SUPER NANNY

Since I've been off of work since Christmas Eve I've gotten my days a bit tangled up. Friday night I decided to waste sometime in front of the television and channel surf. Okay, channel surfing to me is changing the channel from 7 to channel 4 and then back to 7 - I know, dumb, but I like those two channels. Thankfully on ABC7 they had WifeSwap and SuperNanny on - I HEART THESE SHOWS. I remember over a year ago I would race home from work to catch these two shows on Tuesday nights... they were that important to me. I feel like every episode is pertinent to everyday family life and valuable lessons can be learned by watching them. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I cry every time? Yes, I cry Oprah tears. WifeSwap was sentimental and of course... I cried, however SuperNanny made me extremely sad and reflective on how I treated my parents. The two parents on the show had kids from previous marriages, totaling four: 7, 8, 9 and 18 years old, sounds pretty normal right? Yah, normal except the parents were both legally deaf. The younger trio of kids were extremely rude to the parents, often mocking them for their disability and outright disobedient. When they didn't want their parents to hear or see what they were saying they would cover their mouth so their elders couldn't read their lips. Nine times out of ten the 18 year old was forced to act as the parent, especially since she was fluent in ASL (American Sign Language) and was able to hear. While the show ultimately had a happy ending, what it took to get there was tremendously heart wrenching and I wish I could have turned to my mom and apologized for all the times I was an asshole to her, I think we've all be one to our parents before. Turns out the show I'm talking about made a great impact on the deaf community... who knew the deaf community sign's on YouTube (check it out below) as this lady is referencing the particular SupperNanny I watched - truly amazing.

I guess the moral of the story is that no matter if your parent is old, young, deaf, mentally disabled or "normal" you should always treat them with the highest respect.