Parenting Network: Shows for Modern Moms and Dads

Tune into Parenting Network for a great new line up this season! Parenting Network offers a range of shows specifically for parents, covering timely topics such as whining, temper tantrums, and teenage angst. There’s something for everyone on the Parenting Network! The best thing is that we understand how real life moms and dads live—our format offers ninety seconds of programming followed by a four minute commercial break to give you the opportunity to referee fights, clean up cat puke, and change the laundry. Grab a bowl of goldfish crackers and a juice box and join us for the fun this Fall! Here's a sneak peek at some of what's coming your way!

Teen Clean
Parents pay the show’s team to completely clean out, repaint, and update the décor of their teen’s room while the teen is away for a weekend. On Sunday afternoon the parent reveals the refurbished space to their child, resulting in the teen having a complete breakdown over the invasion of their privacy, and the disposal of their precious “stuff,” crying that their parents just don’t “get” them.

Tween Jeopardy
Using the same format as the iconic original, Tween Jeopardy’s topics target the interests of modern tweens and teens (Minecraft, the Kardashians, proper eyebrow grooming). The twist? When contestants present their answer-in-the-form-of-a-question, the other participants and the host tell them they’re wrong, and argue with them. The show will be moderated by a different guest presenter each week, including pop idols Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, and Zendaya.

What’s For Dinner?
Three moms are challenged to make dinner with what they can find in the show’s pantry (consisting primarily of Cheetos, canned tomatoes, snack size boxes of raisins, and mayonnaise), in between helping three children to complete math and spelling homework, and finish a science fair project assigned three weeks ago, completely ignored at the time, and now due the next day. The winner is the parent not actively having a nervous breakdown at the end of the show.

School Countdown
Kids have twenty minutes to get ready for school—get dressed, brush their teeth, collect their backpacks, and get to the school bus. Every episode offers a special challenge such as
  •          I can’t find my homework. No, I swear I left it right here.
  •          I need a green pot holder, four plastic soda bottles, and a traffic cone for a project today or I get a zero.
  •          Have you seen my shoes?
Viewers will be on the edge of their seats to see if the kids make it to the bus on time!

Are You My Family?
Join in the hilarity as four families swap kids around, sending them to live with other parents! The children discover that all parents are mean, make their kids do homework, and refuse to let them have unlimited screen time. Parents learn that all kids are whiny assholes sometimes, which of course they already knew.

Easy Living Summer
Follow the summer vacations of three families. Watch the parents’ resolve slowly deteriorate until the kids are eating popcorn and American cheese slices for breakfast, watching television and playing computer games all day long, and staying up until midnight every night. Share their pain as the kids morph into unresponsive zombies, hell bent on unlearning every particle of information from the previous school year. Each show ends with the parents confessing the complete abandonment of their will to live. You’ll cry and plead for the sweet release of death along with them!



4 comments:

kdcol said...

Where can I sign up for this network? It's gotten to the point in my house where when the kids (have the gall to) ask me what's for dinner, I just laugh. Nobody eats anything I make anyway so it's time they learn how to make do (with cheetos and whatever else they can find in the pantry).

Tracy said...

Seriously, someone needs to launch this network! I would watch!

I told one of mine last week that the next time he whined about what was for dinner he could make what I was intending to make himself, and then when everyone said they didn't like it, he might get it!

Margot said...

In my daughter's Child Development class last year each student took home one of those plastic babies that cries at least every 2 - 4 hours (including overnight) for 3 days. She wore a bracelet that she'd swipe over its chest (so the teacher knew she wasn't pawning it off on someone else), and then would have 2 minutes to figure out if it needed a bottle, a diaper change, burping, or rocking. The longer she took to figure it out, the louder the baby would cry. They use recordings of real newborn infants for these "babies"--it's actually pretty realistic, except that they are much easier to soothe than real babies. Apparently these dolls teach kids what it's really like to have a baby and are pretty effective in getting a girl or two per class to stop romanticizing the idea.

I think that this year, for her Child Development 2 class, they should be subjected to watching 3 continuous days of your parenting network shows. If the babies didn't dissuade them last year, these shows almost definitely would do the trick. They'll have to watch it in a different room from their parents, though, who are already "living the dream."

Very clever and realistic shows you've come up with!

Tracy said...

Margot--thanks--glad you enjoyed them! I remember when I was a kid, a few schools did a similar exercise with those electronic pet things, and if your electronic pet "lived" through the whole two weeks or whatever it was, you passed. The baby sounds like it would be WAY more effective in removing the "glamour" of having a child. The electronic pets were annoying, but they typically went a bit longer between demands than a real child.

I wish someone would make these shows. Can't we have them instead of the Kardashians or anything with Alton Brown on it?