Feel free to read Part 1 of What Reality Shows Can Teach You about Parenting, or feel free not to bother.
American Idol may not seem like a primer in parenting, but it is. Where else can you learn that everyone judges you? That lesson became apparent on a recent trip to IKEA. I had just plopped my children onto an IKEA dolly meant to carry flat-packed pieces of furniture while you search for a set of allen wrenches and 6000 screws. A woman wearing Ugg boots approached me. I noticed her footwear because I was looking down, trying to ensure the strings on my daughter’s hood didn’t wind around the wheel. No sense being totally irresponsible and hanging your own child. “Excuse me?” she says. “That’s not safe.”
With my back safely to her, I swear like I’ve dropped a sledge hammer on my baby toe, lessons that I’ve learned from Hell’s Kitchen. The kids will learn it anyway, so they might as well learn it in the safety of IKEA.
You think this is Fear Factor? Try Childbirth or The Years That Follow It
It looks like art till you have a newborn
The reality show that should be required viewing for expectant parents is Fear Factor. If lying down in a tub filled with snakes makes you up-chuck your crackers and brie, how are you going to clean diarrhea off your own pajamas? It remains a mystery how innocent newborns can consistently empty their bowels the moment you lie them on the change table, remove the soggy diaper, and raise their legs to wipe them. Liquid poo sprays from their anus to your pajamas, turning your nightgown into a canvas that resembles a Jackson Pollack painting. It ain’t art, though, if it smells like crap. I’ll take the tub-o’-snakes anyday.
Although it contains few bodily function references, The Amazing Race offers its own lessons for parents. Only unlike the actual show, the raising-your-kids version lasts at least twenty years and offers no million dollar prize. Roadblocks? You wanna talk roadblocks? Try driving with two-year-old twins across Canada …with no DVD player. The fact that anyone on the car trip survived, especially the children, is in itself amazing. A second lesson this show teaches is about correlation: the more time a family spends together, the more fighting occurs. So, book a babysitter, and get some distance.
The adage, “Things Could Always Be Worse,” is easily learned from watching twenty seconds of Intervention or five seconds of Toddlers and Tiaras . At this point, it’s difficult to conclude which show is worse, but there’s something seriously wrong with making three-year-olds look like Lady Gaga, however cool she may be.
So, feeling morally superior, a switch to Intervention is in order. As you sit down with a well-deserved glass of Pinot Noir, you’re reminded that there are people suffering from serious addictions. Then, when you realize your kids could become addicts, you turn off the TV and go back to the kitchen for a second glass. You take your wine out the back door to begin the search for the shoe your son lost. You step over Tonka trucks and skipping ropes, but trip over something, slopping your wine. It was the shoe, of course. As you head upstairs, you’re relieved: today’s reality shows are yesterday’s news.
As for tomorrow…
Photos courtesy of nugunslinger and Abby Lanes, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License
Leanne Shirtliffe is the mother of seven-year-old twins, Thing 1 and Thing 2. She lived in Asia for eight years, which turned out to be a build-your-own-family adventure. Leanne writes for Nickelodeon and pens a humour column for The Calgary Herald. She is represented by Jill Marr of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency in California. 
