THE GUARDIAN
10th February 2010
Sam Wollaston
Your daughter won't eat anything but sweets and ice-cream? Time to send for Jo Frost.
Kiran doesn't like food, apart from sweets and ice-cream, that's the problem...By the end of the programme, Kiran is wolfing down the fish pie, and asking for more vegetables. ________________________________________
BROADCAST
4th February 2010
Tony Prince
Director of programming, Wedding TV
...Frost handles the kids well and teaches us what comes naturally to most good parents: communication with the kids, love and kindness, strictness and commonsense.
The item that concerned me most wasn’t the study of 10-year-old boys playing aggressive computer games to see how it affected their nature, but the one of 10-year-old Bronwyn, who shaves her legs and plasters herself in a daily two-hour make-up regime. An expedition to a photo touch-up studio helps her appreciate that the media cheats.
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THE MIRROR
9th February 2010
Jane Simon
..Jo meets a four-year-old who will only eat sweets and an 11-year-old who can’t leave the house without full make-up.
Both are emotional cases and if seeing a beautiful pre-teen calling herself “stupid, ugly and horrible” doesn’t upset you, witnessing a pushed-to-the-edge mother force-feeding her child will.
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THE TELEGRAPH
9th February 2010
Benji Wilson
... the usual diet of tough love, strict routine and hierarchy did the trick.
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THE TIMES
10TH February 2010
Andrew Billen
Bad mother number one was Sophia, accused of force-feeding four-year-old Kiran. Eating nothing but sweets, she had already been treated in hospital for malnutrition and suffered ten fillings to her teeth. .. Frost’s remedy was to send Kiran to bed hungry until she got the message, which she duly did. Bad mother number two was Emma, whose daughter Bronwyn had a surprising number of body issues for a pretty 11-year-old...a visit to a photographer’s studio where the wonders of touching up were explained by means of a rigorous Photoshopping of ... Frost’s portrait. By the end of the show, just as we had left Kiran tucking into fish pies, Bronwyn had thrown out her make-up bag. ________________________________________
THE TELEGRAPH
10TH FEBRUARY 2010
John Preston
... delinquent child, despairing parents, quick visit from Frost, nuggets of common sense dispensed and finally… happiness restored. According to a statistic at the start, ‘One third of UK parents think they are doing a really bad job’ ... One of the terrible tots shown here was a four-year-old girl who would only eat sweets. Another was a 11 year-old called Bronwyn who hated her appearance so much that she regularly covered herself in hair removal cream... But the real cracker was an item about the effect of violent computer games on children.
A doctor conducted an experiment in which various 12-year-old boys who played violent games were contrasted with those who didn’t. The most telling part came when he invited each of the boys in for a chat, then deliberately knocked over a jar of pencils on his desk. Only 40 per cent of the violent game players offered to help pick them up, whereas 80 per cent of the non-violent gamers did. Conclusion: violent games are desensitising children to the point where they are losing the ability to empathise with, and help, other people.