Jo Frost (Extreme Parental Guidance) interview
Jo Frost, aka Supernanny, Britain’s best known parenting expert, is back on Channel 4 in February with a new series, Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance. The series promises to provide the UK’s mums and dads with the honest, insightful and no-nonsense advice they need. As well as visiting individual families, Jo will also be working with experts to stage big events, discovering the truth behind the issues most relevant to children’s lives.
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Here, Jo explains a little more about the series, reveals what we could all do to be better parents, talks about how her life has changed now she's an international TV star...
Your new series is Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance. What’s it all about?
This new show has allowed me to branch out. It’s on a much wider scale than Supernanny. It let’s me travel across the UK and listen to parents talk about the things that they’re concerned about. It’s dealing with bigger topics, with the issues that are really affecting children and their parents today. It’s allowed me to be a family advocate, in a way. I go in and ask questions and explore, on a much deeper level, these issues. With Supernanny I’d be working with one family and their specific issues - this time I’ve decided to take on the UK as a whole, and take a look at what matters to people and what parents are worried about. So we’ll be looking at things like body image and eating disorders; at food and how it affects us in different ways; at the importance of sleep and issues surrounding that area; at social media and the affect that that’#s having on kids - children are becoming addicted to computers and DVDs. All of that, is happening now, and it’s stuff that people are talking about and parents are concerned about. People want to know how they can parent better and what they can do. So this series is about me going out and listening to these concerns, talking to people and finding out some answers. And I go out and do some experiments to illustrate certain points.
So how does it work? What will I see if I tune in to show one?
You’ll see me travel to a destination in the UK, talk to parents and professionals, and you’ll see a very different way of looking at the issues and the facts surrounding them. We’re going to do certain massive experiments, so we can explore the information that we want to pass on to parents.
Will you still be working one-on-one with individual families?
You’ll certainly see me connecting with parents and giving them advice and helping them. But it’s very different to what people will have seen on Supernanny, because I’m dealing with bigger issues, nationwide issues. So I’ve stepped outside the home this time.
What sort of experiments do you do?
Well, for example I was very concerned by the influence of social media, and the effects it has on our young children. I did quite a few experiments that involved large numbers of the public. Without giving too much away, we were looking at things from a different angle. They were huge exercises and experiments, and they were a lot of fun. But the results were really alarming. I certainly learned a lot in doing Extreme Parental Guidance But it was great, being out there connecting with so many parents. And I received so much support as well. Parents were really enthusiastic about learning more.
Does all of this mean that there’s going to be no more Supernanny?
No, there won’t be any more. But Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance has evolved from that. It’s a natural evolution for me to move from being in the home and helping one family at a time to doing something much bigger like this. It’s extremely informative, it’s going to be very compelling television. There’s no way you can go on this journey with me and not start to think and think, and make decisions about how you’re going to parent and feel more confident in your decisions. I want to be able to empower parents by giving them information.
You talk about these complicated issues that parents are facing these days. Do you think it’s more difficult to be a parent than ever before?
No. I think the issues are different because society evolves and things change. Everyone can talk about the things that have changed since their childhood. Certainly things were different when I was a kid. We’ve only got to look at statistics to see that young girls are really worried about how they look. We never worried about that, we were just on our bikes and out and about playing. We’ve got obesity rates in the UK that have doubled in the past ten years. There are so many families dealing with teenage computer addiction. But the issues are just different from the ones in the past. They’re not necessarily more difficult. Parenting is the most important job you’ll ever do, and I want parents to honour that, the role of bringing another human being into the world and raising them.
Was it nice to come back to the UK for the series?
Absolutely. I work in America, doing the Supernanny shows here, which are fantastic. But home’s home, and it’s important to me to still be doing work as a family advocate for families nationwide in the UK. That’s why it was important for me to come home last summer and really work on this project.
Your life has changed remarkably over the last few years. You’ve had hit TV series in the UK and the US, and written bestselling books. Are you ever astonished by the way things have turned out?
I’m grateful. I’m grateful to have been given the opportunity in the first place to make the Supernanny shows. I take the position I have in the media very seriously, because I have a responsibility to make sure that the information people are given is absolutely right. And there’s not a day I don’t wake up and feel how wonderful it is to be able to help people.
You’ve done shows in the USA like Oprah and David Letterman and The Tonight Show. Do you ever get nervous before shows like that?
No, I don’t get nervous. I’m going on to talk about stuff that I’m so passionate about. If anything I get really excited. They’re really good experiences as well - the hosts of these shows are always really good fun. I hope I’ll get the chance to do a bit more of it in the UK as well, come on some shows there. But yeah, it’s really good fun. I do remember being on The David Letterman Show, and thinking back to when I used to watch it with a couple of mates back in the UK. The show has that backdrop of the New York skyline, and those little fairy lights in the background, and I remember waiting backstage to go on. Paris Hilton was on before me, and I remember standing back stage looking at the backdrop of the show, and all of a sudden I had an absolute flashback to me and my friends watching the show back home. It was a really surreal moment.
Do you get a lot of people coming up to you to ask advice?
Yeah, I do, and the extraordinary thing is the range of people who do that. A lot of them aren’t even parents. Not long ago I had three young guys come up to me in an airport to tell me that they and their partners were taking notes from my programmes for the day when they did have children later. You get single people who come up, grandparents, young kids.
Does that ever get annoying? There must be times when you don’t want people to come up and discuss their kids with you.
It’s a kind of nice mix I get, really. At the end of the day, I’m on TV. I think it’s great that people see me as approachable, and that people feel they can come up and talk to me. And I’ll always talk back to them. Not everybody comes up to ask a question. Sometimes they’ll come up and say they like the show, or say thanks for the information. If I met someone who I knew had loads of experience on a topic, and it was something I was interested in, I’d definitely go up and ask them. Why not? People in the UK are a little bit more reserved anyway. But people are very supportive and helpful and kind. It’s great, if you’ve had a really long day and you’ve been on the go for 17 hours, to have someone come up to you and say “Keep up the good work.” It’s a nice reminder of why you do what you do.
I read somewhere that Britney Spears calls you for advice. Is that true?
I’ve got to keep hush-hush, haven’t I? I’m not going to tell you who calls me! Come off it!
But you do get famous people calling you for advice?
Yes. And they’re not always calling about extreme situations either. They have the same issues as everyone else. It’s just the normal questions that people have about the many, many changes that children go through as they develop. Mostly it’s just general advice.
Having spent the last 20 years working with kids, has it put you off the idea of having them yourself?
No. It’s still a question that I get asked a lot. The answer is absolutely not, it hasn’t put me off. Are you kidding me? No way! But I’m a very busy lady, I’m constantly on the move. I’ve been to 43 states now in America, and I’m on the road loads. I don’t feel, as a woman, that ‘tick-tock tick-tock’, I’m not panicking about it. And I firmly believe that you don’t have to have your own child to love a child and to raise another human being, so maybe that’s why I don’t feel that biological clock.
You obviously connect really well with the kids you work with. Do you ever get sad about saying goodbye to them after, say, filming Supernanny with a family?
Yeah, it’s emotional because you’re going on an emotional journey with them. You can’t help but be emotionally involved. You have a relationship with them. I’ve talked to them on the phone and received Christmas cards from them. There’s no way I couldn’t feel something.
What are the issues you most often encounter in your work?
I think parents now are really understanding the importance of time. All of us, parents or not, are always short of time, but you have to make time. Without giving time to your children, you can’t look at anything else. Things take time. It’s important for parents to understand that the time they put in is an investment on so many levels. And communication is key, as is being able to hear and listen to your children. It’s important to understand where kids are coming from, and bridging that gap is an important part of what I do. I’m able to mediate between kids and their parents or teenagers and their parents. And then it’s important to be consistent and to be constructive.
Are you still learning about kids and families and your profession, or have you seen it and done it all?
By no means have I seen and done it all. Making Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance was a real learning experience for me. I went out there with fresh eyes and asked questions and found some alarming results regarding issues that are a big problem in the UK. And they required real thought. I don’t think you ever stop learning, to be honest with you. In fact, I’m not often gob smacked, but there were a few things I learned and situations that I came across in the summer that left me not knowing what to say. Like I say, it should make for a very compelling and insightful series.
Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance airs on Channel 4 at 8pm on Tuesdays from 9th February 2010.
