To think supernanny doesn’t need a come back

Some of her methods however (time out) are bordering on abusive though imo....I prefer Democratic Parenting

Seriously, do you really think ‘go away and think about what you did’ is such a damaging message? Were you never sent to your room as a child?

Has she updated her methods?

I have a very strong suspicion, that time out/naughty step is responsible for a lot of the poor mental health we're seeing in today's young people. A whole generation of DC who were "disciplined" by well meaning parents basically telling children they were so bad parents wanted them out of sight.

Well we will have to disagree then. Setting boundaries is important for children to feel safe. Having someone else step in when they can’t control themselves is vital. Attachment and gentle parenting, while not necessarily bad ideas at heart, are too often excuses for parents who don’t want to do the difficult bits of parenting.

I disagree. I think secure attachment drives everything from self confidence through anxiety and resilience, and "banishing" children harms that.

I would suggest you read more into it.....

I think the MH crisis in younger people is more likely to be a combination of generally harder social circumstances, knowing they are growing up with less advantage than previous generations, incessant social media exposure and parenting which teaches them that all distress or difficulty is bad and intolerable and means they are not developing any distress tolerance and resilience skills. The opposite of your post, actually.

Has she updated her methods?

I have a very strong suspicion, that time out/naughty step is responsible for a lot of the poor mental health we're seeing in today's young people. A whole generation of DC who were "disciplined" by well meaning parents basically telling children they were so bad parents wanted them out of sight.

Some of her episodes are horrible. In one she made a toddler who was used to always cosleeping cry it out alone in his room with no adjustment period and he was weeping and crying ‘I’m going to die’ as he was so distressed. Awful tv ‘entertainment’

Do I think that SHE specifically needs to be back on our tv with the methods she used in the 90s? No.

Do I think that there are a lot of parents with basically feral children who could do with some robust parenting advice nowadays? Yes.

I was in France a while back where there was a British woman in a hairdresser trying to get her little boy, who must have been about three or four, to have his hair cut.

Everyone has sympathy for a parent in that situation and at the start everyone was really patient and helpful , but honestly it turned out to be a really dreadful display of “parenting” so much so that I’ve never forgotten it.

The kid, who was a lovely lad with golden locks, ran around crashing in to and playing with all of the hairdressers things with absolutely no correction from mum and then when he was sat in the chair, refused to stop moving and squirming so the hairdresser couldn’t cut the hair.

All pretty normal three year old behaviour and absolutely not the child’s fault.

I kid you not when I say this went on for about three hours on a Saturday morning!

I know the hairdresser who has the patience of a saint with young and elderly clients.

But the mother sat there, very ineffectually, with a serene smile on her face throughout. She obviously loved her child very much but she seemed to have no thoughts for the hairdresser’s time, her property, the other clients who were having to wait, as the boy only tolerated three minutes of hair cutting before he would protest again and then he would escape the chair and run around again.

By the end all of the morning, all of us in there were willing her to leave for the child’s sake, if not anyone else, but she seemed oblivious to anyone else and her marvellous boy!

Several people including myself were helping at first, I got involved translating, and the child didn’t have any SEN ; he was boisterous, energetic and bored.

I’ve never forgotten the episode and of course I know that effective gentle parenting is the very opposite to this, but the problem is that, if you extrapolate out the hairdresser incident, when you have parents like this who want to be their child’s friends all of the time and refuse to say no to their beloved infant, and not give them any boundaries, then the rest of society pays for it.

That lad no doubt will have grown up feeling absolutely adored and confident in himself which is great, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to feeling adored by everyone else! His parent had more or less contracted out parenting to wider society, and I imagine that some of the members of the public he encountered would not have been as kind about it as the years went on, as that hairdresser was. It’s so unfair on the child and I see it more and more. Never mind the consequences for wider society.

And these are the parents who get told by teachers and scout leaders and sports coaches time and time again that their kid is disruptive and they instigate zero consequences at home and the child and these very same parents get upset and defensive when the child isn’t invited to parties and gets thrown off the under tens football team.

The children from programmes from that era are old enough to have their own social media and some have uploaded their own views about it. Most that I have seen tend to be "Lol look how naughty I was, this is funny, look at me now!" (They seem to very rarely be doing anything of note now) - but I did see a video of someone who had been on an episode of Hoarders as a teenager, and felt that the entire process had been exploitative, disruptive and did not help long term.

Of course if someone doesn't want their name linked to this old TV programme they are unlikely to post openly, so I wouldn't take that as a given.

Some episodes have been removed from re-airing due to privacy concerns, which may have been at the children's request, and the families' names removed from the Supernanny wiki.

As far as I can tell from what I've seen from people sharing their own experience plus a few comments on the wiki, some families found that the approach did help calm things down somewhat, and combined with the children growing up there was a longer term positive effect, but many did fall back into some state of chaos. Some families sold stories to newspapers/other media in the following years claiming that the producers wound up the children or staged some of the incidents shown. It's hard to tell whether this is genuine gripe because they were misled or a skewed/unreliable narrative of what actually happened. Some of the children ended up committing crimes and going to prison. Several families went on to have more children. Many of the couples divorced/separated. Many of the children on the programmes who have posted about their experience state that they do not have much if any contact with their parents as adults.

Interestingly this was also a topic on the podcast interview, and Jo said that she didn't feel responsible for whether or not parents fall back into bad habits after she leaves, which I thought was a bit simplistic - I felt she was implying if the parents had stuck to her advice perfectly and used it always, then every problem they have ever had will be solved, and that seems unlikely. It also ignores the fact that it's not completely random that a family ends up in the crisis point they are usually at at the start of the programme. Most of Jo's advice is extremely basic and the first parenting advice you'll find in any book, article or course - clear boundaries, connection, structure and positive role models. So if you're not managing those things often it's because of underlying issues e.g. own childhood trauma, lack of own role models, extreme stress, emotional difficulties, very poor self-awareness, MH problems/ND etc. You can override things like that for a very short intense sprint like a 3-week TV programme with an expert coaching you all the time, but parenting is a marathon not a sprint. And as others pointed out, TV editing is such that you can easily show the worst parts of the "before" week and the best moments of the "after" week and make it look like Jo's methods have totally transformed the children but that is unrealistic in such a short space of time. And as you usually see during week 2, it only takes a small amount of slack in the plan for things to unravel, and parents are only human and probably humans with issues or they wouldn't have got there in the first place.

I liked house of Tiny Tearaways as well as Jo Frost’s programme but omg the psychologists on HTT were as smug and condescending as they come!

I never watched it but I used to love house of tiny tearaways.
I always remember one of the very restricted eaters on it and the doctor was trying to get the dad to set a good example for the child by eating a vegetable or something like that and the dad didn't even try to hide his disgust for it in front of the child.

For those laughing, Time Out is described by a very highly thought of Irish child psychologist, David Coleman, as 'an emotional slap' and he's not a bit airy fairy in his advice but I always remembered that and never did it.

Those saying 'no harm done' are echoing plenty of the previous generation who still say the same about slapping their children. I wasn't slapped thankfully and I didn't do time out and even less harm done that way.

Relationship is key, but it's not quite as easy to market it but it is the solution overall. I agree some children's behaviour today is dreadful and it's not fair on the children. I was uncomfortable with some SN episodes pre kids and don't think I've seen any since.
I remember another series that I can't remember the name of.. a nanny that sat taking notes the first week and then gave advice. More modern I think.

Time out is not abusive

Some of her methods however (time out) are bordering on abusive though imo....I prefer Democratic Parenting

Some of her methods however (time out) are bordering on abusive though imo....I prefer Democratic Parenting

Well, I think she's brilliant and I think a huge amount of parents could do with the support right now.
There's nothing outdated about getting a good routine and consistent boundaries.