Super Nanny…again
Once again, we are watching “Super Nanny” on ABC. Again, we are the perfect parents.
This week, there is a young family in Utah with 3 children; 6, 5 and 2. The eldest has been diagnosed with ADHD. Mom is pregnant. She’s a stay at home mom and dad is a mail carrier. The house is pandemonium.
Here’s my beef. The dad is as useless as tits on a boar hog. He would come home, after delivering mail, and disappear for an hour, eat, then disengage again. The poor mother was handling these 3 children all day, one an extra challenge, and dad was NEVER present. He laughed it off the first time he was called out about it.
“Am I like that” I asked Sarah.
“No, because if you were, I’d be like ‘you need to do something.’”
I can’t believe that fathers do this…or any parent. I have witnessed the absent mom first hand. It’s hard to be giving everything and have no help.
I realize that we are talking about 2 parent homes. When it was just me and Jack, i knew it was just us and set my mind around that. I had a different mindset. I think it’s something all single parents do. When you do have another parent in the house, however, you should be able to plan on that support. When you give everything you have in hope of tag teaming at some point, then it not happening, it is extremely frustrating, even maddening.
So here’s my advice. Talk. Let each other know what you need. Not in the heat of the moment. Talk to your partner about what you need. What are you not good at? What are they better at. When do you need to tag team? What are the signs your partner needs to be aware of? Talk…and listen. Share in the parenting. Talk about what works and what doesn’t.
It’s not always easy to be a parent. You shouldn’t have to fight your partner to accomplish it.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more. Do you ever watch these shows and think…how did it get to this point? I know we do!
Anyways my real reason for coming by is to Tag you to write seven unusual facts about yourself!
http://www.about-sandiegoca.com/seven-unusual-facts-about-me/
June 19th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
“regarding the heat of the moment” - so TRUE. I try very hard to not say anything when it actually happens - say, I disagree with how he handled something with out son. I wait until later and just bring it up as a discussion point. Another very, very helpful tip is to try and discuss things BEFOREHAND. Say - how you want to handle various safety issues like childproofing or how you want to handle tantrums. I will tell my husband what I have seen/read and then flat out ask him “What do you think?”. If I already have a stance I want to go with, I explain why and I ask him “Are you okay with that?”.
For example, a real hot topic is sleep and crying. My husband is NOT comfortable with our son crying AT ALL. One thing that helped was to have time limits - we’d pre-agree on how long we’d let our son cry before picking him up.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Here, here. I’m the primary caregiver to my almost 11 month old. And until a month or so ago, we were living in that same “comes out to eat dinner and then disappears” world. It WAS frustrating, and angering and worst of all, after 9 months of it, it has caused a lot of resentment that I cannot erase.
The best thing that I could have done is called it out when it first started happening, regardless of whether I felt it was selfish of me - because I was mommy and therefore should be willing to spend 18+ hours per day with a child in arms…
Good opinion piece!
June 19th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Victoria hit our main quote on the head.. “How did it ever get this bad?” It’s so incredibly frustrating to watch these shows and KNOW that there could’ve been points to turn it around completely. As I pointed out last night.. just like Ceasar Milan doesn’t go to train the dogs, SuperNanny very rarely goes to rescue the children. It’s always the adults that need the help.
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