I’m ashamed to say I watched the first seasons of Survivor and Big Brother back in the late 90’s. It was novel, but the attention-whorishness, staged quality, and tendency to highlight the worst of human nature became annoying so I didn’t watch it after that. I haven’t done reality TV since, and generally speaking, I despise it. I don’t do American Idol or Wife Swap or Husband Swap or or Best Anorexic or Chef Knife Fight… or any of it.

I know a lot of people like it or the networks wouldn’t continue to crank out that dribble, but I’m sorry to say I think it’s all crap. The people on them are usually irritating, often despicable, and they frequently seem to be taking advantage of someone or something for the sole purpose of getting their 15 minutes of starlight. A good many of them are either looking to become famous or in the case of something like Dancing with the Stars, their star has faded and they’re looking for remnants of glitter under the dust and crud.

One of the most disturbing things about reality TV for me is that oftentimes, there are kids in the mix being exploited, and that’s not cool in my book. If you’re an adult and want to get on national TV to make an ass of yourself or you want to reveal your personal business in what I can assure you will most likely be an unfavorable light, that’s your business. Kids on the other hand, don’t have any rights in the matter. They might think it’s an awesome idea if asked, but remember, these are the same munchkins who would think nothing of eating Dunkin’ Donuts every morning for breakfast, candy bars for lunch, McDonald’s every night for dinner, and replacing school with Disneyland.

I like well-written, scripted TV shows with real actors and actresses demonstrating real talent. Glee, Dexter, 30 Rock are some of our favorites. I also love documentaries like Lizard Kings and How the Earth Was Made, a super cool series on the History Channel. It annoys me that the networks will happily fill their TV schedule with a perpetual abyss of craptastic reality TV simply because it’s cheaper to produce than quality TV shows.

While I have little esteem for reality TV, I made an exception to my rule about not watching it last year when the show Intervention, a program usually about addicts, had an episode about a young man with type 1 diabetes who wasn’t managing his diabetes. It was interesting. I shared my rather extensive thoughts in a two part blog post. Then I returned to status quo of not watching reality TV.

A *great* TV show

However, last week I saw a tweet that the show Supernanny would be featuring a family with a type 1 child. I wasn’t intrigued enough to watch though until I caught a few tweets after it had aired referring to some complaints about the episode. My curiosity got the best of me as it often does. I did a little digging that included reading a thread about it on CWD that I found enlightening. I was feeling the urge to write a blog post, but didn’t really think I could write a well-informed post without actually watching it.

Like many of the CWD moms, one of my primary concerns was that it didn’t make sense that they were forcing Aiden, the diabetic 5-year old, to clean his plate. If this was 30 years ago and Aiden was on Regular and NPH, that would have made sense, but this family dosed Aiden’s insulin after he ate based on how much he ate. Accordingly, and assuming he was on a standard Lantus/Humalog or comparable regimen, it totally baffled me that the parents insisted he eat everything on his plate.

The Supernanny, Jo Frost, implemented a reward system for which Aiden could earn stars for every meal and snack he ate, and Aiden’s response to this appeared to be favorable. That she tried to transform the issue with a reward-based system from the power struggle into which it had morphed was an improvement. After this reward system was in place, there was a meal during which Aiden said he didn’t want to eat anymore. It appeared that he’d eaten a decent amount of food, but he proclaimed he was done before actually cleaning his plate. He then sat at the table for an hour after everyone else was done while mom eventually coaxed him to eat the rest of the food on his plate.

Of course, I’m a little overly sensitive to food-related conflict in diabetes families because I know firsthand the ugliness that food issues can become. Will every diabetic kid who engages in food conflict with their parents develop a diagnosable eating disorder or even sub-clinical food and body-related issues? No, of course not, but needless to say, diabetes is a Petri dish for food-related issues, and this family isn’t exactly off to a great start in minimizing the potential for this boy developing a contentious relationship with food. I found their approach very unsettling and concerning, but my response is based on the limited information presented. It’s hard to understand the reasoning behind this force-feeding policy without knowing its source. As far as I can recall, nothing was said about whether he receives his diabetes care from a pediatric endocrinology practice or if his family is only seeing a general practitioner. He had an insulin-to-carb ratio though which allows for flexible carb consumption, so I’m still left scratching my head about why this was even an issue.

Moving away from the family’s food battles, one of the mom’s on the CWD message board expressed displeasure that they even mentioned how mom’s dad had died of diabetes-related complications at age 46, questioning its relevance. I don’t want to get into this too much because I’ll meander off topic, but the reality is that this has everything to do with the family’s response to Aiden’s diabetes, so it’s a significant factor. It at least partially explains what seemed to be mom’s rather unrelenting guilt. Dad seemed pretty frustrated, and there’s probably a list of reasons for that, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he subconsciously blames mom to some extent for Aiden’s diagnosis since it’s easy to pinpoint her genetic contribution. Obviously, that’s conjecture because I don’t know them, I only have a tiny fraction of the information, information that’s been filtered through the show’s production and editing, and clearly I’m not their therapist, but if this family showed up in my office, I would at least want to talk about whether or not that might be a factor.

Mail-Order Surgeon, at Your Service

Related to my uncertainly about the source of the force-feeding policy, I wish someone had said where this family’s diabetes care team was in the midst of all this. In my imaginary world where all families get the true diabetes team approach that includes a mental health professional (this is the part where I jump up and down, screaming about why this isn’t the way EVERY diabetes family’s care is managed, but this isn’t a vlog, so you’ll just have to imagine that part), this family should not have felt like they had to resort to Supernanny, who as far as I can tell is as qualified to be counseling families with rather extensive problems, and doling out diabetes education in the case of this particular family, as I’m qualified to be doing brain surgery.

I tried to find some information online about who she is and what sort of credentials she has – training in behavioral analysis, a degree in child development or education – and I couldn’t find anything that made me think, OK, this lady has some education and experience in this area so maybe she could be considered an authority – or at least experienced. My understanding is that she studied drama as a teenager and has some babysitting experience. Oh, and she has a British accent. That’s all it takes to counsel families with problems? I assure you, no one in their right mind wants to have that argument with me. This post from the San Francisco Chronicle’s baby blog, The Poop, nicely captured my impression of her:

“But I absolutely can’t stand ‘Supernanny,’ and its host Jo Frost. I do watch that ABC network show sometimes, but it’s mostly to reaffirm how much I hate it. I put Frost somewhere between Dr. Phil and Nancy Grace on my list of useless people who are posing as experts and slowly destroying the universe.”

I don’t have an opinion about Nancy Grace because I don’t know anything about her, nor have I seen her show, but I think Dr. Phil is a complete hack, so after watching this episode of Supernanny, that really resonated with me.

This family needs the help of a mental health professional, not some TV-anointed “expert” who’s hooked her star onto a reality TV show in hopes of making it big in Hollywood. She slapped some bandaids on a few of the problems this family has been having, but this family needs therapy to get to the root causes of their issues. It seemed plain as day to me that mom is plagued with guilt. Dad was trying to help, but every time he did, mom snapped at him because she felt he was critiquing her more than helping, likely because her confidence has been eroded by guilt, so he kept his trap shut in order to avoid conflict, but that’s just left him stewing in his anger. The older sister, Paige, at all of 9, was the good girl who was constantly dodging the line of fire, while trying to shoulder extra responsibility because mom and dad were clearly frayed, and Liam, the youngest was perpetually acting out because he was no longer the coddled baby and the attention had abruptly shifted to Aiden with his diagnosis. And they’re trying to tell me some finger puppets, a mealtime reward system for a force-feeding policy that seems totally questionable, and a communication book for the parents, while potentially useful tools, are going to solve this family’s problems? $10 says that within a month of the completion of filming, the family was back to their old ways because that family needs a real therapist to get to the bottom of why things had evolved into this mess.

SuperNanny: Jo Frost

My final thoughts about Supernanny aren’t specific to this particular family. I found the show unsettling because a family’s personal problems shouldn’t be entertainment for America. I don’t know why people watch this normally. I can guess it’s to garner some parenting tidbits to apply to their own families, or maybe it’s evidence that there are families with worse problems, an “Our kids might be rotten sometimes, but at least they aren’t THAT rotten” validation. Maybe it’s just the same voyeuristic thrill that comes with watching any of these programs about other people’s drama.

I know a lot of people watch this stuff, and I sincerely don’t mean to offend anyone who enjoys it, but I find this particular show’s premise very exploitative. I admit it’s upsetting to me that this is the stuff that people find entertaining, especially having worked in the homes of families much like these for several years providing therapy. I’d go in to these kinds of families’ homes, spend several hours a week with them, typically for 6 months, but there were families with whom I’d work for up to 18 months. Working with families like that doesn’t go down like it does on TV, all neat and clean with a tidy ending (although I assume not every episode of Supernanny has a happy ending?) because *newsflash* people behave differently when there are cameras, camera crews, producers, directors and pseudo-stars like Ms. Frost prancing around their house.

The networks, ABC in the case of Supernanny, are only looking to get ratings. These kinds of families run on drama like my car runs on gas. The reasons are varied, many, depend on the individual family, but most importantly, they’re more complex than they might appear on the surface. The networks don’t care that they’re making a commodity out of the drama in these families, drama that a real therapist would try to discourage and ameliorate, not emphasize and turn into a spectacle.

Through the magic of editing and producing, they made it seem like they’d solved this family’s problems, and as I indicated, they did give them some helpful tools that I hope the family has continued to utilize. Regardless of the work they did though, the family needs follow-up, and it’s very much my hope that they were advised as much, and at the very least, directed toward appropriate resources.

In the end, I think it’s a shame this family felt Supernanny was a solution to their family problems. Why they came to that decision is anyone’s guess, but I think it’s wrong that they either don’t have a proper diabetes treatment team, or if they do, there are some serious issues since it should be the hypothetical team with its hypothetical mental health provider who’s helping them through this adjustment period, not some wannabe starlet flaunting the problems of America’s families on TV. Plus, someone isn’t giving the family updated management information if they’re force-feeding Aiden, and he’s not getting age-appropriate diabetes education if the task of demonstrating the relationship between insulin and carbs fell into Ms. Frost’s finger-puppet-covered hands. To me, whether or not Supernanny did a good job isn’t as much an issue as why this family got to the point where they felt like she was their best option because Supernanny is no replacement for a good diabetes care team.

For more reading about the show, check out Multi-Minding Mom.