. . . My Hometown Neighborhood
I haven't seen it yet since I'm in the Mountain Time Zone and the Easterners have already viewed it but it should be an interesting squabble, judging from other Super Nanny shows I have seen.
I am starting this blog one hour before the show will be seen on ABC here. But i have read about the show when it was first filmed a few weeks ago back in Taunton. The focus is on a family named DeMello living on Scaddings Street about a mile from my old home .
A preliminary, very brief statement by the Super Nanny producers calls the kids in the family "demons" who have supposedly turned their mom's and dad's parenting dream into a hell on earth.
And now, let's get into the show and see what's happening and if these demons are being turned into little angels. Of course, I will be just summarizing, not trying to reproduce the whole show.
Well, now I've seen it and it was quite a squabble . I was curious to see scenes of my old neighborhood. Of course there's a difference of about 50 years and it was obvious.
All I saw was a roadside sign saying "Entering Taunton" probably on I-495 , a road not there back when.
The one-time thickly pine-bordered Sabbatia Lake now has numerous new homes around it, wide streets and a supermarket the size of which I know did not exist when Mother bought her grocieres from Oswald Beaulieu and I worked in Charlie Grady's First National Store at St. Mary's Square in the city center, both small stores about the size of a doublewide mobilehome.
Wow! Those kids were little hellions but it looks as if Super Nanny - (that's Jo Frost, a Britisher, who was a speaker down here a few months ago) MAY have turned the demons around, although not yet little angels.
One has to remember kids growing up do rebel at their parents, and the younger ones will mimic the oldest. The kids in time grow up and turn themselves around but it is a process for a whole famly.
In this case , Mother DeMello was a disciplinarian but Dad didn't take an active part and support Mom, which frustrated her and she as a result did some back-sliding in parenting. He admits the problem with the kids was his fault.
Observation on the first days of Super Nanny's visit disclosed havoc within the DeMello family.The older boy would shout "stupid mama" or "stupid daddy" to his parents and "shut up" to both if he was disciplined. The younger ones followed suit and picked up the same retorts.
I can't recall my four ever acting like I saw on TV tonight but as I have said before, my memory is slipping a bit and . . . well, let's leave it there. I don't think there was ever tha extreme a problem.
By the end of the week , however, the home at the side of upper Sabbatia Lake as I remember the area, was a bit more peaceful.
The visiting nanny used a lot of gimmicks to force the children to like her, to obey her, to comunicate and laugh, to play outside their house instead of staying inside and to stop abusing their parens.
A return check by Super Nanny in the future will tell if her counseling worked. I'll follow this story and give you the answers when I learn them.
= 30 -
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I didn't watch the show, but did watch, against my better judgment, "Wife Swap," the last 30 minutes. Like you, I don't remember any of my kids or my two brothers and I EVER acting like some of the people on TV lately. Then again, I'm hoping some of that behavior was forced to get ratings.
ReplyDeleteI remember Sabbatia Lake as a pretty,wide open place where we went sledding on the hillside. To bad there isn't that amount of space for children to run around in safely these days.(there is of course but too many parents don't take the time to find it)
ReplyDeleteBut everything is relative. I have never understood parents who allowed their kids to spend every minute inside.
I didn't watch the show. I knew I wouldn't recognize the area and I'm done raising dem...uh children.