by Melody Powell

Created on: August 12, 2008   Last Updated: August 14, 2008

Perhaps if parents were able to watch themselves on television, they could best see what others see, whether it is quite shocking at first or not, it may save some kids by enabling parents to reflect on themselves in order to facilitate the development of confident, passionate achieving children.

Late night show
Switching on to a late night television show, I was compelled to watch a story about a family living in the UK. They were interviewed on a Breakfast TV Show along with their 11 year old daughter, whose ambition is, to become a model and work in television. What was disturbing, was how the mother of the little girl, encourages regimes such as bleaching of her hair, the wearing of extensions and make up, which made her look almost uncomfortably grown up for her age. Throughout the interview the little girl sat, straight faced and was not dawn to speak in the interview. Here there is a real image contradiction; she looked like an adult but was not treated as such in the conversation. I could not help thinking that, she was being drawn too quickly into an adult world, the world of models and celebrities. My doubts were confirmed, because the only time that this little girl smiled, the way children do, was when she was given an opportunity to talk about her hobby, cheerleading.

Pushy parents
We later see a scene of the family in a restaurant discussing an article written by the interviewer, suggesting that she had a pushy mother'. The mother then tells her little girl to go and practice her cheerleading in the restaurant. This little girl was shy, lacking in confidence and did not want to perform in front of people even thought the restaurant had a sparse amount of diners. I thought surely there are better ways to build confidence in children without such radical tactics. I could guess from the program that the mother may have wanted to build some sort of confidence in the little girl, because the mother had made plans for her to enter a beauty pageant. I think that she may have had better results if she had enable the child to take part in small scale activities or perform in front of family and friends first, to build up her confidence.

Model agency
We next see this mum driving her two children, a girl and a boy to a model agency. But she says quite openly, without joking, that this is, so her children can take care of her in old age. Off camera the Agent, remarked that the mother did all the speaking for her children. As a person, this little girl was not developing

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