I have a variety of guilty pleasures and they are probably all related to televsion (except for the Hostess yellow cupcakes, but I have 20 pounds to lose before I get another one of those) and not all of them are SVU. That, at least, is a legitimate television drama, with actors and writers and stuff.I watch Supernanny.
I am not a big fan of "reality" shows in general, although I like documentary-type things, like Little People, Big World. Okay, that's a guilty pleasure, too; I guess. But I think part of the reality show draw is that we feel superior to those -- I really don't have a word for people this stupid -- who are willing to share their poorly lived lives with the public. I'm not saying that the watchers truly are superior, or that it's the actual behavior of these people that is stupid. It's their going on TV and showing what are edited to look like massive flaws that make them stupid. Okay, enough of that; it's not my mission to analyze the reality TV phenomenon.
I do love Jo the Nanny, and I would love to know if she is just a performer who says what child psychologists tell her to say to the parents, or if she really is some kind of child behavior expert. I do think that the advice she gives is good, and her ability to come up with a new way to say "time out" each week is astonishing. But what got me while I was watching the show last night was the behavior of the children (and of course the clueless parents), as it does and as it is designed to do. Last night's show was about a family with 5 year old triplets who were very aggressive, not only hitting each other, but hitting and kicking their parents.
And then I got a mind's image of myself at 5, kicking my father. After which, the world goes black, because that would have been the end for me.
Hey, I was far from a perfect child. I was a whiner, and under any kind of pressure, a crier. I don't recall being hit by my mother, in general, and I can tell you that I was only ever hit by my father when I was on the run. He would say (to either me or my sister), "I'm going to count to three," and we would stand before him, defiant. "One," he would say, and we stood. "Two." Holding firm. "And a ..." and before he could say three, we were running. Now, at this point, we lived in a two-bedroom apartment. Where the hell were we running to? Invariably, we ran into the dead end that was the haven of our bedroom, where we would hurl ourselves onto our beds and where he would catch us with a mighty whack on the back of the thigh. That was it, and baby, that was enough. I can only imagine that this was followed by weeping, sobbing apologies, and you can be sure these were coming from us.
My father did not need a supernanny to teach him how to establish authority over his children. He had established his authority over a battalion of anti-aircraft gunners, and we were small potatoes after that. There was no "naughty spot," but there was "Go to your room and don't come out until you're ready to apologize." There was no "What would you like for dinner?" There was "Here's your food. When you're finished eating it -- all of it -- you can leave the table. Don't forget to put your dishes in the sink." You get the picture.
I am also not saying that I couldn't have used a supernanny on occasion when my own kids were little, although I wouldn't have asked for one if it meant going on TV, I can tell you that. Like my father, I established authority by the seat of my pants, and since I have reasonably decent adult children, I can tell you now that it seems to have worked, more or less.
It's all a crapshoot anyway, you know. We had a family in town years back with two sons; one went to Yale on a full scholarship and the other is in the slammer for life for a particularly grisly murder.
I have no idea where I'm going with this, but the image of me giving Jack a kick -- or attempting to -- just made me laugh. One of his classic lines, btw, was "I'm bigger than you, and I can hurt you." Actually, this makes me laugh now, too, probably because now I can see that this was something that came totally out of his very dry and very black sense of humor. If you said that to a kid now, they'd probably lock you up.
