To think Jo Frost (Supernanny) was wrong to post inflammatory comments

[Margot78]

Jo Frost shared this on her FB page. I’m
not sure why, I was quite baffled by it. Surely she knows that parents of children with asd/adhd/ocd will be offended at the suggestion that they are chasing a label for their child? Not sure what she was trying to achieve with this!

I have a lisp and high frequency hearing loss which makes my voice sound a bit nasally. I've only ever had one comment on the sound of it from a child, which was when I was asked why I "sounded funny". This is ok, acceptable as it was a child. If it had come from the same type of people on here, adults who should know better, then I wouldn't be able to hide my feelings.

People need to learn that disabilities in all forms are deserving of compassion and respect.

Your friend was in the wrong job
Well, you seem to be proving her point! She did the job for over 25 years and was highly regarded. She specialises in autism, early on in the late 80s. She loved her job, the children, but those arrogant parents who somehow would argue using the entire session that they knew better, despite having no medical background and only the experience of their own kid or a handful at best was laughable. She saw thousands of kids and trained for 10 years! She was constantly running late for dealing with these parents. Of course, that wasn't most parents but it took only a handful to make her day hell.

The amount of '😂' responses to that post on a thread about possible disabilities is really ironic.

Exactly, it is. Funny how people can hide behind keyboards and be horrible.

I agree totally with her.

She sounds quite unprofessional to be discussing in such detail and in such a disparaging way desperate parents. Children would have reached certain thresholds and dealings within the system to get access to a paediatrician.

She’s right!

She’s hit a nerve with a lot of people on this thread, that’s for sure!

Children are naughty because they’re trying to communicate something and mostly as a way of getting attention. Whilst I don’t agree with this post I see what she’s saying. It seems so many people are looking for reasons to explain why their child is difficult. What children need is just attention and time which, sadly, not many parents have the luxury in modern society to offer.

It seems to be the general consensus among those who choose to become parents that if you don’t have a perfectly compliant child who is happy to be pushed from pillar to post, sleep soundly in their own bed and cause you minimum effort so you can carry on your life as it was before you had children, then there must be something wrong with them.

I wonder if her point is that most of the children she has to deal with are just a result of poor parenting issues but the parents don't accept that and want to find a label instead to take the responsibility away from themselves for just being a bit shyte at parenting and believe it's not their fault if they can find a label to blame it on. We've already had a paediatric worker post on here that most of the 4 to 8 year 9lds they see just have attachment issues from inadequate parenting but the parents demand labels to shift responsibility away from their own failings.

That's exactly how I read it, but it seems most other posters read it totally differently... 🤔

I think posters with kids with asd/adhd are defensive as they feel their kids behaviour is being questioned. But its really not.

It’s not like social workers go through several years of advance academic and practical training or anything is it... oh no, if they just had a kid they’d be much better at all of the theory, knowledge, interventions, compassion, legal understanding, etc. 🙄

I’d be more curious to listen to parenting advice from someone who has cared for many different children (such as a nanny) than someone who’s raised just one or two or three of their own and has a far smaller sample size of experience.

most of the workers at my kid’s nursery don’t yet have kids and they’re all bloody fantastic at caring for and understanding kids, making suggestions for positive behaviour modelling, connecting with them, helping them flourish and develop, they really know their shit.

personally the friends I have who’ve had the most useful advice/input on parenting troubles I’ve had have been the ones without kids as they see it totally differently instead of just through their own lens of how they’re parenting. We’ve all been kids and we’re all humans. Suggesting that you wouldn’t listen to a trained experienced professional cos they haven’t had kids is wild.

I can’t stand Jo Frost btw. Her being childfree is not why.

Excellent. Refer to a relatively rare condition (munchausens by proxy) rather than actually acknowledge the fact that neurodiversity isn’t given the same respect as physical disabilities. Completely ignore the fact that neurodiverse people are constantly told we’re making it up or just need to try harder. And that’s been said repeatedly by many on this post. Excellent. Pretty much as expected.

Again, just illustrates my point perfectly.

The flippant reference to “abcd” people really didn’t help. It suggests quite a derogatory attitude, even if gay wasn’t the intent.

*that not gay

sigh

But that assumes that their naughtiness is caused by some syndrome or whatever, MN refuses to accept that some children are just naughty.

It wasn't worded brilliantly, but I think what's she's trying to say is that too many parents hide behind these labels to excuse their child's poor behaviour and thus don't properly deal with it.

Indeed. And unfortunately it'll be these types of parents who will get defensive about this sort of thing.

I have absolutely no reason to get defensive about what she said because it doesn't take away from ds's diagnosis. It isn't a reflection on me and him so why would I be bothered.

Oh this episode was my favourite 😂

That is fine if you don't want him to sleep separately from you.

Jo Frost was a nanny for well-off families. She was not a parent. But she would have looked after some children for long periods of time and done most of the caring. Nannies are not allowed to stick kids in front of the TV for a break while they have a drink. Expectations are usually pretty high.

Well I don’t know where you are but in my area I couldn’t get a referral for an assessment unless it came from the school and school only agreed after they couldn’t continue to label DS2 as a naughty boy who was refusing to learn when he got to age 9. Two years for an NHS assessment at my local CDC. A further 5 years after years of hell and wasted mandatory school years with absolutely no support before I was granted a reassessment at Guys & St Thomas’s (another 2 year wait) with a full panel of Neuro Sciences Consultant, Clinical Psychologist, SALT and OT, who were perplexed that he hadn’t been diagnosed while at primary school as they had access to his school record and it was glaringly obvious.

I had been told by someone in the know that due to ‘over diagnosis’ some areas put a limit on how many diagnoses they made in a year. DS’s local Paed ‘moved on’ very quickly after his diagnosis at Guys. So quickly that when I put in a formal complaint I was told that as she no longer worked for the NHS, there wasn’t much they could do.

I couldn’t just rock up to an NHS Paediatrician with DS in tow demanding an ASD diagnosis because I wanted validation that my shit parenting wasn’t the cause of his behaviour! Failed miserably the first time anyway and the enhanced rate PIP he gets now certainly wasn’t worth 12 years chasing a diagnosis purely to get the small amount of support he gets now or the effect the lack of diagnosis has had on his education and MH.

Bullshit.