To be ashamed that I used to look up to 'Supernanny'

Absolutely. Ok so she’d just lost her dad, I have sympathy for that but she is delusional about the facts, even stating ‘ok, so I don’t hit my kids…’ and still thinking he was somehow a victim of unfair treatment by a tv show he presumably agreed to appear on. And the personal attacks on Jo Frost - completely irrelevant to anything - were deeply unpleasant.

I used to think she was great, till I learned a modicum about neurodivergency, disregulation etc. A lot of these children needed understanding not labelling as naughty. Supernanny is only one woman - the whole production team ought to be ashamed.

They certainly shouldnt have been shamed all over TV. I’ve seen plenty of tv shows where they handle disruptive and angry children with a much more compassionate vibe and with much less shaming of the parents and children.

What I used to think of bad parenting, I now can see are the actions of exhausted parents who have learnt to pick battles, and need to take the easier roads now and then because all of their roads are fucking hard.

I don’t doubt people can peek into my parenting and witness many incidents where it looked like I could have been better, more present, prepared. But the TV show can’t adequately demonstrate what 5-10 years of hard grind raising a child with adhd and autism and the battleground it creates.

There were lots of structural stuff I remember as being valuable to families - but so much of it toxic to the communities of children with biological behavioural differences.

Worse than all that is that Supernanny has since doubled down on being an absolute shit head. Ignorance is no excuse when she has many people trying to help her understand the alternative, science led approach. Attached image taken directly from supernannys own social media account. It was not taken down despite significant backlash.

Ha yes, the idea that being completely naked in a public place while being filmed would make you really happy with yourself. He never got naked though I noticed.

I liked watching SN, I never believed in the naughty step - why would you put yourself through that battle of wills? Not good for anyone IMO. But she always listened to the kids and tried to make life better for them with an equal amount of boundaries and enjoyable activities I thought.

I'm not at all surprised about it being staged: in lots of these shows, the outcome is probably decided before they start filming. I remember one episode where a child broke a car window by throwing a brick, and Jo was telling him "that man is sad now".

The window breaking did not happen on the screen; and I very strongly suspect that it was not that young lad who broke the window at all, and the car was driven in, with the producer tapping his or her nose, saying "here's one we prepared earlier".

Yeah how much did they pay people to subject themselves to that.

Also thought they didn’t dress to cover their own flaws all that well tbh.

I watched supernanny growing up and I think it was a breath of fresh air at the time from the discipline my peers and I recieved at the time. There was a lot of shouting and smacking but also unrestricted freedom, I was out playing for 6 plus hours a day up to all sorts, going into random friends houses for tea. As long as I was out the house it didn't matter what I was up to. When people say that her methods are cruel they were considered soft at the time.

She gave the kids rules and expectations and gave the parents a way to discipline that didn't involve hitting their children. She called out lazy/uninvolved parents. She made it very clear that the problem was with the parenting, not with the children which was a very different school of thought than the time.

Her methods certainly weren't perfect and she became a bit OTT with the American shows where the culture was so different. Alongside this parenting has changed so much and we now are much more actively involved and more in tune with our children's emotions.

However that in itself is controversial and I know one school locally where they have very little behaviour management because parents will never agree that their child could possibly misbehave and they have to be 'invited' to detention and one punishment for swearing at a teacher was to go rock-climbing with the headteacher during school time.

I had one of those kids that get out of bed 400 times, absolute bloody nightmare. I had watched Supernanny before I was a mother and her advice helped. Bring the child back, no matter how many times, don't engage, don't speak or get angry, no cuddles just firm repeated actions. The alternative would have been either locking a child in their room (as many suggested) or have a child wandering dangerously around all night.

I know some of her stuff has been criticised but she was about empowering parents. The lack of parental confidence these days is obvious, there are threads nearly every day here about how it affects not just kids and their parents, but society as a whole. I work in childcare now and still believe her approach was mostly excellent, with some tweaks.

The problem of consent always bothered me. Imagine going to school the day after the episode featuring your family had appeared.

That’s a form of child abuse right there. I’m amazed no one has taken a case against the production companies

Also, regarding kids being told to act - I’m a bit on the fence about this.

Is that what happened?

Or did the producers have a word to suggest the kids be as extra as they want to counter the likely affect of the presence of cameras / strangers? And also because they have a limited time to film everything (probably 4 days for a show like this) and need to ensure they get the extreme behaviour reported by the family when they applied.

I never got into those sort of programmes because I guessed the kids were encouraged to behave badly. Children do misbehave sometimes, we all know that, but most not that badly and not all the time unless they have some sort of health problem.

From clips, and from what others told me, it was obvious they were coerced, bribed or whaever. It was pure drama - who in their right minds in real life wants their family's unpleasant business displayed on TV anyway? None of it added up. Shameful.

I just hope no parents took the supernanny's advice.

There’s nothing in that tiktok that makes me think anything other than her father was an arsehole who yelled and hit his kids and took extreme objection to a woman calling him out for being an arsehole

Bring back the Barbara Woodhouse methods I say. She got those naughty dogs under control😂

HRFT but American tv is made very differently because of different compliance rules.

Most UK-broadcasted tv is subject to Ofcom, which has clear guidelines on what can & can’t be done. Misleading through unfair editing or manipulation isn’t allowed (look at Queensgate scandal where a trailer made out the queen had stormed out of a meeting, entirely falsely).

Contributors aren’t (usually) paid in the UK, but almost always are in the US. I would be surprised if the family weren’t paid for their appearance on SN USA - but don’t know for sure. Turning the relationship between producer & contributor into a transactional one invariably (IMO) leads to situations where the producers feel entitled to ask for what they want in terms of performance. It’s gross and, along with constructed reality like TOWIE, has helped destroy documentary filmmaking by offering audiences more outlandish content.

Her other points about SN wearing the same clothes - it’s not to mislead, it’s to make filming & editing easier so you can get all the arrival / leaving / filler shots and put them wherever required - but using reactions from one conversation as if they are from another is a big no-no (in the UK).

SN having a drink before filming - insensitive / stupid to do it before going to the house of an alcoholic, and unprofessional before going to work, but boundaries were less clear in the 00s.

It's just something that's of its time, a common alternative then was smacking, suddenly a naughty step doesn't seem so bad anything that showed there were options other than physical chastisement. Also it was a TV show not a parenting class.

Or having your boobs groped by Gok Wan.

Ah, the old days...

Any reality tv show involving children, particularly behaving badly, is wrong.

Look at Wife Swap, You Are What You Eat etc, all prime time shoes of their day.

Very true! All "You Should Be Ashamed Of Yourself" tv...

Someone mentioned You are what you eat.
I always thought surely, nobody’s diet consists of that, and only that. By showing such horrific diets it leads you to believe that a good proportion of the public eat like that.
Or that house programme with Stacey Solomon. Surely you can just go through a cupboard and chuck that crap. Then go through another cupboard and do the same.
Again, most people don’t live like that.
Or that fashion show with Gok Wan. He was obsessed with women’s breasts and underwear. Trying to get women to contort themselves in ridiculously uncomfortable underwear. It must hurt. And for what? Who cares?
Trinny and Susannah- still peopke frightened to wear black with a colour-why.

I really disliked her methods anyway, not my vibe at all, I didn't/don't treat my DC as my adversaries so this revelation is a bit of relief to me as it was more acting out the harshness it seems.

I still use a time out now, although I don't call it a time out or naughty step. But if my ds is disrespectful to me, I say "Don't speak to me like that, I don't like it" and walk away. It just saves my sanity by not getting sucked into an argument with my ds, who has no access to the logical part of his brain in a heightened state any way. We both need time and space to calm down sometimes. It's not a bad idea at all.

I think the naughty corner/thinking step / time out is a dubious method. I raised my kids during the Supernanny heyday and some very controlling mothers I knew used that method in a way that was abusive as it was so over controlling
I used the ' naughty step' and found it a useful tool. However it has to be used sparingly otherwise it loses its effect. It gave ds a chance to calm down by himself. I agree that it has the potential to be abused.

I like SN. I work with teenagers and there are so many that can't be told " no" to anything, No boundaries were put in place when they were toddlers and then suddenly mum.and dad have a 13 year old that doesn't know how to behave and can't deal with authority. Jo Frost was consistent and fair with the children and often, quite rightly imo,corrected the parents behaviour. For many it was a tough pill to swallow.

Supernanny really helped me with ideas at the time, because I had been brought up with being smacked and shouted at, and I knew that I didn't want to do that. But I didn't know what to do instead. I started watching supernanny before I even had children.

Seeing it now, I don't agree with children being exploited for entertainment. That's on the production company and the parents themselves rather than Jo Frost personally.

I’ve been a nanny for a long time too, I don’t use her methods and I’d be out of a job sharpish if I ‘called out’ the parents I’ve worked for in the same way. Sometimes I wish I could! Very clear that children need consistency and boundaries though and always have done, but I’m glad there’s been a shift towards a bit more empathy and understanding of child development. That does not mean letting children rule the roost, but I do think in the past we’ve expected ever such a lot from small children who are at the end of the day just learning and growing.

I have read though that the camera crew/production would turn up to the family’s home at random times and tell them they had to film them having tea or doing bathtime or whatever, to confuse things and make it more likely that the children would act out, and the parents would be at peak stress.

Very popular at the time though, this sort of theme of showing families or individuals living in the ‘wrong’ way and needing to be corrected. Look at Wife Swap, You Are What You Eat etc, all prime time shoes of their day.

🤣🤣🤣