Supernanny

Not impressed with what I saw of it. I think my friends told me the other nanny on "Nanny 911" is nicer. This one was certainly judgmental enough. Lynn Koegel came off well, I thought: the clips I saw only showed her being positive about the parents, which was my other big beef. Granted they were seriously off their game, telling the four-year-old to watch the autistic younger brother outside, but they also to me seemed obviously depressed, and I couldn't help wondering where the hell Early Intervention was. If they knew the diagnosis, someone, somewhere, had seen and evaluated this child. So why wasn't there intervention, or ANYTHING in the way of community support for a nonverbal three-year-old?

I won't get into the fact that it made therapy look easier than it really was: to me this kid seemed obviously engaged and related, and he picked up imitative skills very, very quickly, but that's the luck of the draw, and I don't fault the producers for that. I do fault for them for a lost opportunity to point out what disability does to family dynamics. This wasn't a case of wimpy parents with out-of-control children (I've seen some of those in my time, and I'm not as sympathetic to the parents--I just want them to buy a really, really big clue): it was a family dealing (or having trouble dealing) with a serious lifelong problem, and working its way through the depression and denial at the beginning of the journey. And depressed parents tend not to be as available to their kids. It sucks, but there it is.

I'm borderline enough that I fired off a long rant to the show. No reply, but it was Friday night.