;)
Sunday
Nov112007
Sunday Secret
Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 7:54PM
Josh and I were really young when we started having kids. Neither of us had the best in the whole 'parental role model' thing to go on, and so we have winged it. We have guessed, we have messed up, we have just closed our eyes real tight and hoped we don't screw these kids up too badly.
We don't have a lot of friends with kids, and until school started for the boys, we didn't really ever have a basis of comparison for how our kids are turning out. And then, one fine day, a beautiful thing happened.
Someone created SuperNanny.
SuperNanny is one of our dirty little secret things we do late at night when we're sure no one's looking. We watch this show, and every week it teaching us something. It teaches us that we are damned fine parents.
SuperNanny is the one time when we can get really smug and holier-than-thou. We watch, and we talk about what idiots these people are, and how they are making rookie mistakes, and how oh my god we'd never do that or holy crap could you imagine if one of our kids pulled that shit?
Our secret little hour of SuperNanny, when we can get it in, gives us a chance to compliment each other. To discuss our strengths and weaknesses. To hold a mirror up to our parent-selves and admire the reflection. It brings us together in a way that we thought only the Wii could.
This parenting thing is hard, and isolating, and terrifying a lot of the time, and it makes you crazy with worry. No one tells you when you're doing it wrong, because, like religion or politics, wrong parenting is a very subjective sort of thing. At least we have SuperNanny every single week telling us just how right we are.
We don't have a lot of friends with kids, and until school started for the boys, we didn't really ever have a basis of comparison for how our kids are turning out. And then, one fine day, a beautiful thing happened.
Someone created SuperNanny.
SuperNanny is one of our dirty little secret things we do late at night when we're sure no one's looking. We watch this show, and every week it teaching us something. It teaches us that we are damned fine parents.
SuperNanny is the one time when we can get really smug and holier-than-thou. We watch, and we talk about what idiots these people are, and how they are making rookie mistakes, and how oh my god we'd never do that or holy crap could you imagine if one of our kids pulled that shit?
Our secret little hour of SuperNanny, when we can get it in, gives us a chance to compliment each other. To discuss our strengths and weaknesses. To hold a mirror up to our parent-selves and admire the reflection. It brings us together in a way that we thought only the Wii could.
This parenting thing is hard, and isolating, and terrifying a lot of the time, and it makes you crazy with worry. No one tells you when you're doing it wrong, because, like religion or politics, wrong parenting is a very subjective sort of thing. At least we have SuperNanny every single week telling us just how right we are.
Reader Comments (7)
without supernanny, i would've never learned about the naughty chair/step/mat/corner.
we have the naughty crib. naughty crib is tough love - the timer gets set for 2 minutes, the crib gets stripped of lovies, stuffies, soo-soos and blankies. i get down on their level and use the supernanny techniques jo taught me - works like a charm!
I am curious as to how young you were.
But yeah supernanny, I used to watch her all the time. Now the stupid parents annoy me too much and I get much too stressed yelling at the telly. Maybe when Amy is bigger?
Oh... I just cant watch it - I'm too much like Veronica....:)
I've gotten some great ideas from supernanny. Feeling superior? Not so much. I do like to watch it though.
If anything it makes me sad sometimes. They always wrap the episode up all nice and tight, everyones happy and ever and after, but you know sometimes that the husband is still not going to come home at night and give his wife a break, and that they've staved off behaviors A, B, and C in the children, but just wait for D, E, and F!
ARCI Your write it; I read it!
I love that super Nanny show. She puts it to the parents.
That show is great. In one of the first episodes, maybe the first one, the couple featured was actually one of the contractors for my parents' mountain house. Good thing the house turned out so nicely because those people were some of the most ridiculously selfish and moronic people I've ever seen...
I am with Veronica... Super Nanny creeps me out.
cheers kim