At a SureStart nursery/preschool I worked at in a very deprived area there were a lot of 3-4 year olds not able to use cutlery or even have the dexterity to hold crayons or paint brushes properly. Most were still in nappies, lots didn’t have the attention span to do anything that didn’t involve a screen, they couldn’t nap on the mattresses or sit on a chair, many still walked around with comforters, dummies or bottles. Levels of speech differed wildly but nearly every single one of them struggled to communicate in some way. I’ll never forget the little boy who’d never had a book read to him at age 4 as he ‘couldn’t even read anyway’ and we had to teach him how to turn the pages in order and that books could be read to him to make the story come alive.
As I said these were children that hadn’t had a good start in life. Some had parents with addiction problems, some were in care, some could only see their mum or dad with supervised access. That’s the extreme end of the scale and I’m not blaming all the parents of those children as some really did try and do their best in very difficult circumstances with the skills they had but if Alf is now developmentally behind, what the fuck excuse do TNB and Ash have for that? They sit in their million pound plus property, they don’t worry about money or putting food on the table, they have family to help, they have all the tools available to them, and just look at where it’s got Alf. The only difference between him and some of those children I’ve mentioned is that he doesn’t come from a poor background, and perhaps if he did, social services might take a closer look.