To think supernanny doesn’t need a come back

Janet Lansbury is very good for no-nonsense, adult in charge but child understood/respected approach.

Block them and stop them is what you do, leave the room or park if necessary, but you're with them, that's the difference.
I was a real pleaser and good girl so I really didn't want my children to absorb the idea that bad behaviour = bad child or that if behaving badly their carer didn't want to see them. With my second ds I didn't need to block or stop anything, he was one of those super easy toddlers who just played and listened and followed along with how things were done. Second child, more relaxed parents and temperament I guess.

and perhaps more tellingly what did nursery do ?

Apologies for typos- new phone.

I rhink it is also worth acknowledging that some children are easier to parent than others. That most pre-school boys have a greater need for physical outdoor play and clear boinderies than most pre-school girls and that anyone parenting a girl between 12 & 16 deserves a medal.

But in the momemt what did you do ?

So how do you deal with a pre school child who for example grabs food from another child ? There needs to be some level of order and compliance with basic standards from around 2 or 3 or life becomes impossible for everyone, especially if you have more than one child. How would you do it ? I think time out was a response to the decline in the acceptability of smacking/ spanking. Both methods are relatively straight forward and quick. A long conversation with a 3 year old just isn't possible when you need to get to school or get on with cooking tea. It also absolutely centres the child so they never ever learn to wait for parental attention, this is a pain in the arse for any other adults, but completely disasterous when they go to school.

‘My question is, if not time out with say a 2.5year old who is hitting/snatching/biting then what?’

My daughter went through a hitting phase at nursery when she was 2. We bought a book called ‘hands are not for hitting’. She stopped hitting very quickly.

The problem with Supernanny is that she would have to go and ‘fix’ a situation that was often a result of how the parents had mishandled their children’s behaviour for years.

So her methods are quick fix. They needed to be. And the show wouldn’t have been popular if people couldn’t see a difference in the child’s behaviour.

I personally agree that her methods belong in the 00s.

Another Xer here with adult children, we did a bit of time out and even she who must not be named for routine on the very early years - the DC seem fine.

My question is if not time out with say a 2.5year old who is hitting/snatching/ biting then what ? My Dsis has younger children now 12&14 and they have used v. little discipline, life at their home is complete chaos, nobody helps out, there is shouting every single day ( from everyome) give me a few minutes in the buggy facing the wall aged 2 or 3 anyday.

You really need to show them at 2 or 3, certainly by 3, that they need to listen to their parent/ caregiver. They learn where the lines are by realising when they've pushed things too far. When there are no natural consequences the child can kearn from, the parent has to be the one who provides the way to impress upon the child that they should have listened.

You're not going to succeed in getting your child to listen to you if you leave it too long after 3.

They are not babies. They are capable of learning habits that are explicitly taught to them. The habit of eating with a spoon or fork, the habit of using the loo, the habit of helping tidy up, the habit of sitting at the table while eating and drinking, the habit of saying please/ thank you, the habit of being gentle with the family pet...

You also need to make sure your child isn't hungry, sick, tired, or upset about something, and that your daily lives are suited to the sort of child you are dealing with - some children are happy to potter around home all day and some require a good deal of physical activity. There's a context to everything.

It's important for parents to teach and encourage their children to express their feelings verbally, and to show their children that they too have feelings. I'm not advocating authoritarian parenting. It's important to apologize to children if a parent feels they were immoderate in showing irritation, or unreasonable in expectations, or impatient. This teaches the child that we can try to fix mistakes, and we can acknowledge the feelings our behaviour causes in other people, as well as honoring the relationship and repairing it.

Children need to be learning by age 3 that there are expectations of their behaviour and that these expectations are going to be consistently required, by a parent who is on top of things and in control of herself or himself.

Like people who signed themselves up to Jeremy Kyle, they were often vulnerable in various ways. Yes they volunteered themselves but was it really informed consent? I doubt it and the children certainly couldnt consent.

I am advocating one approach over another, yes. Time outs and the like aren’t promoted by infant mental health professionals. But yes agree with you that empowering parents to understand they need to be in charge and how children actually want and need this, is a timeless message. Also totally agree parents do the best they can, and when struggling will follow the most easily available advice. I’d rather it wasn’t hers.

Time outs can be really helpful when they are ‘OK, this isn’t going well, let’s remove ourselves from the situation and reset.’

I don’t like ‘naughty step’ because a lot of children will just turn it into a stupid game of running off it and shrieking with laughter, especially if you have more than one child and they wind one another up. I am not massively keen on any sanction that is unrealistic in terms of work for me.

She did it with two or three year olds. Do you really punish them, they are babies.

A well fed child can go without food for a day or two with no long term issues. Do you recommend that? We set the bar so low.

There is no 'blame'.

There is no expectation of 'immediate compliance' either. The timeouts on Supernanny showed parents that a child crying was not the end of the world, and it didn't mean the parents had scarred the child for life.

Many of the parents on the show had the idea in their heads that they were doing something wrong if they upset their child. The result was very unhappy children. They were unhappy because they thought their feelings were frightening their parents.

A child who continues to play up/ defy parents after appropriate warnings is one who has got used to getting their own way and ignoring parents' instructions or expectations. Allowing children to get away with ignoring parents is not a recipe for bringing up a happy, secure child, one who will function well among peers and within wider society. Children need to feel, deep down, that their parents are in charge, that their parents are their leaders.

Exactly. A secure, loved child will be able to deal with the occasional punishment.

I'm really surprised people think that kids should never be punished

There is a place for punishment just as there is a place for reward. Natural consequences are not always going to be unpleasant enough to teach a child, or memorable enough either.

Okay, what other consequences last for less time than a few minutes of time out then?

Most parents are not professionally qualified to parent either. We all muddle through. Some make a spectacular mess of it.

Nobody was ever obliged to take on board any of Jo Frost's advice. There was always some other programme you could watch or some other guru whose parenting advice you could follow. Or you could just make it up as you went along, or take whatever was relevant to you from many different approaches.

Maybe that's telling you something like punishment isn't the answer.

The parents of the children signed their families up for her programme. She didn't just rock up to their front doors and barge in with her camera crew.

The parents were clearly doing pretty much everything wrong and the result was deeply unhappy children who took out their frustrations on their parents and on each other.

You are very ironically advocating for one approach over another here. There is no one size fits all to parenting, and no perfect method. Parents do the best they can, dealing as they are with their individual circumstances and their own personal limitations. Sometimes their best falls a long way short of effective or even reasonably ok.

Jo Frost's methods were hardly 'spank them all soundly and send them to bed' - even if there is research suggesting timeouts are not the gold standard, there is a lot of excellent advice in her overall approach, which is essentially to show parents the importance of taking back leadership of their families and how to do that. 'Grow a backbone' is parenting advice that is always going to be relevant.

The back to bed technique saved my sanity with a then 3 year old who was running us ragged night after night. It took 6 nights, and was a complete battle of wills but within 2 weeks we had her asleep by 7.30pm every evening. And because we kept that routine going, we didn't have to do it with our subsequent kids, they just followed suit. It's a veritable hell living with an overtired and overstimulated child. And once she was sleeping better, her behaviour improved dramatically. We were all a LOT happier for it.

Thinking about it, dd3 was so shocked by the behaviours she made the decision not to behave like that just from watching Jo frost 🤣

I watched one today where she was helping a mum to teach her ds how to play with others. He got it really quickly once down. If that mum had posted on here she’d be thinking she needed to get an autism diagnosis. Setting clear boundaries isn’t abandonment, it’s love! My dc are very close to me and survived the super nanny techniques to grow into wonderful adults/teens. Her techniques were kind and based on clear communication.