I notice no-one is discussing last night's Wife Swap...

[Tinker]

...are we all too shocked at how that nasty man could spend so much time on the computer neglecting that poor child?

ahha explains it a bit... also thought that Alice's mum was definately depressed- she was very emotional- didn't feel a 'good enough" mum. I reckon she had overindulged the e-bay anorak/misery guts and was beginning to realise the effect on her daughter.

No the best bit was when Dour Sterotypical Yorkshire Dad said "oooh now for the fun bit!" and it was sorting out knitting needles to sell on ebay I must admit I wondered if we had a touch of the Vanessas then and if they were actors with scripts. Surely NO-ONE thinks sorting knitting needles for 3 hours is fun? And the buying up of boxes of out of date food? And the daughter talking to her pet rocks for company? It was a wind up...surely? And the lovely chest of drawers in the living room "and look...12 month's supply of shower gel....12 month's supply of shampoo.."

I felt a bit sorry for Yorkshire Mum at the end - everything about her life was under attack: her diet, her work, her relationship with her daughter, her lifestyle, her relationship with her husband. I could understand it when she lashed out at Cornish Mum and called her a "sour faced cow" - she WAS!!!!

As always I was left utterly perplexed as to why anyone would subject their life to such public scrutiny and potential humiliation. Can't seem to stop watching though...damn it!

Anyone else feel they are running out of extremes? Think it's yet another working Mum v. Stay at Home Mum next week (yawn...)

The only solution I can see is for the extremes to become even more so. One half of gay partnership goes into highly homophobic household and vice versa; mixed race family swap with Nick Griffin's (BNF) family; devout church goers swap with devil worshippers?

Agree with all of that mm except that when watching it I did think that I would quite enjoy sorting out the knitting needles.

I believe you can get therapy for that, tinker

My grandparents used to do the buy in bulk thing. We would be given endless supplies of stale Kit Kats when we went down there. And it wasn't as they needed to save the money either. Odd.

Come to think of it, I have sat and sorted out knitting needles for my mum before now....

Will anyone still play with me?

beansprout my grandma and grandad used to 'bulk' buy aswell, i think it was a physcological thing from the war and the rationing

Sonnet, did you get the gist of it from what people have said? (I just noticed you said you missed it).

Basically Dour Yorkshire couple with only daughter, Alice. Only married 2 years (he was Alice's step-Dad). Lived in house with no garden, existed on junk food (had wedding reception at MacDonald's). Spent 6 hours a day on ebay and weekends scouring car boots for stuff to buy and sell. Also for boxes of out of date junk food to eat. Daughter quite neglected - left to play trumpet in £5000 converted attic room and talk to her collection of rocks.

Swapped with Cornish family with 4 kids. Great outdoorsy types - 25 mile bike rides and "bashes" through the countryside every day. Had small farm and animals in the house all the time (cow in bathroom, turkey in kitchen etc.) Ate home grown organic veg. and slaughtered own meat. House was pigsty - preferred spending time as a family outside than doing housework. Youngest son has CF. Kids have mad (sorry, unusual) names like Calamity Jane and BoJangles Jack.

Surprisingly enough, Cornish Mum not happy eating out of date chicken nuggets and Smash, and Yorkshire Mum not wild on yomping through the muddy Cornish countryside with her sandals on. Week 2, Yorkshire Mum locked up the bikes and took them to a car boot sale. Cornish Mum locked up the computer and took them camping.

Get the idea?

We used to get huge cardboard boxes of Penguin biscuits from a friend of my Mum's who worked at the factory. Some of them looked OK but others were clearly Mutant Penguins. I never buy Penguins these days.

Fab summary M/moo!

I felt desperately sorry for Alice - that loft was like a training ground for a serial killer.

Daughter was CalamAty apparently, not CalamIty. Others were Haby-Blu, CapabilAty something and Bow-Jango

mama mia can you do the bow-jango

So not only did they give their kids mad names, they spelled them wrong too?!!

LOL at Marthamoo's summary too . Actually, , I really liked the outdoorsey family, wish I could be a bit more like that.

I think the key there is "bit more", Bagpuss. I thought they were either a bit manic about it or encouraged by the programme makers to over-emphasise their outdoorsy lifestyle. I'd love to spend more time walking or cycling with my family, but not to the detriment of basic hygiene or stuff like homework and the odd bit of teen mooching. Having said that, surely the Huddersfield family would have scurvy if they REALLY ate nothing but crap.
I agree Fio2 - we have a child with CF living next door to us and his mother told me that one of the ways she feels she can help him is by keeping the house dust-free and very clean. I did wonder about the mantlepieces and lightshades in Devon.
I also think that by choosing such extreme opposites for the last few programmes they have lost some of the subtlety...I now find myself so horrified by either or both of the families that I am maybe not being challenged in my own parenting assumptions like I was!

Within about 30 seconds of seeing the step-dad, dh said "He's an Aspie." (Asperger's Syndrome). After that I saw the man in a slightly different light. It certainly seemed to explain a lot about his behaviour - his computer obsession, his complete inability to relate to other people, and the absolute panic at the thought of his usual routine being changed suddenly. The only thing I couldn't understand was why on earth either family had volunteered for the programme when the ones remaining at home had absolutely no intention of following any of the rules.

I think I'm so middly I'd make a lousy swappee. I'm not really extreme in anything - we eat reasonably healthily but junk food too; I'm neither particularly strict or laid back with my children; my house veers between fairly messy and fairly tidy; I don't do anything exciting like breed Rotweillers or host swinging parties. In fact, my bf and I have joked that we could do Wife Swap and our dh's probably wouldn't notice.

Oh I thought the little boys name was just Bo, I quite like that name too. Bow-jangles, jeesh!

I did love the outdoorsy way they could go cycling and hill-walking all the time but they perhaps took it to the extreme. Agree the 18 year old was way too immature.

As for the other two ignoring that poor little girl, thank god the mother came to her senses! Seeing the girl playing on her own all the time, no wonder the silly moo started crying at the thought of it (and didn't she cry a lot!)

What about sleeping with the au pair on channel 4, looks good. Prepare for a lot of out of work au pairs tomorrow

I missed wife swap last night and I've made a point of watching it every week this series, didn't watch the last one.

I have to say though that when dh and I got married we went to McDonalds for our wedding meal. Now before you all think that we're some sort of disfunctional family we got married aborad with our dd, who was 4 at the time, as our flower girl and she asked before the wedding if we could go to McDonalds that day for lunch so we did. And it was great

Was thinking about this last night . If the little girl had said she talked to her dolls instead of her rocks we'd have thought that cute no? She was so sweet that Huddersfield mum must have been doing something right. If not, then it reignites the whole nature v nurture argument.

dont forget Tinker these programs are carefully edited to get the viewer to think about a particular family in a particular light. they cut loads of stuff to try to make you think in a certain way. I am sure the hudderfield mum did give her daughter attention. i know when I was that age I used to talk to myself and to my toys etc. i dont think it is THAT unusual. My husband still talks to himself now. I remember when my daughter was a baby and we had visitors and he was in the bedroom talking to himself but we could all here it downstairs (maybe we are just weird!)

A little girl talking to her dolls is normal Tinker. Talking to rocks is not.