I’ve never heard of them until yesterday when I ran across this on Imgur. It seems pretty bad. Even if it is all a prank, the one kid (Cody?) sure doesn’t seem happy about it. Furthermore, he pretty clearly appears to be being abused.
What I found interesting is when the mom (and the rest of the family) blames everyone else/the viewers/the haters for making it worse. While that can be true in some cases. For example, put a random picture up on the internet and let the internet find something wrong with it and watch the entire world tell you that your a horrible, awful parent that shouldn’t be allowed to have kids because you put your child’s shirt on backwards or some other non-sense. But OTOH, when you throw your kid into a bookshelf and tell the viewers that it’s their fault, that’s abuse, period. Sure, I’ve never heard of them until yesterday and only saw what was in that clip, but ISTM, all they have to do is leave that one kid out of it.
What I noticed, what really caught my attention is when the kid was asking the dad to leave him alone and the dad yelled back ‘you know I have to blog’. To me, it sounds like it’s more than ‘fun and games’ when he said that. It’s at 7:20, check it out.
If CPS hasn’t been in there yet, I’m sure they will be now. The mom said they already were and like the guy said, maybe they were, maybe everything really is fine and it really is all an act. But if it’s not, I’m guessing those kids will be pulled out of the house, or at least Cody will be. He sure doesn’t seem happy about this. And again, they could avoid a lot of this by filming around him.
I’m not really in favor of CPS acting on a random notion of psychological abuse but there sure needs to be someone to step in and have a talk with those parents. I think I would have rather had the physical abuse instead of the constant brow-beating and condemnation from my parents. Just thinking about this stuff is getting to me, it’s all so long ago, I don’t want it my memories, I’ve reconciled to accept it all as circumstances outside of my control, but there’s no escaping the affect on my life, and always wondering what could have been. It’s beyond me how any parent doesn’t realize how damaging this kind of thing is, calling it a prank isn’t going to make anything better.
Neither am I, and I’ve said it before on the boards. I don’t like the idea of taking the kids first and then asking questions. I know you said you didn’t want to watch the video(s). But that dad really is injuring the child and kid is (at least in the one I linked to) crying and/or screaming in all the clips. Asking/demanding for them to stop with the ‘pranks’ and the constant filming of his life.
It’s also not so subtly pointed out that Cody is covered in bruises.
Hopefully, at the very least, someone at school, CPS, police officer, counselor, teacher, principal, etc has talked to all these kids and either decided that everything is fine or started the wheels turning.
Their response just shows how out of touch these people are. They think yelling, cursing, pushing, etc. is within the bounds of normal parenting, and can’t fathom how their actions seem excessive and abusive.
The kids, unfortunately, are imbibing the same Kool-Aid. Which means they are on track to eventually becoming their parents, dishing out the same type of treatment to their own spawn.
But perhaps this brouhaha has served as a wake up call? I can only hope so.
My parents liked to prank the kids on occasion. Once when my sister and I were having a preteen slumber party and wanted to camp in the backyard, my Dad snuck outside and made spooky noises, which sent everyone inside screaming. Where we found Mom sitting calmly in bed while Dad was “showering”- they turned the shower on as part of the prank. The end result was we all got snacks then Dad came back in and confessed.
And we fooled with my brother a lot around Christmas because he would decide he wanted something really specific and would be vocal for months making sure everyone knew he wanted xx toy or clothing item from Xx company, in a specific color. So Mom would buy the cheap knockoff and wrap it - he would open it, try to hide is disappointment, then my parents would present him with the real deal,
But none of this was really mean. The stuff with my brother was maybe a little mean, but Mom and Dad didn’t drag it out, his disappointment only lasted less than a minute
I don’t think so. Pretty sure there was some serious manipulation going on there when the parents allowed their kids to speak. I mean think about it, do you think those kids feel safe enough to just straight up say: “yeah, my parents are horrible!”?
I’m not sure what your point is here. Just because they’re not comfortable calling out their parents on-camera doesn’t mean they won’t grow up to be the exact same kind of horrible people they are.
Agree, but it also works the other way around. Just because the kids are saying “We’re not being abused” should not be taken as an indicator that they will grow up to be like their parents.
Lot’s of people grow up to be quite different then their parents in spite of them. Heck, I know of at least a couple of Dopers on this board who managed to do just that.
I don’t like echo chambers, but it does feel good that we are all on the same page with regard to these parents. I was totally expecting that at least one Doper would offer up a defense for them.
The Daddy’o’five channel has gotten even more widespread attention. The parents in question posted another apology video, in which they state that a lot of what they do on camera is scripted/fake, and they are sorry if anyone was offended.
Then the parents state that their lives have been seriously disrupted by harassment and death threats from outraged people.
Then they blame deFranco for the current situation they find themselves in, an assertion which deFranco rejects.