Kids today: A Dose of Reality

This weekend I gathered round the television with my friends, watching much loved programs we had been saving on the DVR. And when those programs were over and we still had a little time to kill before heading out to the midnight movie at the Minneapolis Uptown Theater, we stumbled upon something truly phenomenal.

Well, maybe not phenomenal, but at least interesting.

OK, maybe not interesting, but entertaining and rant-worthy:

World's Strictest Parents on CMT (the promo below does not seem to accurately describe the show I saw...especially the part about the teenagers electing to go live with another family because it would be a crazy fun adventure...)


First of all, I did not know that Country Music Television, much like it's more popular big brother MTV, plays original reality programming. Only instead of watching spoiled kids who recently threw their super sweet 16 parties (which we also enjoyed watching) shipped to places where kids that age work for a living (see below)...
(I couldn't find any clips on youtube, but you can watch full episodes here)

...we get to see rebellious teenagers shipped off to good, upper middle class households where they can finally have some good parenting that they're so desperately crying out for! Thank heavens for these "strict" parents! Also, I would imagine that CMT's budget is slightly less than MTV's, so shipping kids off to Africa to live in a hut for a week and appreciate all the wonderful things they've been given is just too pricey.

In the episode we watched (and sadly, we didn't get to stick around to see how it all turned out, so I guess we'll never know whether the strict parents really got through to these troubled teens) one teenage girl, Brittani, and one teenage boy, Ivan, went to live with some "super strict" parents. As soon as the kids arrived at their new home, they had to get rid of their cigarettes and piercings, and we all learned that slamming doors is one of the WORST things a rebellious teenage could do (not as bad as lying though. Lying really is the WORST thing that anyone could do). As far as I could tell, these parents were more anal than strict--they made sure the kids woke up by 7:30 am each morning (hello! that's earlier than I get up in the morning!) and they had lists of chores ready and posted on the kids' doors. It seemed to me that these kids had some issues that weren't going to be solved by waking up early or dusting, but...whatever. It was almost like boot camp that those troubled teens are so often sent to on the daytime talk shows, but for parents who couldn't really commit to boot camp, so instead they just shipped their kids off to the suburbs.

In MTV's Exiled, the audience is ready to see super spoiled, mouthy little good for nothings experience a week of difficult living. We hope that they learn a valuable lesson--to appreciate what they have and to recognize that not everyone is so lucky as they are (OK, maybe two valuable lessons). These kids aren't going to like what they have to do, but we're a little happy to see them suffer, because hey, they're the "bad" guys, right? The bad guys who need to come to some realization of their wicked ways and repent before our 60 minutes is up.

However, in World's Strictest Parents, the kids aren't spoiled brats, they're seem like quite the opposite. These are kids who have a hard life going to live with someone who has been blessed with a comfortable life, and while living with the "better" family (the comfortable suburban two parent household family) they are to come to a similar realization about how they have been acting and become "better" people. So...what's the lesson here again? At one point, Ivan (one of the troubled teens) refused to get up his lighter to the strict parents. When pushed, he said that he never gives up his things, even when he's brutally beaten. It seems to me that a kid who is brutally beaten has more issues to work out than slamming doors and taking out his piercings.

Who knows, maybe in the end these kids did learn something. And maybe the strict parents learned something too. And it did keep our attention for more than a half hour, which is more than I can say for most things on TV. I also learned that lying is the worst thing I could ever do, and that no matter what, I should NEVER slam a door.

Reader's note: While relaxing for the evening and watching some Toddlers and Tiaras, I happened to do a little googling of World's Strictest Parents, only to find that this is apparently a WORLD-WIDE phenomenon? It airs in 17 countries?? What? Now I'm curious...just because the episode I saw was ridiculous, maybe this show does have some merit...here's a clip from an episode that takes place in Ghana, where British teens learn to live with a different family:

This entry was posted by Brigitte, on Thursday, August 20, 2009. You can leave your response.