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!

There is no embarrassment anymore, years ago your child played up on a supermarket throwing things and crying / screaming parents were embarrassed and the behaviour was dealt with and the child reprimanded or distracted etc
I remember being told 'don't you dare show us up!'
But a lot (not all) parents don't feel this way now behaviour is explained my a label which silences people and stop's criticism.
I know of a little boy with Asperger's and another disorder I forget the name of and he very much is noticeably different In his ways of thinking / acting however he is held to the same standards as his siblings in terms of behaviour it is not a lab excuse for him to be rude/ not listen etc

So I'm not saying children do not have these issues of course some do but it's the certain types of families and parents that give these disorders a bad overused name

To think Jo Frost was wrong would just cover it, for me. Dreadful individual, don't know how she got on TV at all.

Hang on a sec. I don't know why she's being criticised so badly. She's not even current. Apart from this recent comment.

I've just had to look it up. She quit making the programmes in 2010, having made them for 6 years: so 2004 to 2010.
So any programmes you see re-running on tv may be nearly 20 years old.

I remember watching her programmes. The American ones were the worst. Most/ some of the parents looked like they only had half a brain cell, if that. No awareness, none of them had ever talked to any of their friends about parenting. Often, No basic discipline. No basic parenting at all in some households. None/some of the parents seemed to have read any parenting books at all! Mostly kids crying out for love and attention.

I remember watching a couple and was shocked at why parents weren't even doing the basics.

What about the very gentile 'how to talk do your kids will listen' with its sweet suggestions of choices: do you want to put your socks on now or in 2 minutes: do you want blue socks or red socks. Ahh bless, I remember those days! None of JFs participants looked liked they'd ever read such a book.

There are plenty of children out there now with ASD, ADHD. I'm sure There are plenty of naughty children out there too now. Most are just normal.

But it's OK to laugh at speech impediments?

@SusanPerbCallMeSue

And then people like her hear ADHD and think he's some terrible kid who's disruptive and hyperactive. He's not, he's inattentive, so usually in a world of his own and needing a nudge and extra help to stay focussed.

This resonated with me as my son is the same. He's quiet and mild mannered but very inattentive and struggles to focus. After getting a diagnosis of ADHD and starting on medication he's suddenly achieving everything he couldn't before.

People hear the diagnosis of ADHD and are shocked as he doesn't fit their idea of what it is. ADHD doesn't automatically equal 'naughtiness' and I wish people understood that.

She is right. We all understand that behaviour has to be managed, whether its because of ADHD or because a child's lack of parental boundaries mean their behaviour is just naughty. (I'm using ADHD because this is what I have experience with). We've all seen well behaved children with ADHD and extremely bad behaviour in NT children. We've also seen appalling behaviour excused and not corrected because the child has ADHD. Its more "asseptable" to say your child has for example ADHD than admit they are just a little shit who isn't parented properly. Naughty implies parental fault and lack of boundaries, or some sort of home issue which is causing emotional turmoil. No parent wants to admit that.

I read it more as in the was people say ‘oh I’m a bit OCD’ or ‘Jesus, has that kid got ADHD?!’ It’s part of our language and it’s wrong to do that. I also know personally parents who are desperate to ‘label’ their difficult child, even when then behaviours are largely average and age appropriate. I think parents expectations of ‘an average child’ are skewed. In a similar way to how expectations of an ‘average sized woman’ ‘normal healthy relationship’ and lots of things are skewed in society thanks to information overload/social media.

There is a huge difference between bold and ND.
In fact most ASD children over the age of 7 with the right therapist are amazing children.
She should have known better.
Maybe slim women who are fit can give her some advice on excusing bad behaviours like overeating for a start.

Children who have ADHD have evidence of a narrowed thought process cortex in the brain.

Absolutely agree with you that diagnoses given by the health service are rigorous (in the UK).

I don’t think Jo is commenting on the health service though, she’s commenting on parenting.

I work with children and parents, and when a parent tells me “he has ADHD” or “he has PDA” (also sometimes “she has PTSD”) I HAVE to double check this, because a good 25% of the time the child has no such diagnosis.

That’s not to say I think these children definitely don’t have a condition (not my place to diagnose- and maybe they are just on the waiting list) and I do NOT think they are simply “naughty children” (they need help of some sort) but it’s not their parent’s place to diagnose any more than it’s mine!

It’s so unfair to the child for parents to label willy-nilly and not fully explore all the possibilities. Telling people “my child has ADHD” means others will probably ignore hyperactive behaviour, instead of trying to teach that child to regulate and attend to what’s going on. It also means that any unhelpful aspects of the parents’ parenting will go unexamined or unaddressed. This is doing such a disservice to their child!

I think she’s very dismissive and ignorant

just as a side point, where I live, the service that assesses for adhd will not accept a referral until the parent has had a ‘parenting intervention’ - this can be through the school’s PFSA, or an outside agency. It is a very awkward conversation to have with parents when they ring up asking to be referred (I work in a school) but apparently it has had to be put in place because the service is overwhelmed.

Yep. She's not wrong.

As the parent of two children with ADHD and ASD I actually agree 100% with her. My dc have never been particularly naughty and I really object to the complex conditions they have to deal with every day being attributed to children who just need some good parenting.

I feel like a horrible old right wing dinosaur saying it but there are far too many indulgent, entitled parents out there who don’t set boundaries and don’t understand that saying ‘no’ is absolutely fine. What it results in is spoiled entitled children who can’t cope in the real world where you don’t always get what you want and not everyone is prepared to change everything to suit you.

I think people are quick to want a label to explain their children’s behaviour rather than looking at their own parenting.

Parenting can be really hard and difficult to navigate. My own son has no additional needs that I know of, but I also know the MN-approved army drill Boundaries bark has no effect whatsoever: he doesn’t understand, becomes frustrated and then the whole day becomes a disaster.

Occasionally you do get people who want their child diagnosed. I know one: it’s a bit odd. She’s been saying since her son was three that he has autism. Twice she’s been told he hasn’t. She still says he has. In all other areas, she’s a lovely lady but I do find that bizarre.

There was a point in the mid 2000s when ADHD was interchangeable with naughty boys. I think that myth has mostly died down now though.

Most uncomfortably though, Supernanny was popular because some people ‘like’ to see ‘naughty’ children get their comeuppance. I suspect JF knows that and is jumping on that.

I don’t actually think many people here have a good idea of what constitutes good parenting. Not that I am necessarily an expert, but I suspect strongly that if we went to homes that was high in levels of deprivation, poverty and so on, we wouldn’t find indulgent, nicey-nice parenting.

Where might we find that?

And who tends to have the worst outcomes at school? Shall we think about that for a moment?

TreeFishFrog

What an utterly ridiculous thing to say.

So your children deserve their diagnosis, others don’t.

Autism and other neurodiversities vary hugely in how they present and severity. No 2 children will be the same and traits will vary hugely.

You know absolutely nothing about the diagnosis other children have which will have been a long and lengthy process carried out by professionals.

Oh and good parenting isn’t just saying no.

Pronouncing one word wrongly is not a speech impediment fgs

One of the reasons I knew ds wasn’t typical, was that simple discipline wasn’t cutting it. When a child has massive, unmet sensory needs, sitting on a naughty step doesn’t compete. It is the equivalent of expecting a hungry child not to cry.

I have no idea whether JF’s hugely simplistic methods work effectively with NT dc because I had to learn a massive amount about sensory regulation and find more effective parenting methods which I then used with my nt dd.

My ds is not naughty but he was difficult, and more importantly he has an incredibly very difficult time dealing with everyday things.

I have a few relatives though who know better. He masks beautifully (and at enormous cost) with people he doesn’t trust. So they conclude that I’m at fault.

There are other cultures with much kinder child rearing practices than UK/US that see childrens distress rather than naughtiness, and draw children close rather than pushing them away. They also tend to have lower levels of anxiety and MH problems too.

The sheer unkindness towards neurotypical children always astounds me. There’s an attitude you see on MN summed up in the phrase “assuming no SN”. For ds the difference that saying the magic word “autism” has made is enormous purely because it elicits a bit of kindness.

I’m honestly astonished that none of JF’s charges sued her as adults. I’d be mortified by my work if I were her.

I have no personal opinion of Jo Frost, however, she is a reality TV star, who deals out pretty standard advice about setting boundaries, occupying children and positive communication, to families who seem to be struggling.

She is an experienced nanny, but is she really a child behavioural specialist? Her shows seem to be rather voyeuristic, presenting the spectacle of a dysfunctional family, parents (particularly mothers) are often shamed before they are 'transformed' and we never really explore the multiple factors that have led to any difficulties with parenting in any of the families.

Her shows are there for the entertainment, and seem to have waned in popularity since they began in the early 2000s. Ambiguous and potentially controversial statements on social media can keep her 'relevant'.

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I agree with her. I think for every child who has adhd or autism and rhe parents are struggling with accessing help and support and desperately need it, there's another badly behaved kid who never hears the word no and is a general pain in the arse in school. And their parent wants a label as it takes away them actually having to be responsible for the bad behaviour.
But as with being diagnosed as depressed and someone saying they suffer from depression as they are a bit down some days, its a very fine line to tread.

But i do agree with her.

And i think if the parents of kids that are just badly behaved actually dealt with their own kids, parents of kids with adhd/add might get more support and help.

Asd not add

Fat fingers

True. But it starts there.

It really doesn’t.

“And i think if the parents of kids that are just badly behaved actually dealt with their own kids, parents of kids with adhd/add might get more support and help.”

How?