Tuesday 13 January 2009

Dear Supernanny

Dear Supernanny

I write this letter because on days like this I feel that I am bashing my head against a brick wall of bad parenting.

I have been rudely awoken every morning for the past 4 and a half years. I feel like shouting a lot of the time. I’d rather stick a hot poker up my arse than endure another day of mindless bickering.

I watch your program with great interest. It makes me feel better to know that there are people worse off than myself whose children are absolute terrors. But today I feel like most of those women rolled into one and my children could do with a bloody good talking to in your coarse cockney tones.

They need big colourful reward charts, naughty chairs, they need you to bob down and talk to them an inch from their face and tell them how it is with your voice of authority, they need extra attention, they need to be listened to more.

I understand that the reason you can stay calm, not shout and bob down on their level without strangling them is that you can go home at the end of the day TO NO CHILDREN.

Still, it would be nice for you to visit. You can stay as long as you want. In fact you could turn my life around if you could stay … forever.

Yours pleadingly

Laura

7 comments:

Gone said...

It gets worse before it gets better, but it does get better....eventually.

Anonymous said...

See now, we did the whole Supernanny thing with my son and it WORKED A DREAM.
Then we had a daughter and thought 'sure this parenting thing is a lark. No probs. Just do the same stuff. Naughty step, time outs, sticker chart, blah blah blah'.

That girl is unSupernannyable! she laughs in the face of Supernanny.
You are not alone Laura!

Merrily Down the Stream said...

Then jump back over the pond and come and straighten mine out.

Tim Atkinson said...

UnSupernannyable - great new word, Tara! Personally, I've never really 'got' the TV concept of doing the same thing with different children and it working. Kids are different, and need different handling (at least when the cameras aren't rolling!). Best advice I ever read was a book called 'The Parent-Child Game'. Speaks the most sense.

Michelle said...

We tried the supernanny thing and none of it worked. Maybe it's because we were expecting instant gratification? Or maybe it's because I don't have black-rimmed glasses and an English accent. Not sure which.

kerry jean lister said...

A friend of mine used to regularly put her eldest (10) on the 'naughty step'.

At first the method was successful - he seemed to be suitably chastened when threatened with/sent to it.

After about a month she noticed it didn't seem to be having quite the same effect and spoke to her other half about it.

'Naughty step? Ahhh - I was wondering why I kept seeing him playing his Nintendo on the stairs!'

Turned out the clever little bugger had been hiding it beneath a loose floorboard!

Kitty said...

Hi ... I found you when you manifested at my place as a 'follower'. Awful term isn't it? Thanks for 'following' though.

Have had a lovely time reading your blog - though I would have been tempted to answer Trinny's question with 'has anyone ever told you you look like a transvestite?'. They're known as 'Tranny & Susannah' here.

Hang on in there on the parenting front. Before you know it you'll be where I am ... which is unable to get the sprogs out of bed in the morning. Believe it or not you'll want them to get up, and they will grunt and pull the duvet over their heads whilst simultaneously telling you to 'go away' ... only using different words.

Bet you can't wait. :-D