All scamps need is a magic button
DRAMATIC cry for help of the week goes to the woman in ITV’S Eat, Shop, Save, who condemned her garage as “an apocalyptic wasteground”.
Although she wasn’t wrong. In Thursday’s episode, English teacher Kate and tech worker Dan looked forlornly at their unused car that was part-buried under a heap of trash.
In other news, they were spending over £200 a week on takeaways and ready meals, with not a vegetable in sight.
Dan’s teenage son deserves credit for being the only sensible one in the household.
“I feel guilty because I’m only eating junk food,” he sighed.
Fortunately Ranvir Singh helped them to er, deliveroo some change. I COMPARE my kids to dogs more often than is probably acceptable.
Usually when they are slurping milk directly from the cereal bowl. Or when they need taking out for a run around the park to burn off some energy.
But C4 doc, Train Your Baby Like A Dog, was on another level. Top dog trainer Jo-rosie Haffenden thinks she has come up with a revolutionary parenting technique. Treat children like dogs and they will behave.
“If everybody parented their child the same way that we’re training our dogs, we’d end up with much more confident, compassionate and curious human beings,” she said.
Or how about, we’d end up with adults who enjoy chasing sticks and will only turn up to work if they get a biscuit?
“Down!” she yapped at her toddler son Santino. “Sit!”
Santino duly sat down.
I mean, I have been known to bark instructions at my children, but this felt like one step away from naming her child Fido or Spot.
What followed was Jo-rosie turning Supernanny, visiting the homes of difficult kids to help their exasperated parents.
She had a well-behaved dog in tow, of course she did, and dubbed them Batman and Robin. Holy smoke, she even had a dog training clicker.
Desperate
Click, you put the toy away! Click, you got in a bath! Click, you didn’t hit Mummy!
I’ll admit I was nearly on board with her radical ideas at first. I’m all for rewarding good behaviour instead of punishing bad.
And as she visited three- year- old Greydon and his desperate parents Jo and Garrett, you could see her suggestions working on his angry outbursts.
“Kids are a lot more like dogs than people like to think,” she said.
And I’m sure she’s right, but then she lost me. On visiting 14- month- old nightmare sleeper Dulcie, she was on hand to stop the screaming at bathtime.
Still wearing her walking coat and boots, I thought she was about to whip out a dog lead and take Dulcie out to chase rabbits. But instead she had a secret weapon.
Chocolate buttons. I swear she had just said that diet was key to a good night’s sleep, but never mind.
Every time Dulcie did something right, there was a “click” and a chocolate. Sugar before bedtime, marvellous.
This is good old-fashioned bribery – not a new parenting technique at all.
Back at Greydon’s house, Jo-rosie taught the family a neat trick to get him to leave his parents alone for two minutes – it was essentially a game of fetch.
Dogs, kids, what’s the difference? “They all want to be patted and liked,” she said. There were some pawsitives here. Even so, call me barking but I think I’ll stick to human parenting.
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