Chaos theory

by Gillean Craig

television

“Every child can be good. They need [sic] discipline, rules, and boundaries.” These are Jo Frost’s celebrated principles for childrearing.

Miss Frost is Supernanny (C4, Wednesday). She confronts some of the worst examples of misbehaving children, and attempts to bring order to their unsatisfactory lives in this new series.

Charlie, who is two, controlled the Woods family. His constant screaming tantrums meant that his mum and dad never got a night’s sleep; that every mealtime was a battlefield; and that the older children never had a moment’s peace.

 Miss Frost was allowed to live with and observe the family for two days. I suspect that all she really needed was about two minutes.

These were hopelessly indulgent parents, terrified of making their little boy unhappy, and giving in to his whims by offering a bewildering range of choices. Armed with what she saw, Miss Frost was given a week to impose order.

She called the whole family together and set guidelines. The parents had to decide when the children should get up, when they should go to bed. The parents had to give time to all their children, not merely to naughty Charlie.

He had to be told very clearly what was expected of him, warned what would happen if he failed to do it, firmly sent to sit on the “naughty stair” if he didn’t and, just as importantly, praised when he behaved properly.

With Miss Frost in charge, it worked like a dream. The outbursts reduced dramatically. For the first time in months, he ate his meal with the others, and got a proper night’s sleep.

Then Miss Frost withdrew for the second week to allow Charlie’s parents to apply what they had learned. To start with, all went well. Quickly, however, they found that they couldn’t bear to sustain the discipline. Within a few days, chaos returned.

 Finally, Miss Frost — having watched the mayhem by CCTV — came back to restore order. This time, it really seemed to work. The parents have accepted the need to be consistent, to expect reasonable order in their children’s lives, and to take responsibility for creating it.

My predominant emotion was distress at the sheer level of unhappiness in the bewildered little boy. His screaming tantrums were possibly the symptom of not knowing what was expected of him, or who was in charge.

This wasn’t a particularly well-made programme. There was a silly attempt to set up the nanny as some kind of Victorian ogre, and crucial bits of the story were simply missing.

But the insights overcame these failures. We can all draw up a list of where Jo Frost’s talents are sorely needed: the Archbishops’ Council, General Synod, and Lambeth Conference come immediately to mind.

Channel Five is preparing us for the delights of the Olympic Games by presenting something of the cultural setting of the competition with The Treasures of Athens and Olympia (Five, Thursday).

This is an earnest series, with a repetitive narration that tends to speak down to the viewer. But the assembling of experts and artefacts, in order to remind us of the achievements of the Age of Pericles, quickly silences any criticism.

 It is good to be shown, without any punches being pulled, the simply stupendous significance of ancient Greece : its architecture, poetry, drama, politics, and philosophy reaching levels of excellence rarely, if ever, surpassed.

Although much of the achievement has a religious context, the crucial theme is the importance and wonder of being human. We are still illuminated by this explosion of light.