TV review by Vijay Solanki
As the co-founder of a company about parenting and mental health I was a eager to watch the first episode of Nine’s new Parental Guidance.
At ParentalEQ we have spent 18 months interviewing 1000s of parents. It is human nature to want to watch your neighbours. As parents, we can’t help being intrigued by other parenting styles.
Vijay Solanki
The core concept of Nine’s Parental Guidance is for the 10 sets of parents on the show to discuss and pick winning parents. Ultimately, it’s all about the winning parenting technique.
It must have been tempting to award points. It was a smart move by the production team not to go down that road.
It’s dangerous to pick winners, nonetheless. Every family is different and ages and numbers of children matter.
One of the keys to the show’s success is Doctor Justin Coulson who is credible and is well respected in the parenting and psychology world. In fact, he has been the reassuring factor for many.
The cutaways to the doctor keep a thread of credibility running through the show. They also provide the learning moments for parents and carers watching.
I’m impressed with Nine for giving a difficult topic like parenting a crack. Everyone has an opinion on the important subject.
At ParentalEQ we’ve learnt that most parents want to know if their approach is the right one and we can’t help but look at others. For some parents, it’s almost instinct to make judgements, so you can see the logic for making it a TV series.
It was impressive the program took on a topic like physical discipline. We saw in the first episode that most parents acknowledged, often reluctantly, that they had smacked a child. That said, only one family had smacking as a “tool in the toolbox”.
Parental Guidance hosts Dr Justin Coulson and Ally Langdon
Doctor Coulson was fantastic as the voice of reason and scientific authority. He reaffirmed that there is no evidence that smacking a child is helpful in any way and usually quite the contrary.
Every show needs its villains and Parental Guidance has found some too. The highlight of the first episode was opposites day. It’s an interesting exercise in what goes around often comes around. It seemed to be an accurate reflection of the parenting styles on the show. The families are reasonably diverse, although I think I only saw one single parent so let’s see how that plays out.
Best takeaway from episode one? I loved the line “children learn what they live”. That and Dr Justin Coulson. I will keep watching and I am keen to see how extreme the scenarios will go.
Vijay Solanki is the CEO and co-founder, ParentalEQ. He is a former media executive including launch music and marketing director at Shazam, chief digital officer at Southern Cross Austereo and CEO IAB Australia.
ParentalEQ is a psychology platform. Personalised programs and on-demand services for parents and carers. It’s like a therapist in your pocket. Find it on the app store.
See also: What Allison Langdon learned during her time on Parental Guidance