Honey we're killing the kids

[Carnage Head]

For some reason I found myself watching 'Honey we're killing the kids' on BBC1 last night. This is one of those programmes where attempts are made to set wayward children straight according to some child psychologist's dictums.

In this episode, the mum was greeted by a computerised mock-up of her children's faces when they were forty years old, if the children carried on with the 'bad' habits they had become accustomed to. In this nightmarish vision, the hapless mother's ten year old boy, who had had been a regular smoker for six - six! - years, and who ate Turkey Twizzlers like they were coated in crack, was thus portrayed as a toothless, ruddy-faced obese thug. His sister in her 'forty-year-old-worst-case-scenario' looked just like her mum did at the moment - a kind of doleful Waynetta. [Watching this made me squirm with embarrassment, which the presenter obviously did not feel. How did this programme get on air?]

Anyway, the ninth and final 'rule' this dysfunctional working-class family had been given by the patronising middle-class do-gooder was to 'have a family day out', on the pretence that a family that plays together, stays together. The children were then given three choices of what to do on their day out.

Option one: Climbing [girl registers flicker of interest, boy looks as if someone had farted and wafted it at his face]

Option two: Orienteering [girl squeals 'yay!', boy looks indifferent]

Option three: A day on a canal boat [boy and girl both look as if the third option was going to be 'go to Disneyland']

What did they go for?


























Canal boating.

The carnage heads.

Did anyone else see it, and hoped against hope that the children would see the light?

[Miffy]

Ha ha that must have been the episode my mum and dad were provisionally lined up to teach orienteering in a park in scunthorpe! they heard later that they weren't doing it - sounds like a lucky escape.

[Adventure Racer]

Wasn't there an episode of Wife Swap where the active mum took the kids from the inactive family orienteering and they loved it?

[RWK]

I saw it

Sadlly

Why could they not have picked orienteering. It would have been hilarious

[Carnage Head]

Ha ha that must have been the episode my mum and dad were provisionally lined up to teach orienteering in a park in scunthorpe! they heard later that they weren't doing it - sounds like a lucky escape.

The family were from Leeds, so that sounds feasible.

On a more serious note, assuming that your parents are not brown o-suited beard-sporters (either or both of them ), then I reckon that just 5mins exposure on TV in front of millions of prime-time viewers could have been beneficial for the sport... Hmmm.

They call this kind of programme 'car crash TV', because you just find yourself staring longer than you should. The human zoo, at mucking-out time. Not pretty. Incidentally, next week they are featuring a couple of spoilt rich brats, so at least they can't be accused of being nasty to just one part of society.

[rob f]

I probaly would have picked rock climbing, but thats beacuse i can't do that very often