to feel sickened at a very distressed 6 year old being exposed to the whole nation on TV?

[emkana]

Just watched the Jo Frost programme because I wanted to see about the portion sizes. There's that girl Paige, 6, on there, who is desperate to sleep in her Mum's bed, and she is extremely distressed. There are obviously some deeper running issues there, but instead of those being addressed she is just being "beaten" (not literally) into submission. It made me want to cry. And all this with all the cameras pointed at her.

not actually seen the program, but I do think it's an invasion of children's privacy in general to be putting their perceived misbehaviour on TV.

i did watch this ep. the mum was on her own because partner had left due to the childs sleeping arrangements.

poor woman was shattered and said she didnt think she'd ever have a bf again.

my neice employed these exact same tactics until she was ten to get in with pnts. they had complaints off neighbours, dilliberate wetting/messing herself, kicking parents/pets etc to get her own way

very disstressing to wittness but ultimatly she was litterally doing whatever she could to get her own way. this would then be employed to every situation where she couldn't get her own way. there was no genuine fear i promise.

eventually they used similar tactics as on show, put locks on their door(bit extreme but so was the prob) and gave her a radio to fall asleep to so she wasn't as alone and within a week or so they cracked it.

i do watch the show but think with this and even MN you take from it what you want.

agree i definately would not have wanted cameras around if this was happening in my house. i hope the poor girl doesn't get picked on because of it, but mum must have been desperate to call them in the first place.

what i was impressed with most was the calmness and well behavedness (is that a word?) of the younger sister. i hope that she gets enough praise and attention to reward her good behavior

If it's just a habit then how come some children grow out of it aged 3ish? My dd's are now 8 and 6, haven't come in with us for years, but we always let them when they wanted to when they were younger.

It seems a very British obsession with not letting children into your bed; haven't come across it so strongly in Sweden. My brother used to quite often share his bed with partner, 3 children and 3 cats. I wonder why it is- do the British have more narrow beds? In many cultures, communal bedsharing is the norm, so does that mean people from these cultures are permanently sleep deprived? Or that they are just better at sleeping anyway?

Personally, I have never found it more difficult to sleep with a child in my bed that with 50yo dh, in fact rather easier. Either one of us would sneak off into ds'/dd's bed, or if all three stayed that meant dh couldn't get into prime snoring position- so either way, I'd get a much better night's sleep. I wonder why so many people find it so hard to sleep next to a child, but are quite happy sleeping next to an adult, who is likely to take up more space and snore more loudly. Seems to be quite culture specific.

Exactly cory. It's nice to sleep cuddled up with someone. I had a friend who's mum got divorced in her 50s, she had grown up in a large family in slums and it was the first time she had ever slept alone and she found it really really hard.

I remember seeing a clip of "Little Princess" once (programme on C5 for little children, TBH, I can't stand it for the most part) where the king is telling the little princess she has to sleep in her own bed, he says something like "You have your teddy to keep you company" and she says "But you've got Mummy." She got it right there!

Really don't like the whole Supernanny thing. Fights and battles have their place and it's not in child rearing.

There's some shocking parenting on there too, which is obviously why Supernanny is called but it's distressing viewing. The parents tend to have parented so badly that they have created the very problems they need an outsider in to deal with.

I didn't see the program, but I do think it is a problem if things affect the adult reationships. In this instance the womans partner had left beacuse of the sleeping arrangements, someone said?

I know a family where the eldest sleeps in with the mum and the baby, the dad sleeps in a different room. That is not healthy for their relationship, and they know it, but how can they stop now? It's how things are.

FWIW my brother and I were shit scared of the dark. When parents put their foot down about going in with them, we slept in teh hall outside their room, then both in my room, then eventually went our separate ways around puberty age. I would be surprised if anyone thought they were being mean with us sleeping outside their door - we had perfectly good beds to sleep in, we wnated to be nearer our paretns, it was our choice YSWIM. No harm done.

The portion sizes are absoultely shocking what are they for elves? Children need all the energy, they are usually on the go, playing doing actitvities going to school. I agree on a health diet with the right portions but a quarter of a mini pizza , hope that its not the only thing, that there are potatoes, veg accompanying it.

As for the little girl not sleeping in her own bed, her distress was shocking and at times I could not watch. Sleeping in her mums bed might be all that she knows and like others have said a habit that had to be sorted earlier or it would get to that.

What is this portion size stuff? Who has decreed these portions?

With the mini pizza, are they maybe restricting it because of salt content or something, rather than saying that is how many calories a child needs? My baby eats more than that and she's not even one yet...

completly agree that most shown on supernanny have only themselves to blame for their parenting problems. please note i say parenting problems rather than dcs misbehaving.

i don't think the prob is whether dcs should come in with mum/dad, it's whether you want them to.

personally i have no probs with ds coming in in morning with us but if he calls too early, he is happy to understand we are still tired. he comes in and it's playtime not rest.

equally i'v no prob with others wanting to let their dcs in with them all/some of the night. it's a personal thing but this woman obviously didn't or she wouldn't have asked for help.

Ds (5.7) still gets into our bed in the middle of the night. I will have to address the issue soon as I don't get a good nights sleep. I don't want to wait until ds is ready to sleep on his own because that might never happen, I was still asking my mum to sleep with me when I was 13!

Unfortunately some kids do not move out of their parents beds, BIL, 14 years old only just moved out of MILs bed. If it were up to MIL he'd still be there, I think. She always painted it like it was his decision, but it was clearly cos she didn't want to be alone. It was getting seriously dodgy, DH and I decided we'd make a fuss about it when he reached 15yo, but thankfully it never came to that!

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP, that poor little girl

I think that the issue with this particular family was that the little girl didn't sleep well in her mum's bed - so they were both getting broken nights and not enough sleep, and felt that they would all be better off if the little girl was getting a proper night's sleep, and that she'd get that in her own bed.

I saw a lot of temper in the girl's crying - creating a huge fuss because that would get her what she wanted, and that is not a good thing to encourage, in my book. If the mum lets the little girl sleep in her bed because she is frightened of how she'll behave if she's not allowed, that is going to spill over into everything else - 'I want it and I will scream and scream until I'm sick - and I can, you know....'

davidsgirl totally agree as i said previous post my neice did this and would use temper tactics whenever she wanted for whatever she wanted eventually.

it was only then they seemed to realise it all started with this not wanting to sleep alone

but she took until 6am to finally go to sleep - there HAD to be another way - i thought it was horrific.

Our DD has always been difficult at bedtime - my DP had to lie with her for hours in her bed, then one night, she told DP "you go and lay on your bed daddy, i'll ring the bell if i need you (she had a little cow bell in her b/room) and now that is what happens - it took four years of one of use doing bedtime every night, but we got there in the end without any dramas, i would have gone down the supernanny route my my DP was adamant that it wasn't going to happen - do you know - he was right.

I totally agree about the whole "battle" thing and not letting the child win - they are CHILDREN and yes, boundaries are good - but there is no way on this earth i would let my child get so distressed, if that woman was in my house and not allowing me to go to my distressed daughter, she would be leaving minus a few teeth!

It was difficult to watch but surely worth the short term distress for the long term gain? I don't think that there are/were any deep hidden issues - the little girl had got into the habit of sleeping in her mums bed, it was causing problems so she needed a solution. The little girl was feisty, bad tempered and wanted her own way and she eventually learned that she couldn't have her own way. She seemed pretty happy by the end of the show, and both she AND her mum were having a better nights sleep.

Did no one watch it through to the end? Yes, it was horrid viewing, but the child was clearly doing it out of habit and to wind her mother up - she (the child) was very obviously incredibly tired, and therefore unable to function properly during the day. The most telling thing, though, was surely the night she spent with her Grandmother in Granny's caravan - she tried it on once, Granny said no, she went to bed and was asleep before 10pm.
By the end of the episode, she was not only sleeping in her own room, but was playing in there too with her sister, was much happier, seemed more energetic, and the mother was over the moon. Therefore, everyone was happier and the family was far more able to function in a positive manner.
If you don't like what happens on Supernanny - don't watch it! It's the same every week! I didn't find this one anywhere near as distressing as the one where the mother was physically shoving food into her pre-schooler's mouth as the girl was refusing to eat. That was really dreadful.

Surely this is just the old chestnut of CC against no CC? It all depends on your personal feelings. My personal feelings are that teaching a child that they do not always NEED to be just inches away from mummy is a good thing. Others are happy to have child inches away until they decide themselves to move away. I like mine and my husbnd's personal space, and we do not share our bed with DD. She still knows she is loved.

WEll i personally think that CC is barbaric and still am deeply puzzled why it has a place in modern parenting when we are supposed to be more aware of our childrens' needs than ever

Eeek - I rarely baulk at Super nanny's methods, I must be a hard faced old boot of a mother

What I baulk at is not so much the methods as such, but the idea of letting your child appear on national television as an example of the badly behaved/spoilt child. Imagine what it's going to be like to be that child in the playground, or next time you go on a playdate? Or that 13yo who went clubbing- how safe do you reckon she is now, after she has been advertised to all the local semi-paedos?

If you are that desperate, surely there is confidential help you could be getting?

Agree, I'm really uncomfortable with these children's distress and personal 'challenges' being served up for our entertainment each week.

And am uncomfortable that there is only ever one method used; basically, it's controlled crying/repeated return and that's it. There's never any room for other, gentler, techniques such as gradual withdrawal because lets face it, that's not such good telly

I don't think the issue is the child sleeping in her mothers bed. Fine, if the mother wants her out then thats up to her.

But why film the whole distressing scene, the little girl was hysterical, no one was comforting her and the mother was encouraged to be cold towards her.

You can still be kind to her and firm at the same time, there was a bit in the programme were she looks directly into the camera, and that just made me sad.