Why is it that parents on tv never lose their temper?

Like Caillou’s Mommy always calmly asks Caillou to pick up his toys, and never gets annoyed that he whines all the time. How does she do it? Oh, yeah. She’s a cartoon and she has a writer who writes her like that. Little kids don’t want to watch real Mommies on tv–they already have one like that. What kind of ratings would pbs get if they showed real Mommies who yell and get annoyed and put their child on time out for whining? Not very good in the 2-3 year old bracket, that’s for sure.

I need a scriptwriter, or a cartoonist. They could write me nice mommy lines, like, “What have I told you about leaving your toys all over the house?” and the nice child would say, “I’m not supposed to.” and then the cartoonist would draw that child putting away their toys. How lovely that would be.

Instead, we live in non cartoon land, where a trying to be nice mommy has to take a SCREAMING child out during sacrament meeting, and because sitting him on the couch and talking to him wasn’t working, I went out to the little foyer and stuck him in there. He, not about to be quiet, pounds on the glass, screaming, “LET ME OUT!” at the top of his lungs. Some lady said, “That’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!” Well, it’s not so cute to me, sister–I’m thinking. His nursury leaders were standing right there, and said, “I’ve never even heard him talk, let alone cry.” I guess it’s a realization for all of us.

And nice mommy may know what to do with two girls who constantly tell each other how much they dislike each other. This one took those two girls, taped their wrists together (now, don’t get all ‘child rights’ about it, it was that low-tack blue painter’s tape, it didn’t hurt them), and sat them down and said, “Now, I want to hear you each say 50 nice things about each other. Go!”
Yeah, I definitely need a good script writer.