Wife Swap Last night

[luvthatduke]

I have to agree with many here that my first thoughts were,
"Oh great, now look how bad homeschooler's look!"

I am a conservative Christian, and have many
homeschooling friends (I still have a toddler).
Please let me tell anyone that cares to know,
Paul & Melissa do not represent ANYone I know.
No one I know makes their children do ALL
of the housework, especially most of it before breakfast.
And I don't know any children that are as robotic as they
appeared to be.
I know & admire strict parents,
but they were extreme - see my "joy" remark below.

Also, the homeschool kids/teens/graduates I know
loved being homeschooled. One or two asked to
try public school, and they came back to Mom
the next year because the "fun" school wasn't
what they had built it up to be in their minds.

2 things stood out for me:

1) I saw little, if any, joy in their Christian household,
which made me so sad...
2) Made me sadder still when Melissa came home
& her own children looked as if they were waiting
for the "all clear" to give their mom a hug.

What made me angry from the start was Cindy's
nasty, and down-right ugly, attitude.
She clearly decided to hate Paul from the get-go
after reading Melissa's manual.
And like another post'r suggested, she didn't adhere to
virtually ANY of their rules, but demanded Paul adhere to hers.
I just plain disliked her, but liked her husband
as he truly tried his best.

This is one of those shows where it was
abundantly clear how one family (Cindy's) operated,
but Melissa's family was an example of one where
I wish the show was 2 hours, so that more could
be revealed especially talking w/the children more.

This show makes for good soul searching,
but at the end of every one I ask myself
the same question - why would anyone
want to be on this program??

 

[Kimberle]

Just a FYI, I read Melissa's manual and it said they have a housekeeper who comes in one day per week to give the house a good cleaning. Maybe the Producers "overplayed" the kids doing all the housework a bit.

 

[luvthatduke]

"Maybe the Producers "overplayed" the kids doing all the housework a bit."

LOL Kimberle - thanks!
Isn't that always the way with "reality" programming?

I saved the link to their journals & rules,
but haven't had time to read them.

 

[Kae]

Originally posted by orvilleair


The kids in Virginia are probably borderline obese,

The oldest daughter & mother are just not borderline-they are obese. I am not trying to be mean. The oldest daughter was just a plain lazy girl & I go so tried of watching her make all those faces. I mean it said she did not have a job. I sure hope her mother keeps supporting her Because I sure did not want to start. And where were the doors on the cabinets at the FL house?

Kae

 

[Imzadi]

I thyought the father of the permissive family was good. He really listened to the FL Mom, was willing to try new things and when his daughter got upset, he let her have her feelings & upset for a while before handling them. He even taught the FL mom to wait & let her have some time instead of simply, immmediately, overcontroling the daughter. The dad gave a lot of respect to all.

His wife however was ill-mannered, rude & disprespectful. The way she wouldn't even let the FL couple talk whe they all sat down together, cutting them off, invalidating them.

I wouldn't be surprized if that 14 yr old daughter is pregnant by age 17.

I wonder how the kids of the Fl family will react when they finally leave home. Having a taste of freedom, privilege, treats, I'm sure a seed has been planted that will stay with them.

 

[tiggerlover]

Originally posted by Imzadi
I thyought the father of the permissive family was good. He really listened to the FL Mom, was willing to try new things and when his daughter got upset, he let her have her feelings & upset for a while before handling them. He even taught the FL mom to wait & let her have some time instead of simply, immmediately, overcontroling the daughter. The dad gave a lot of respect to all.

His wife however was ill-mannered, rude & disprespectful. The way she wouldn't even let the FL couple talk whe they all sat down together, cutting them off, invalidating them.

I totally agree with this, I really thought the VA dad made an effort.

I usually don't stay up this late to watch this show but I did this time because it was filmed in the town I live in and it received a lot of hype this week. Also, I work with someone who knows the VA family fairly well. After the show my co-worker said Cindy was not like the person she was portrayed through the whole show, her personality was more like when Cindy first walked in the house and saw the vegetarian cookbooks. My co-worker did admit that the kids dressed really trashy, but other than that he said Cindy was acting very different and stressed over the situation. The local radio station had her on and she said that we didn't see the whole picture as they had 10 days of footage and only aired 42 minutes of it, she said FL dad was constantly following her the whole time she was there and that he was just odd. I am not sticking up for her in any way, just stating what I heard. I have to agree that each family had their own issues and I couldn't imagine living in either household.

 

[dzneelvr]

We've been watching both the wife swap shows (ABC and FOX) and come to the conclusion like many of you that ABCs is much more "extreme" than FOX. That makes it interesting to say the least. We all watch it together (DS 17, DD 14, DH and I) and have really good discussions during the commercials. It's interesting for me to hear how my kids dialogue about what they have seen on the show. I guess that's what we use the reality shows for in our house--good discussion tools to help them see different real life situations and what they would do in them.
We all agreed more in principle with the Florida family, but how they practiced it was too obsessive and controlling for our tastes. And no meat--yuck, that I couldn't handle.
The fat family was right about individualism, but we did NOT agree with how they practiced that. Could see 2 girls with major social problems as adults (and now). Very interesting viewing in our opinion.