Did you watch Supernanny last night?

[BubblesDeVere]

What did you think of it?

i think the differences are that on SuperNanny, Jo is more hands on and stays whilst the parents are discipling the child/children.

Whereas on Little Angels, the person sent in to help them does so from a room in the house, she has a tele where she can see what is happening and speaks to the parents via headphones without getting involved hands on etc

LA is much more positive. E.g. instead of taking something away from the child, they suggest sticker charts, i.e. the child is rewarded and good behaviour is reinforced.
Also, the "experts" are wired up with mikes to the parents, and not physically present all the time. They coach the parents and help them to deal with situations rather than intervening. This empowers the parents as they really see that they can deal with situations, rather than the undermining intervention of SN.

LA has "time out" rather than a naughty step. It looks fairly similar but it is more about cooling a child (and a situation) down. The naughtly step/spot always smacks slightly of punishment to me.

LA's philosophy is that kids will always respond positively to boundaries, clear instruction and lots of affirming attention from mum and dad. Don't quite see that in SN.

And, the bottom line, LA always seems to have a much more positive outcome. I've only seen 2 SNs but I don't hold out much hope for either family.

Btw, I say all of this, but I'm not yet having to deal with kids of this age. Have a teenage sd and a 5mo ds!!! These are just my observations of the programmes and would be very interested to hear if any of it feels useful/relevant to other people!

I cry at Supernanny, I can always see a bit of myself/my family in what is going on (just a little bit mind ). I did think it was interesting that SN said that the mother had a "big personality", that didn't really come across but since Bubbles has filled in the blanks it makes sense now.

I was very shocked that she was going to drag the 5 year old down the stairs by his feet as he would have bumped his head off every stair.

I just hope she has managed to stick to SN's advice.

I did wonder about the footballs in the jar thing, I thought it was a bit like Soupy's pasta thing but I wondered what would happen, with Soupy's plan the children get 5p (I think?) for every piece of pasta in the jar at the end of the week, I wondered if the boy on SN got the balls or whether they were just a visual aid, if they were just a visual aid I could imagine the novelty wearing off.

I thought Jo's approach was fine but the changes will not last. The fault lines in the faily are too deep. The dad was a useless lump - embarrassed to admit he had read his kids a story, and unable to even talk to his son in a nice way at the table.'But he's not looking at me,' he whined. The mother had serious temper problems - I wonder how she had been parented herself.

I felt so sorry for that desperate little baby - no one paying any attention to him, and him just observing the screaming and yelling going on around him.

I think the couple loved their kids - but they were like toddlers themselves in the way they behaved.

I agree Tiktok - the question every week has to be "what's really going on with the parents?" Until that is considered (doesn't have to be aired, but does need to form part of the process) surely it would be very difficult to make real changes? Not talking about deep analysis but if I was smacked every time I did something my parents didn't like, I am going to think that is entirely reasonable. Under pressure, we all revert to type unless we really have something else to go on.

well I think if I was on my own all day with 3 small boys constantly testing boundaries I would go spare too and I'm sure I'd give the camera some choice moments, so I'm loathe to judge

I couldn't work out at what point the boy got the balls in his jar either. It all seemed rather pointless. The reward/punishment aspectwas all very well but he didn't seem to get anything out of it at the end.

It seemed that he was given them at the outset, had them taken away when he was naughty, but could earn them back when he was good again. It seemed like a very clumsy way of doing it, and I can't imagine he would keep on caring that much about lots of identical small footballs, surely? Would it make that much difference to him if he had 11 or 12, say?

Were we the only ones to have a brief moment of confusion when Jo said "If you're naughty I'm going to remove one of your balls"? DH said that would certainly make HIM behave...

How is a child supposed to learn not to scream and throw tantrums when his mother effectively screams and throws tantrums? It did look as though seeing herself on screen had finally brought her behaviour home to her, but maybe I'm being over-optmistic.

Haven't seen any of this series, but what I really liked about SN last time, was her ability to see the underlying problem and draw the family's attention to it. I really didn't think she undermined, rather she enabled parents' to learn from her.

Leah, yes i mean drastic measures or what. We laughed at that too! Irony not dead on mumsnet.

do you know what bit made me cry though? the bit where Jo was kind of ganging up on the little boy with the crazy mum. the mum had put him (shoved him) on the naughty spot and he was crying because he was saying he didn't like mac cheese. I didn't think that was too naughty, sure it goes on in most houses at one time or another. Ignoring him would have been far more effective than making it a big "naughty zone" isse, but I hated that Jo whispered to the mum "ignore him that's what he wants, he wants you to react" and I thought "yeah right Jo, he really wants his Mum to drag him down the steps, or shove him on the floor, or scream at him" maybe he doesn't like bloody macaroni cheese!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It just seemed a bit .... mean. He was only a little guy after all.

secret, you are right. Poor little mite.

The mother's temper made me wince at times and this in front of TV cameras! Good on SN for physically intervening (like putting hands out to stop mum pulling one of them down the stairs and responding to the middle one hitting her on the back) and highlighting mum's temper. I'm not sure how LA would have handled those particular situations - needed some kind of direct intervention. Do think her and LA are basically delivering the same messages about setting consistent boundaries etc with children and more positive parenting but their methods of delivering the message different.

However, got to say that the mother in this episode must have had some desire to improve her situation otherwise why call on SN in the first place, although think she was looking for SN to improve her son's behaviour and was probably shocked when SN focused upon her & the father. I felt quite uncomfortable watching this at times and desperately felt for those children.

I think Jo Frost is lovely and obviously very effective but I don't think she MAKES the parents learn the way that Little Angels does

LOL at your DH Leah!

He was given the balls but I don't think he was allowed to play with them, they were either in his good jar or his naughty jar.

secret -- I too thought "maybe he DOESN'T like mac cheese" but he did then happily eat a huge portion so clearly was just trying it on.

I sat there completely stunned and horrified, and also vowed not to shout at my ds any more. So I suppose it did a good job. I think a lot of people will have looked at her shouting and thought, OMG, that's what shouting looks like.
I also far prefer Little Angels and think it goes much deeper.
Also agree that horrible husband was worse than useless, and very intrigued by BubblesDeVere's inside knowledge...and yes, all those comments about 'big personality' make more sense now.

I assumed he did like mac cheese, or it would have been a bizarre menu choice?

From the amount of macaroni cheese he was tucking away, I'd guess he DID like it!

Thought she was a single mother at first. Which, I suppose, she was effectively. But I did recognise that scowling face in myself though

I thought SN was quite right intelling the mother ot ignore him when he was tantrumming about the Mac Cheese. She ignored him, he did calm down and he ate his tea.

Aloha, what are you curious about? Ask away lol.