That happens all the time. Good luck to you, Sis. Peck.

A parent without a plan can too easily lose control of their emotions.

This is so true. I am looking forward to your post!

You are right there was a lot more going on with James and Hannah than no fathers, but the father thing was a BIG deal. James really attached to Spencer and opened up around him like he enjoyed it. This was a big step for James.

James had a lot of other issues which were not brought up on the show due to time. A one hour program is not long enough for everything we did in those eight days and all the issues and behaviors we worked on. To respect James I will not discuss any issue that was not brought up on the show. I will say though that James opened up to me like he has never opened up to an adult before in some quiet moments off camera. Those moments were some of my favorite of the week.

We talked, hugged, cried, and prayed. He was so honest and even started our conversation with the words, “I need help…” He knew he could trust me and that I loved him and wanted to help, so he humbled himself and asked. I am so glad he did. No one should have to deal with the hard things he is trying to sort out all alone.

Regarding the “no answer” thing. Since you are not familiar with my style of parenting and the parenting interactions were chopped to bits because of time, let me explain. I teach four basic skills to my children: Following Instructions, Accepting No answers or criticism, Accepting consequences, and Disagreeing Appropriately.

Before we told James and Hannah about our family standards we taught them how to do these four basic skills. This was not on the show. So, when they were getting anxious and emotional about what was so dear to them, their image, I was gently reminding them that we had just practiced how to accept no answers and that they could disagree appropriately with me if they wanted to. I was reminding them, but people didn’t really know what I was doing.

I consider these four basic skills to be fundamental for happy living. I know grown adults who still haven’t mastered accepting no answers from people or disagreeing appropriately. I don’t want this for my children, so we all learn these life basics at my house.

Regarding sounding too planned out…I like planned out. A parent without a plan can too easily lose control of their emotions. I am sure you all saw how calm my husband and I are. We are calm because we have trained ourselves to respond to situations with specific phrases. Knowing what our responses will be helps us stay calm. An out of control parent can’t change any heart for good.

I have parented many hard foster children and teens over the years who are a lot harder than James and Hannah were and they all responded well to our style, so I guess the proof is in the pudding.

You are right that stopping all three substances in one day would be really hard. We agreed and decided to let James and Hannah have four smoke breaks a day, after meals to keep them sane and not shaky. However, they didn’t have any drinks or weed. I don’t know if you noticed that in the one scene where he says he isn’t a child, he is figiting like crazy. He was having some withdrawl problems. But, by the end of the week the teens were down to one cigarette a day.

There was a beautiful moment where James asked to say the family prayer. Then he asked me to teach him how to pray. He prayed that he would be able to overcome his addiction to smoking. He told me after that he never really realized how much control smoking had over him. There was even one day when James and Hannah said they totally forgot to want to smoke because they were so busy doing fun things with the family. These were all successful moments for me and them.

I will be writing a post for this blog really soon. In that post I will talk more about how we got the opportunity to be part of this amazing journey and other powerful experiences which were not seen on the show.

My personal blog http://teachingselfgovernment.com is also going to have posts about the show for a while as well as other helpful parenting tips. My sister, Janelle, is going to guest write for me about her assesment of Hannah and James on the homeschool group youth conference which they attended and she supervised.

Secondly, both sets of parents I think did a good job. Naturally we all think we are the worlds best parents so I didnt agree with everything but I’d have no uneasiness with the idea of my non mormon friends watching either, so good job.

#13 I saw that show and fully expected a similar result in these shows but thankfully not. ‘Disastrous’ is the word.

I hope the British kids in particular did manage to change in something approaching a permanent way. My own kind of similar experience to this involves my younger sister in law, who we managed to get to EFY in Arizona when she was about 16. She wasnt such a bad kid like the examples in the show, but she was clearly going to flirt with activity and inactivity in her later teen years. She came back ‘changed’ and it was genuine, and nice to see although we were under no illusions that EFY had sorted her for lie. The sad thing looking back is that it was her elder inactive siblings that really didnt like the changes she was going through and kind of teased it out of her until she reverted. It was sad to see. I think Sis Peck said on her blog about the socialisation back in Britain being so important in the case of the 2 kids on the show: too true – It would be extremely difficult I think for either of them to continue on the curve the Pecks started them on.

Finally, it struck me in both shows just how much of a big deal clothing is to us as LDS. Having very young children I have never had to tell them or even consider what they are wearing. And as a fairly standard male, I never had cause to be told to dress modestly either. I mean I’ve read standard for youth a thousand times but in both shows it was THE big deal. I did find myself siding with the British kids a little bit when they argued that they were looking to change whats inside and not outside. I guess I have always thought I’d have a fairly liberal approach to the clothing standards regards my own kids, but this has got me thinking….and I really don’t know what to make of it. Could those kids have made the changes they did without first changin the way they dressed?