SuperNanny - USA and UK

Ruf and I spent a lovely day naked in bed recently. And during a hiatus in our lovemaking, we watched the television whilst we took tea.

SuperNanny USA or Jo Frost Extreme Parental Guidance as it is known over here is the most amazingly valuable programme for parents… and grandparents.

As I mentioned in my post about the recent riots in London, there are a lot of feral teenagers roaming the streets who have never been on the receiving end of proper discipline from their parents. A fact compounded by their continuing exposure to unsuitable material containing violence on the many games consoles and dvds.

Watching Jo Frost in action as she helped parents to cope with temper tantrums and bad behaviour whilst learning the art of responsible parenting was fascinating.

In so many cases, the children are responding to the ingrained reactions of their parents and feeding those actions in a vicious circle that becomes ever perpetuating. But, at the heart of so many of their difficulties, was the emotional state of the parents themselves.

One couple in the UK had separated but continued to live on the same street and have sex together. Some days they were like a proper family and at others they weren’t. One child had learned that if she threw a tantrum, Daddy would come to sort it out. Ipso facto, she regularly went into meltdown. At the heart of the problem was the fact that she wanted her parents back together so they could be a proper family again. The parents had to sort out their own relationship because it was causing such confusion to their offspring. They thought they were doing the best for them by giving them regular access to both parents but it was actually making things much harder for the kids because of their unusual sexual arrangement.

Another family in New York had two parents who worked very long hours and so someone else looked after the kids during the day. Their guilt meant that they regularly brought home toys and, when out shopping, the children had learned to expect a gift each time. As a result their small Manhattan flat was cluttered with kids stuff. There were issues over the children not wanting their parents to go out, but also that if they cried and kept on crying, they would get a present. The parents had to learn to override their own guilt about working so hard and spend quality time with the children that did not involve buying them things.

The third family in the US lived in a huge house. Dad was a police officer and Mum stayed at home to look after a nine year old and four year old twins. The twins were driving her to distraction but Dad’s way of disciplining them was to behave like a policeman interrogating a subject so she didn’t feel she could be too harsh with them as well. The real issues came from a complete lack of trust between them and her lack of confidence about her parenting skills. Jo helped Dad to find some ways to relax and take off his policeman’s hat to become Dad whilst finding a way for the two parents to go out as a couple and spend some quality time together to rebuild the trust within their relationship.

Looking back to my own marriage, our difference in parenting style was a key factor in our break-up. But it was more than that. Like the lady in the third example, I found myself tempering my own parenting style because my husband would never back me up and actively disrespected me and any discipline that I had tried to institute. This meant that I could not be strict where needed because he would come home and undo everything. I did not feel loved or trusted as a partner and sometimes I know I vented my frustrations on my children, shouting and pretty much throwing a tantrum of my own in response to their behaviour.

Both the first two families had problems with getting the children to sleep through the night and Jo showed them ways to deal with this perpetual invasion of the parental bed by firmly putting the children back into their own bed every time. The first two times accompanied by an ‘It’s bedtime, sweetheart’ and, any time after that, with no communication at all. No matter how much they cried and returned, each time, they were returned to bed with no comforting words. It took a couple of nights, but they learned to sleep through. You cannot do that if your partner does not follow the ‘party line’ and insists on going in to comfort them or get into bed with them.

For myself, I sorted out the problem with my own child when my ex had to go away on business for a few days. The first night, my child cried for three hours as I sat outside his door. But, by the fourth night, he knew I wasn’t coming back in and he went to sleep. It was the start of a much more structured sleeping pattern for all concerned.

But it took team work. Something that Jo Frost fosters between the parents.

As Philip Larkin said – ‘Your parent’s fuck you up…’

And the problems on the SuperNanny programmes show just that, with a variety of solutions. This should be compulsory viewing for both parents and those thinking about having a child.