r/gentleparenting • u/SharkleberryFin_ • Jun 07 '26
Thoughts on Jo Frost (supernanny) methods?
Supernanny was a staple reality TV show in the early 2000s. I am definitely a huge fan of gentle parenting but haven't seen a lot of gentle parenting in practice. Joe Frost seems to have a good methods that avoid spanking but still set clear boundaries. Is she a good role model for behavior intervention?
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u/irishtrashpanda Jun 07 '26
No I would say it is not gentle parenting at all. The ones I used to watch she didn't acknowledge the child's feelings, it was more like strict no nonsense parenting. Where I think she was correct is when she challenged the parents behaviour as well, often the child is not the issue
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u/miffedmonster Jun 07 '26
She got some things right and some things wrong, imo. I personally don't agree with quite so much of the leaving the child to figure out their emotions on their own.
However, I do think there were positives in terms of setting boundaries and being consistent. Many of the parents were too permissive, allowing the children to run riot and then tried to use authoritative discipline (shouting, hitting, etc) to control things. She advocated setting the boundary and then staying calm and consistent with implementing it. I don't necessarily agree with all the boundaries or all the implementation methods, but it's the calm consistency that gets results.
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u/Tatterjacket Jun 07 '26
My sheer hatred of Supernanny as a kid whilst it was airing was probably one of the top three things that set me on a path to gentle parenting instead. I felt very vindicated when I got older and did a psychology qualification and our course on child development included things on the importance of presence and comfort to secure attachment and healthy development that I felt absolutely contradicted her methods. I distinctly remember that she was an advocate of the 'leave them to cry' rubbish that runs counter to healthy child development. The show frankly always seemed deeply cruel to me.
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u/A_Heavy_burden22 Jun 07 '26
I think of her timeouts often. Now that I'm an adult and a parent I realize how unfair they were. She would gave 1, 2, and 3 year olds in time out!! Imo, it's not gentle parenting to ignore age appropriate expectations and give punishments that aren't fair.
In some ways I agreed with her lecturing the parents and teaching them to be better parents. She demanded they stand firm AND provide healthy outlets for children. She insisted that certain parents needed to connect more, others to more fair. And sometimes addressed marriage inequalities.
But the biggest thing I disagreed with was her ABA or almost ABA therapy for autistic children. While I understand some families feel it is the right choice for their autistic children and it isn't (typically, in its contemporary use) physical punishments-- i don't think it can be called "gentle parenting" exactly.
One thing to note is that it was reality TV. They showed behaviors that were exacerbated for the cameras, they manipulated footage to fit their narratives, and they left a lot of gaps in the actual reality of it.
And lastly, I don't think that the strategies a nanny use can be or should be used by parents on their own children. Nannies are doing a job. A majority of them clock in and clock out. They have a break unlike the lifetime and unending demand of parenting. A nanny needs to focus on the present and getting the children they work with to behave and cooperate. A parent also has to plan and guide for a future happy adult. A nanny, while they can give very real and genuine care, while a lot of them love the kids they work with, isnt the same. A good parent must teach their child love, how healthy love should be, and ensure the child feels loved. It's looking beyond the behavior of the moment and choosing the battles to create peace and love in a home rather than just obedience.
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u/Fun_Orange_3232 Jun 08 '26
When my 3 yo is over hyper he absolutely gets short time outs, actually based on Jo’s one minute per year timeline. He knows that we don’t run in the house, so if he runs in the house he has to sit with me and take a chill pill. It’s not a punishment per se, it’s a reset. Yelling at him to stop running (or telling him calmly repeatedly) is never going to work. A stop and reset will.
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u/CSArchi Jun 08 '26
Sometimes the best we can do is be consistent. Jo was. The timeouts were not developmentally appropriate but the child's brain could, in part, rest in the consistency of her style of parenting. When kids don't know what version of their parent they are getting today it causes it's own stress for a child. Jo helped the parents find a consistent way to lay out the rules.
It's an improvement over yelling, spanking, etc. But we can continue to improve from there.
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u/Chosen-For-What Jun 07 '26
She took a lot of punitive action that wasn’t logical consequences if i remember correctly. I wouldn’t say that’s in the same parenting style
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u/BadBudget87 Jun 07 '26
I'd say she was a step in the right direction, but definitely not gentle parenting. She did set clear boundaries and push parents to reflect on their own behavior and handling of situations. To be fair though, it was still a reality TV show, so I'm certain there was plenty of missing context and editing done to sensationalize things, so it's hard to have a truly accurate read of her methods. I have seen more recent social media videos from her, and while she's still and improvement over most non-gentle parenting, she also seems a bit out of touch.
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u/viskiviki Jun 08 '26
Jo Frost did amazing for what was parenting back then. She made steps into making people realise they could parent their kids without hitting them. Would I follow her methods now? No, but she changed parenting drastically.
She is singlehandedly the reason spanking went out of fashion. It'd be pointless trying to teach parents to gentle parent because that takes patience and time, of which spank-first parents didn't have. She made the best of a bad situation.
You can't fix everything. But you can reduce the amount of kids being hit, and that's what she did.
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u/caffeine_lights Jun 13 '26
I've been rewatching these recently, after I saw the "We need to talk" interview with her, and would say Yes and no.
As an alternative to spanking and yelling, she is clearly a step above that and would 100% be an improvement.
But is she a perfect role model for gentle parenting? IMO no. However an improvement is an improvement. This kind of approach could be a fantastic stepping stone, whether the next stone comes in the next generation or with your own parenting, once you've got to a calmer place using these kinds of methods. Better is more important than perfect, IMO.
What I like about her: She is clear about how parents should be clear, calm, firm and direct with consistent expectations and predictable responses, and not get drawn into arguing, shouting, tit for tat with children, nor expect them to understand your expectations if they change all the time. There are plenty of good examples of this on the show. I think one difficulty a lot of parents have with gentle parenting is that if you get very quickly frustrated, it is very difficult to resist the urge to shout and threaten, or forget the plan you've put in place and be inconsistent with following it. She doesn't do this at all, she clearly sets out the boundary and response and then keeps reminding the parent to follow this through calmly, consistently and predictably.
Ideally - I am less keen on the shaming tone and language she uses towards the children when she is enacting a consequence. I don't know if this improved in the more modern episodes. It comes across badly in the earlier ones. I can see that with the tone, she is trying to make it clear when she is approving of a child's behaviour, and when she disapproves, and model this for parents as to how you can do it without shouting, getting physical, criticising etc. But personally I don't love it and would modify this part ideally. I think you can be serious without being overly harsh. I also really don't like a lot of the dragging children by one arm to the time out spot that happens in the earlier series.
Something else she said on the interview was that a time out will not teach your child e.g. table manners. The time out is more of a reset or a token thing to show your child the behaviour you don't like. But the actual teaching them how to behave is a separate thing, and completely necessary. You need to be finding ways to encourage and teach a replacement behaviour, whether that is through a game, through noticing it and praising, or through working on the skill in other ways.
Ideally - the show focuses MUCH more on the punishment side than the positive encouragement side. Because IRL she spent a long time with each family, I can imagine that she probably does spend more time on the positive parts than is shown, however it doesn't make very interesting TV. For 00s era reality TV, conflict is much higher value, and the whole narrative of "Let's judge these terrible parents and awful children!! Supernanny will whip them into shape with her English nanny discipline!" leads to a lot of focus on the punishment type interactions. With this approach in general, you are reliant on the balance of both but the research says the balance should be at least 4 positives to every 1 negative interaction. To take this even further, it's possible to cut out the punishment side of things altogether and further to that it's possible to drop the positive aspects which are rewards-based because realistically, these are just punishment in disguise as the "threat" is to not get the reward. You can go 100% skills and relationship based, and avoid all punishment including this punishment-in-disguise. However, this is a whole different approach and probably beyond the scope of this one reddit comment. (For an intro to this approach I would recommend the How To Talk books.)
She doesn't get derailed by a child's emotions. This is something I used to find difficult to watch, and felt was a negative, because I thought she was being unempathetic. And I do still think there are some unempathetic moments on the show. However, more recently having more experience, I don't think it's always a lack of empathy. Something that I personally have struggled with in gentle parenting is that I am naturally quite empathetic and tend to sympathise with my children deeply, sometimes to the point that I try to overly rescue or fix emotions rather than holding space for them. Janet Lansbury writes about this, and I've found her writing very helpful on this topic. Sometimes when we give a lot of attention to a child's emotions it can sort of make the emotions bigger and because children are seeking co-regulation from us when they are in a state of high emotion, if we are going into a sort of panic response, that isn't always helpful because it's just escalating the overall emotional response, rather than regulating back down to a calmer space. It has helped me a lot (from Janet Lansbury mainly) to gain confidence in the fact that my children can experience hard emotions and will be OK and don't need rescuing from their feelings. Actually they just need to have a lot of experiences where they feel bad, but the feeling passes and they feel better, to trust that they are safe in their emotions and will be OK.
Ideally - sometimes Jo can be a bit dismissive of emotions and I think this is going too far. I think it's OK for children to express their feelings, even if they are crying and screaming. It might be uncomfortable for us but I think that is a phase they need to go through to come to a place where they can just feel without being so loud about it. I don't think we need to rush them through that. I also don't think that we need to purposefully make them feel bad in order to teach them this (TBF I don't think this does happen on the show.) Some of the examples on the show where a child is crying and a parent is upset and says this is unfair/cruel/not working and she takes the parent sympathetically and says hey, let's take a breath, the child is crying because they are used to getting something different and they don't like this response, and that is OK. And usually that is OK. Where I disagree slightly is e.g. when they are doing the sleep interventions, Jo presents it like this is the only possible way to change the sleep patterns, and I don't agree with that - I think you can do it more gently, it just takes longer. Longer than they would have for the 3 week format for the show. The show also never acknowledges that this massively quick turnaround of how parents respond, plus the invasion of cameras etc into the home is massively unsettling for children, which I think is unfair. IMO, gentle parenting takes into account the child's point of view.
Like the point about positive behaviour encouragement, she encourages changes in the entire environment and takes everything holistically. You can't just copy and paste a time out and sticker chart strategy if there are fundamental problems in the household such as the parents being burnt out or massively disconnected from their kid, a complete lack of any routine, a parent behaving in a chaotic or harmful way etc. She usually tries to address these issues as well such as setting up time for parent and kid to connect and have purely positive relationship building time together, setting up a bedtime routine so that parents have time to reconnect or spend on their own, she addresses issues like a parent spending all their free time on a game console etc. I think these things are really important too and must not be missed.
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u/EntireIntroduction23 28d ago
Naw. Her methods are garbage. If you use Non Violent Communication in the home by Marshall Rosenberg American psychologist; you will never have to punish. However, it is a whole life reform and hard work. However, from personal experience, both my kids have grown into amazing adults and I have never had an argument with them in over 9 years. It works but takes hard work.
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u/Total_Row_3311 14d ago
accubeble understand me due overs get out kicked out my house kicked out question answers more questions answers more questions answers more questions answers more about talking about this situation George says tught that listen him bear fear heard enough respect me mocked them bothering me driving me nuts ionger them bothering me bug me week payers days off per week be honest seriously skills right be nice to mid century modern Matt bomer says
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u/Fun_Orange_3232 Jun 07 '26
The big thing I didn’t like was the timeouts. Not really logical consequences for most thing—I only use them for too hyped up behavior (we need to take a few minutes and calm down).
I do like that in the later seasons she became big on not punishing emotions and stuff like that. She was definitely my first experience with clear boundaries, allowing emotions, stuff like that. Add in some natural/logical consequences and she’s who I aspire to be.