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 was talking about this today!! It wasn't Jo frost but a guy who was a parenting expert there was a series of about 4 families he helped. That little girls mum was very damaged by her own upbringing... tho things looked better by the end! I would love to know how that panned out! It's on YouTube the series but I can't remember what his name is

There is surely a middle line here?

I have seen some (SOME) parents rushing to label their child as ND when that doesn’t appear to be the case because they have challenging behaviour. I have also seen parents whose children appear to be ND ignoring their behaviour completely and refusing to engage with teachers who bring ND up as a possibility. Then in the middle there are the parents who recognise that their children are different and struggling and engage with the system to get a diagnosis and the help that they need - the largest group, fortunately. All three of these scenarios happen.

re: difficult behaviour, sometimes this is down to neurodiversity but it is also often down to a parent or carer behaving in a way that creates mixed boundaries or no boundaries at all, confusing messages or fear. Surely if your child is struggling and displaying challenging behaviour then the first thing you should do is have a good look at how you and other adults around the child are behaving and address that? If you modify your behaviour, using recognised tactics that bring out the best behaviour in most children and your child is still challenging, then going down the route of looking for a diagnosis is the next step.

An example: an acquaintance regularly brings her 4 year old DD to gatherings that my friends have (other children of all ages also there). Her behaviour is really difficult. She is destructive, thinks nothing of deliberately breaking things in other peoples houses or other children’s toys, hurts other children, doesn’t do as she’s asked etc. Is she neurotypical? I don’t know - I don’t see her often enough to have an informed opinion. But in all the times I’ve been in her company, I have never once seen her parents engage with her other than to shout “we’re going” or “good time” or other instructions. I’ve never seen them talk with her or praise her or try to engage her in anything. I’ve never seen them tell her “no” or that any behaviour is unacceptable or try to give her any boundaries. Her mum will occasionally look over to where she is destroying something and shrug and say “ugh, she’s always so naughty” then carry on chatting to a friend. The parents are clearly doing this child a disservice in this case. If they changed their behaviour then the chances are that she might too…or if she can’t, then possibly she needs more specialist help. I always had the assumption that that’s what the Supernanny programmes were trying to do, but that less was known about ASD and the like 20 years ago so they were sometimes off the mark.

The naughty step and Supernanny was discussed in my adopter preparation sessions at the time. The advice was pretty much take what Supernanny says then disregard it. The naughty step and time out for a child struggling with attachment is pushing them away when the need you most to regulate. Instead “time in” was advocated. Stopping them doing what they were doing and sitting close together until they were calm enough to talk.

This is what I do. If my 3 year old has got to the point she is totally in meltdown mode I just sit down quietly and let her until she's ready for a cuddle. She cant listen or understand me at that point. I have to wait for her to calm down and then talk to her.

👏👏👏👏 @SpidersAreShitheads

This.

A lot of the old US episodes I've watched seem to be Jo Frost training parents.

There were parents who hit their children after they hit them/other children, WFH mothers too busy with work to give 3+ young children attention, dads who were never home or when they were home were working, parents allowing young children to run around the neighbourhood unsupervised, etc.

There was also one episode where the dad refused to engage with his children at all. Not too long after filming the parents got divorced.

I think the issue is that for certain people, any reference to SEN has them rolling their eyeballs and muttering about how "every child" has a label these days and "how easy" it is to get a diagnosis.

Which is complete and utter bollocks, and quite honestly, deeply offensive to those of us who have had to fight our way through the system to get our children the support they desperately need.

The same people don't believe an official diagnosis - even though it is very, very hard to get a diagnosis and you can't get one without hard evidence from a variety of different professionals.

Absolutely agree there are outliers on either side.

The problem is that there are certain people who prefer to assume that the rare outliers are the norm, and don't accept neurodivergence is a real thing. And they always fucking pop up on these posts.

I could never stand Jo Frost, she just seemed like a school bully type to me.

Did used to watch Tanya Byron and House of Tiny Tearaways. Much more gentle and good advice I thought.

Surely you need to help them learn to adapt to the environment they are in, rather than adapting the environment around them?

It's a mix. You put children in an environment where they can mostly succeed, and you expand the boundaries as they learn to do more. You start off doing a lot for them, then as they mature they learn to manage for themselves. You look at what they can do and what they can cope with now and then ask "now what's the next step and how do we get there?" You don't try to take steps that are too big at a time or the child gets used to failing. And you don't know how far they'll get when you start.

Same as you may want a child to read by the time they grow up but you don't start them off with a full length novel.

What you have to remember is Jo herself was heavily edited and pushed to behave in certain ways by the producers. I've read her confident toddler care book and it's actually really good. It's more about establishing good communication and clear boundaries with children and offers a few techniques to try acknowledging that not every technique will suit every child.

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

Don't agree with smacking, but this could be said of any discipline technique.

If time out/losing a sticker/whatever else worked then you would only need to do it once.

But I don't think that's true anyway. I can know perfectly well that if I eat too much chocolate then I get a headache-and I still do it sometimes when the chocolate is in front of me. Sometimes I even think as I'm doing it that I will have a headache later, and it doesn't always stop me from just having one more.

I thought the whole premise of the show was unethical , whatever approach Jo F took.

Children should not be exposed on national TV for their behaviour, how could a child properly consent to that? Imagine all your school friends watching? All and sundry discussing your behaviour, picking over your family life. The editing done to make the child look their worst.

Dreadful.

Wife Swap was bad, too. Children subjected to some woman coming into their home and trying to make improvements on their Mum’s way of doing things, filming the comments about children’s behaviour etc as entertainment on national TV.

I've seen lots of US reruns on my facebook feed recently.
Supernanny was for many people a bridge between the old days of hitting kids and yet still having the obey me attitude and a proper punishment. It gave a lot of parents an alternative to hitting without feeling that they were loosing their authority. Kids obey or else they get punished.
For some of the US families it was revolutionary there were quite a few who beat their kids on camera, one piece of excrement man who called his teenage step daughters b**$%es and beat the little kids with a belt (I couldn't watch that one).
But she was very authoritarian.
My stomach curled watching her tell a parent to put the kid back on the naughty step, when the kid after doing their time and say sorry, refused the hug and said they wanted to go to their room because they were mad about the naughty step. Ie she was advocating punishing a kid for not wanting to hug and valid feelings. Even if you were rightly punished (as in this case for the original offence), you're still allowed to be angry about it. But the kid was punished for it at Supernanny's urging.

Tanya Byron was much better, and she coached parents via a wire, so the kids couldn't see that someone else was pulling the strings and parents weren't in control.

I watched House of TT before I had kids and I found it utterly fascinating how she could turn things around. The most important thing was that it was always about the parents and nearly always down to some kind of trauma or similar which, once Tanya got to the bottom of, the “problem” would resolve.
When I went on to have children I really tried to use her strategies and figure out, if one of my boys is being awful, why? What’s going on in the background? I found that if I was cross and grumpy, my eldest especially would mimic that behaviour with his younger brother. Also, if mine behaved unpleasantly it was always some call for attention (any attention is better than no attention).
I clearly remember once, my eldest was going to his grandparents and he was so stroppy and grumpy (he was aged about 3 or 4) and I was grumpy back and then I just said to him “is there something you’re worried about?” and he just burst into tears and went “YES I don’t want to go because I’ll miss you” and I realised that grumpy or angry behaviour was basically fear or worry.
Dr Byron really made me realise that you have to look at yourself to figure out what’s going on!

Parents want diagnoses so they can be informed of the best and most effective parenting for their child. A diagnosis is not an excuse. It’s a pointer to understanding your child and creating the best way to effectively parent them. Parenting a child with SEN is nothing like parenting a NT kid. Long post but knowing your child is the best way to parent them. Build a bridge not a fence. Children are complex humans. Jo frost shouldn’t be any where near children SEN or not.

I don't know how you conclude this approach sets up children to fail. It doesn't!

I've worked in the field of SEN since 1985 and have an autistic dd who is coming up for 19. I can state categorically that if you start from where the child is, and aim for an optimal living and learning environment, they have the greatest chance to develop and learn and cope as adults, whether that's in supported, semi-supported or independent living. The aim isn't to try and make everyone 'normal'. It's about finding the best pathway for each individual. It may not be about getting a job and getting married.

It is an approach that nurtures success not sets anyone up for failure. As children develop and learn the nature of that 'optimal' environment changes. For most, but not all, it gradually moves towards a more typical set of experiences.

Mainstream primary school completely destroyed my daughter. Physically, mentally and emotionally. After 3 years of being pushed to fit the 'typical' I finally convinced the powers that be, that a school environment was not right for her. We'd tried every type of mainstream and specialist provision and the destruction continued. Till ultimately she was assessed as needing education other than at school and the LA had fund home based provision. I've lost count of the number of people, professionals and friends, who told me that dd needed to learn that the world didn't revolve around her, that she'll never get a job if she's stuck at home, that I was setting her up to fail because the real world wouldn't adapt for her , that by not insisting on school I was not setting firm boundaries, that dd wouldn't make friends if she didn't go to school......

Well, DD has been nurtured and is now thriving. She has a job, a boyfriend, drives a car....Her years of highly unusual living and learning environment haven't stopped her from having an active role in that 'real' world. She's learned to be an autistic adult in a non-autistic world. She was only able to do that by spending a long time learning about herself, her autism and mental health and what works best for her, not just academic studies. It all takes its toll mind you, and people who know her in a work situation would be shocked to see what adaptations are still needed at home to compensate for energy expended on functioning in the 'real world'.

Learning at home isn't the right environment for everyone. I've seen the same pattern of growth for example when a mainstream environment wasn't meeting a child's needs but parents were convinced that this was the best place to be if their child was going to 'make it' in the 'real world', and then eventually when the child moved to a specialist provision, they blossomed because they had access to an adaptations that the mainstream classroom couldn't provide. Its like planting a tree in the right soil and watching it bloom.

Mainstream might be the right environment. But too often, the adaptations needed to support the child in that mainstream are not made. There's a prevailing attitude that child should have the fewest adaptations possible, rather than the greatest number, to make their lives and learning easier.

Imagine if you signed up for an evening class to learn a new language, and turned up to find that room you would be learning in was stifling hot, there was drilling going on in the room next door, that the chairs were rock hard the wrong height for the tables, that the teacher spoke so softly you had to struggle to hear, and that everyone else in the class had been sent an introductory booklet that you hadn't received and so you didn't know what was going on but they did. I'm guessing you would want some changes to the environment before you could happily learn there. You might be a bit irritated if you were told that next week you should wear lighter clothing and bring more water to cope with the heat, "do better listening" to the teacher, not wriggle on your chair because its distracting, pay more attention because everyone else knew what was going on ....

I loved this series! It was so much more valuable than supernanny. Dr Tanya has the qualifications to unpick what was happening for each family - not one size fits all response. Her understanding of the issues directed the approach. It was informative and constructive. She did use some strategies like time out occasionally but not as blunt instrument.

A really useful perspective and insight into neurodiversity, thank you @CorylusAgain .

@CorylusAgain yes and being a psychologist she had the skills to get to the real issues. I remember one small child who just would not eat anything other than a few spoons of yogurt and the parents were always there hovering over her, cajoling etc and Dr Byron made them eat their lunch with her doing the same to them to show them how off putting it was!
But basically the child had not thrived as a baby and had been premature and the mum was just so focussed on getting food into her that she just let her eat only yogurt. Food was just a massive issue for her. Anyway, the breakthrough came and the mum was so lovely and determined to put things right.
It was a great series, they should do it again.

Food was often an issue wasn't it @Ozgirl75 ? And the family histories like the one you describe were really enlightening. Focussing on the behaviour (not eating) doesn't help. Understanding why the child is not eating is vital. As PP said, it was the parents who needed to understand and change. And she facilitated that so well

And she was just kind and empathetic and understood that these weren’t bad parents, they had their own issues and traumas that were hugely affecting their own parenting.

Makes sense that it was food - I think I remember her saying that food and toilet stuff were the only areas that small children can truly control so you need to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes in their minds.

For those who enjoyed House of Tiny Tearaways professor Byron and Claudia winkleman have a great podcast called 'how did we get here'

I like some of her methods but not all. I think she was good at bedtimes and getting routines in place there as well as enforcing consistency between the parents and the way they parent their children. I do agree however that she didn't seem to focus on the fact that a child may be autistic.
After working with kids for many years, I do think some children are not used to hearing the word no and rule the roost in some families.

*Surely you need to help them learn to adapt to the environment they are in, rather than adapting the environment around them?

You are 100% setting them up to fail when they grow up… it’s cruel really*!

Presumably your ableist attitude extends to not allowing ramps for wheelchair users because they need to learn to adapt to a non wheelchair world majority or sign language shouldn't be used and deaf people need to adapt to the environment where most people don't sign? Or is it just neurodiversity that you think should be 'adapted' out of people? (Which is a simple as making a left handed person use their right hand).

Individuals are protected by the equality act, so no, you're wrong and if the public could actually change the environment so non disabled people weren't always the priority in every setting, everyone would be much happier in the world. I think you should do a bit of research and review your shocking attitude.