding of those working on the frontline. I simply don't think this is true.

[Clare]

I've had similar experiences with sight tests for Felix. Very silly.

On totally unrelated matter... have you seen this yet?

http://spittingmadwoman.blogspot.com/

Ally Fogg and a friend of ours ripping into Observer Woman magazine...

[ally]

That's a vicious rumour. I'll sue yer ass, Guido-stylee. Must be a completely different Ally altogether.

Anyway, ahem, Dave - you do realise that MeganRorke is someone's fictional comedy character on CiF, don't you? There could be a modicum of truth in her story, but probably not.

It does remind me of Mark Steel's story about his history teacher:

'You boy, last week we learned about the vikings. So tell me, what did the vikings come in?'

'Erm, boats, miss.'

'No no no that's not right. You girl over there, what did vikings come in?'

'Longboats, miss?'

'NO you stupid child. Weren't you listening? Were none of you children listening last week? The vikings came in HORDES, that's what they came in, HORDES.'

[Jane Henry]

One of the many laughable things about this ridiculous notion of Testing Our Toddlers is that no one appears to have worked out who will do it.

At a time when health visitors don't know any of the families they visit (they don't have time), midwives don't always come out to see new mums at home (there aren't enough of them) and children in need are being failed daily by an overstretched and apparently underfunded (WHERE did all that money go Gordon?) system, I doubt very much anyone will be able to put the Toddler Training into practise.

PS I know all about how crap the health visiting service is at the moment as a friend of mine reports to me weekly on her frustrations about her inability to do her job. Even in leafy Surrey it's really really gone pearshaped.