World's Worst Mom sneak peak 1:16
- Play video
Lenore Skenazy hosts a new reality television show to help parents stop bubble-wrapping their kids!
- news.com.au
- 16 Jan 2015
- Entertainment
STEPPING off the school bus just two blocks from home, Manhattan sixth-grader Amedeo White follows the exact same drill every afternoon — the 11-year-old pulls out his cellphone, dials his mum and delivers a running commentary while walking back to their apartment.
“Passing the deli now,” he reports. “Waiting for the walk signal.”
Literally giving a step-by-step account of your movements is par for the course when your mother is as overprotective as Amedeo’s. The ultimate “helicopter mum,” who hovers above her three kids 24/7, Cayle White would prefer that they’d never left the womb.
Amedeo’s closely monitored after-school routine is among a number of cringe-worthy moments featured on Discovery Life Channel’s new reality TV series World’s Worst Mom, which premieres January 22 and reveals how paranoid today’s parents have become about their children’s safety.
New York journalist Lenore Skenazy, host of World’s Worst Moms.
Lenore Skenazy on World’s Worst Mom. Picture: Discovery Life Channel Source: Supplied
In the show, a bunch of obsessive Type A’s are subjected to an intervention from Queens author and public speaker Lenore Skenazy. The 55-year-old famously earned the title “World’s Worst Mum” in 2008 after she let her then-9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone, and then wrote about it in her newspaper column.
Now the founder of the so-called “Free Range Kids” movement, Skenazy has been parachuted into people’s homes, much like “Supernanny,” in an effort to banish irrational phobias and force anxious mums to loosen their grip.
“Some kids are losing their childhood because their parents are so overprotective,” Skenazy tells The Post. “Fear is being shoved down their throats at every juncture.
“Yes, you have to be vigilant, but not to the degree where you are micromanaging and stopping them from thriving and becoming independent.”
In some of the more extreme examples on TV, one mother insists that her 13-year-old son use the women’s public bathroom in case of male predators. Another is so terrified of her 10-year-old choking, she spoonfeeds him like a baby.
Skenazy’s Rx? A healthy dose of common sense.
The White family. Picture: Zandy Mangold. Source: New York Post
Cayle White, an actress and entrepreneur, volunteered for World’s Worst Mom because the family was “paralysed” by her fears.
“I really felt like we were stuck,” she explains. “I was holding the whole family back, and something had to change.”
One of her biggest issues was germs, whether it was picking up the flu from touching an elevator button or contracting food poisoning from meals.
“You always hear horrible stories about people getting E. coli from undercooked meat and children dying left and right,” says White, who would microwave already overdone food to kill off potential bugs.
“My kids would be begging me for something juicy and tasty, because everything I made would be dry or burned,” admits White, who would also use hand sanitiser once every 20 minutes.
Unfortunately for her kids, her philosophy was always “Better to be safe than sorry.”
Mercifully, the Whites were not a lost cause. After Skenazy insisted the family go for a barbecue in a park — with tightly wound mum banned from interfering with the cooking process — White realised that steaks with a tinge of pink don’t necessarily spell a death sentence.
Skenazy’s advice: Break the rules. Picture: Discovery Life Channel Source: Supplied
In another challenge, Amedeo, armed with a map, embarked on a two-hour odyssey exploring Central Park to walk the family dog. He wasn’t allowed to take a cellphone, and even asked a stranger — something that would have been unthinkable in the past — for the time.
“When he came back, he seemed really proud of himself,” admits White, who spent the entire couple hours on tenterhooks. “Even his posture was better.”
As Skenazy points out: “There is no greater gift to your kid than confidence. It was amazing to see the transformation.”
Mostly reformed, White claims to have a much more relaxed attitude to parenting these days. Amedeo, now 14, takes the city bus to school (without having to give running cellphone commentary). And his brothers, Felix, 11, and Ziggy, 5, have learned to appreciate more lightly cooked food.
“One of them dropped something on the floor the other day and it was well beyond the five-second rule,” laughs White. “It was probably there for a minute and I said: ‘Oh, go on, eat it!’”
A family on World’s Worst Mom. Picture: Discovery Life Channel Source: Supplied
Another New York family to benefit from Skenazy’s wisdom on the show are the Almontes of suburban Rockland County, whose home resembles a pampered prison thanks to mum’s insecurities.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m in a box and nobody can come into it and I’m not allowed out of it,” 10-year-old Brianna explains to Skenazy on the show.
That’s because Phyllis Almonte won’t allow play dates, particularly sleepovers, because she’s “worried about Brianna being in strangers’ houses, changing clothes and privacy.”
She even accompanies Brianna into the stall of the ladies’ room at the mall in case she comes into contact with germs or a stranger makes an approach while Phyllis waits outside.
Son Zach, 12, is banned from riding his bike anywhere outside of their driveway because Almonte fears he could be hit by a car on the road. “It feels like I am two years old still and my mum has to watch and correct what I am doing if I make a mistake,” laments Zach. “It feels like I’m trapped almost.”
If that’s not bad enough, when the kids are playing in the backyard, they have to keep in touch with their mum via walkie-talkie.
“I constantly fear that they will get abducted or hurt,” Almonte, 47, an executive assistant, admits to Skenazy on the show before tearfully adding: “I know what I’m doing is not good, but I can’t help it.”
In her case, the intervention takes the form of an organised play date in which Brianna is allowed to host a group of girls from her school for a swimming pool party. It’s a roaring success, with Almonte bonding with the other mums and arranging a reciprocal play date in the future.
In the meantime, Zach gets to cycle to the park less than four kilometres away, where he is able to play basketball with his friends. While Almonte can’t resist driving to the courts to check up on him, she concedes it’s time to cut the apron strings.
Meet Lenore Skenazy
“I learned from Lenore that you have to teach your kids right and wrong, talk to them and it all boils down to trust,” she tells The Post. “I can’t keep them inside this bubble forever, or they won’t know how to handle themselves in the real world.”
The highlight of the show is Zach overcoming his fears and zooming down a giant slide at a water park, moments before his water- and heights-phobic mum follows suit.
“Self-esteem doesn’t come from being told: ‘Oh, you’re great!’ It comes from doing something hard,” observes Skenazy. “Part of our job as parents is to encourage kids to take that extra step.”
When she leaves the family, the more relaxed mum looks 10 years younger while Brianna and Zach, now 13 and 15, have a new-found spring in their step.
“Instead of thinking of all the things that could go wrong,” says Almonte, “I’m thinking about all the things that could go right.”
This story originally appeared on the New York Post
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét