Jo Frost (Super Nanny)

[Ifyouwantmeillbeinthebar]

I’ve become addicted to watching reruns of Super Nanny UK with Jo Frost.

God, she did hand out some awful advice didn’t she?! However it’s interesting how parenting and discipline has evolved over the last 20 years.

There are so many episodes where behavioural issues and additional needs were just put down to bad behaviour, it was quite sad really.

I’ve just watched one where mum and dad had 3 girls, Megan, Erin and Gabriella and it was quite shocking, the eldest (9) had so much anger and was biting and hitting everyone including Jo. I felt so sad for her, she seemed so sad, angry and frustrated.

I was so invested that I googled the girls and where there were now. Interestingly the eldest said that none of it was scripted and the production team were really nice but the whole programme was filmed over 8 weeks and there was lot of changes to their routine to fit in with filming, meals and bedtime different to what they were used to, they couldn’t wear what they would normally wear as no brands were to be shown and not friends or family could visit because they weren’t allowed to be involved in filming and she said it really aggravated her and her sisters behaviour. She also said there was really any change after Jo left and they just behaved better as they matured like most kids.

I found it all really interesting.

Has anyone else got any episodes, UK, version that stand out and what was your opinion on the discipline and methods Super Nanny used.

I liked her. Some of the parenting was appalling and she must have been helpful. She was excellent at pointing out to parents where they had different approaches, confusing the children.

I'm not sure reviews from quite disturbed participants after the fact will be completely accurate.

Real parents in real life didn't regard Supernanny's naughty step as a kind of cheat code that would solve all parenting problems.

Wasn't "using the naughty step for every little thing" one of the problems that Supernanny occasionally had to correct when she came back? You were supposed to keep the naughty step for a limited range of specific very bad behaviour, like aggression.

From what I remember, Supernanny was good on consistency, clarity, and realistic expectations for age. And she was against smacking children or shouting at them.

Naughty Step might seem horrific now

Does it? What's replaced it? "Naughty step" was more a less a version of "time out", has something else replaced time out? (Old lady here!)

Yes that sounds familiar. I would have sworn it was Supernanny but maybe not

That’s interesting OP, as a teacher I’ve found the opposite. Last academic year, I noticed lots of young ND children (who’d missed school so far due to covid, so delayed diagnoses) with parents who were struggling to accept that their child may have had some neurological differences.

On the other hand, some parents are utterly shocked to learn their child’s behaviour is ‘unasseptabool’, and then go on to describe some very strange parenting techniques at home, followed by ‘I don’t know why he/she is behaving this way!?’ It’s rarely a mystery!

This absolutely broke my heart. That poor little girl was just a normal little girl and her mother just hated her, the main reason being that she was so so selfish and self indulgent going on about how she was ugly, could no longer be career oriented and that her husband was the only man interested in her. She had no care for her daughter who obviously was desperate for positive attention. The dad was clueless and did not properly intervene as he should have done. I hope that little girl has moved on from them, and that they are firmly in the ‘I don’t know why my kids never visit’ camp.

Exactly

Those of us with ND kids just make it up.

For shits n giggles n stuff. Nothing better to do.

< if only>

when I was growing up I was slapped (hand) , and now I’m 60 I do struggle to see any evidence that it did my generation much significant harm - were the generation too where teachers would throw board rubbers or walk backs of hands with rulers if people were talking.

I'm a similar age and I don't think it did most children much harm BUT... one big problem with slapping and spanking is what do you so when (for whatever reason) it doesn't work? There you are, an angry disappointed parent whose strongest expression of disapproval just failed. So what do you do? Slap again? Slap harder?

What child development study has realised since the 1960s is that there is always something else you can do that is at least as effective as a slap or a spank, and less risky.

And another downside... my mother taught children who were more than slapped at home, because back then even quite aggressive physical punishment wasn't seen especially as a red flag. And that certainly did harm, not to most children but to those children. She used to say she could tell which children were being hit at home because they hit at school.

Exactly this. If smacking worked, you would only need to do it once.

The one that I remember most was a toddler that absolutely controlled the household. If they wanted the lights off the family sat in darkness, if they decided they didn't want to get dressed the older kids didn't make it or were late to school, in one instance one of the older children got told off because the toddler turned the computer off in the middle of them doing their homework and the kid shouted and made the toddler cry.

The parents deserved to have their heads banged together on that one.

I used to do dance practice with Erin. They were a lovely family.

Is it Georgina with Warwick Dyer? I think I've seen clips of it online, must be on youtube. Horrendous.

Agree entirely. Young people are largely delightful.

While we're talking about old parenting programmes, does anyone remember Tanya Byron and House of Tiny Tearaways? Similar vintage but a bit deeper than Supernanny.

Totally agree but we'll probably be shot down for having this opinion.
Too much 'gentle parenting' and validating feelings going on these days and not enough actual parenting with clear boundaries.

@drunkpeacock yes! That's the one. Thank you. I'll rewatch it later. Having now children myself I imagine it'll be even harder to watch than it was the first time

I remember watching Super Nanny and House of Tiny Tearaways as an early 20s person.

As a child my parents had smacked me and used a brutal alternative silent treatment/Alex Ferguson hairdryer-in-face-shouting regime for when they disciplined 'bad behaviour'.

Seeing Jo and Tanya advocate for consistent, non-violent approaches was a balm that showed me I could do parenting differently/positively and actually made me consider having children.

I don't hold with the forcing eating or no-interaction with bedtime returns to bed, but I'm grateful for what I observed.

Nothing replaced it, hence the threads I see here regularly about out of control behaviour in school and kids getting repeatedly injured by classmates. I agree she didn't really deal with SEN but children with SEN are not allowed to hit or bite either so discipline is needed there too just maybe a different approach and more understanding.

I think parents who let their kids with behaviour problems go on TV should be utterly ashamed of themselves though. That in my view is what makes them shit parents not what actually went on day to day.

My dc is 17 so supernanny is my era.
My recollection is the early ones were quite tame and often had bery basic advice. There was one where twin toddlers were being shoehorned into high chairs, throwing bottles and she was you just sit together at table, don’t treat them as babies - not controversial but effective. Likewise the don’t give them lots of attention at night if you want them to sleep.
The ignore the bad praise the good mantra. I used that with a colleague at work!
As ever they needed more extreme examples for tv and I don’t recall any discussion of additional needs.
The American ones were eye opening. Often far too many children for one adult to cope with and completely unreasonable schedules and expectations. Expecting 4 years old to nap for hours then wondering why won’t sleep at night. There was a mom working ft at home with a headset on complaining her bored unsupervised 4 yr old twins were naughty.

Let's rephrase this question but instead of autism etc, let's switch in a physical condition.

Let's say Jenny struggles to walk, can only manage very limited distances, and doing more just isn't possible for her without causing real pain and distress.

Would you try and adapt the environment to support Jenny to help her achieve her potential?

Or would you say "tough shit, Jenny needs to learn how to manage because otherwise she's being set up to fail?"

Clearly any decent person would pick the first option - finding a way to help Jenny manage by adapting the environment to make it accessible, while also accepting that there may be some environments which just aren't going to work for her.

The problem is that most people don't really believe that autism and associated conditions are a real thing. They might say they do, but comments are needing to "learn to cope" demonstrate that the condition and its challenges just aren't taken seriously.

Lots of autistic people have suffered deep, lasting psychological damage by trying to cope for too long in environments that weren't suitable for them.

It doesn't mean an autistic child shouldn't be supported to develop appropriate coping strategies. But what's possible and appropriate differs for each child and the whole "well, they need to learn sometime" approach is so offensive.

I tell you what is cruel. Expecting a neurodivergent child to cope with things which are overwhelming, traumatic and painful - just because a neurotypical child can cope, doesn't mean an autistic child can.

I am autistic/ADHD, and I have two DC (twins) who are both autistic (plus a few other diagnoses). All diagnosed officially for the naysayers on this thread who seem to think we delight in sniffing out a diagnosis for some kind of misplaced kudos.

No, because as adults, we choose our environments depending on what we can cope with.

I am ND (diagnosed in adulthood) and I have been inadvertently doing this my whole adult life, but everybody, even NT people, do this to a certain extent. We specifically choose jobs and careers that we know we can cope with and avoid ones that we know we won’t. I have always known that I absolutely could not cope with a teaching or healthcare profession, so I avoided those. We choose our friends, partners, and anyone we spend time based on how they make us feel and avoid those who make us feel bad/overstimulated/angry. We avoid social situations that we know we would find very difficult. We choose when to do things such as grocery shopping at a time that suits us. We avoid places we may feel uncomfortable, stressed, and unhappy in, such as nightclubs/pubs/busy shopping centres on a Saturday.

Children do not have this privilege. They have no control over their environments or who they spend time with. NT children may be able to adapt to a busy school of 1000 pupils, or being dragged around Lakeside by their parents at 1pm on Saturday, but many ND children do not have the capacity to cope with these situations and will have a meltdown. Their brains are literally wired differently and no amount of forcing them to “learn to adapt” will change this. You may as well ask a diabetic to “learn to adapt” to sugar.

Giving them some control over their environments at an age where they typically have no control whatsoever is not mollycoddling.

That wasn't super nanny. It was a different programme, one more based on actual helpful psychological advice.

The mum and daughter were clearly ND. I'm pretty sure they were effectively helped in the end. I remember looking into it. It was so disturbing.

I did empathise with the parents- they'd had a nice, quiet life and were now living in trauma because everything they did made their daughter worse. They had no idea how to manage her. They were doing very badly, with no resources to do better. It was painful.

And obviously that poor little girl bore the brunt of it. As I say, I'm sure they resolved it in the end.

The mum was so far beyond her ability to cope and process what was happening. Her DC was not responding like a spreadsheet, and she was completely adrift.

https://supernanny.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Supernanny_(U.K.)_episodes
Looking at that summary the naughty step featured most episodes.

I think it's also incorrect to say behaviour is worse in children these days because of lack of discipline. I recall every single school class in the 90s being disrupted by poor behaviour. My own mum was the very definition of a tearaway in the 70s.