Watching The View

Jo Frost, from Supernanny, appeared as today’s guest host. She has spent 17 years as a nanny, working very closely with children and their families. She said that she is fortunate to be gifted with intuition to help the children and their parents and a lot of her recommendations are instinctual. She agreed with Joy Behar that people often parent how they were parented. She said that people need to recognize what things from their up-brining they want to continue to use and what techniques they should leave behind.

Jo showed a clip of an upcoming episode which features a child with ADHD. Rosie discussed how she feels that ADHD is over-diagnosed and doctors are too quick to put children on medication. Jo said that in a class of 30 children, there is a good chance that one child will have ADHD. She said that a child that misbehaves at school, but acts well at home does not have ADHD. The disorder is caused by a problem in the frontal lobe of the brain and would not only cause problems in one area of the child’s life; it would affect him at all times. She said that the family in the clip from her show struggled with helping their son, because they were hesitant to accept his diagnosis and were not consistent with his medication. Jo said that parents who have children that are properly diagnosed with ADHD need to work hard with the child to help them and need to accept the disorder.

Joy Behar brought up a study that said that praising children for their intelligence is not as effective as saying “well done” or “good job.” Jo Frost said it is good to pick out what they did well and focus on that. Rosie suggested that rather than say “You have the best penmenship in the whole world,” a parent should say, “Oh you wrote that so nicely. Good job.” Jo Frost said that it is also important to recognize what your child needs to work on and help them with that.

John Stamos, who is currently starring on ER, joked that he loves being on The View because he doesn’t need to talk, because the ladies do all the talking. He said that his ER character is a wonderful full character, the first he has been able to play. He said that it is a very adult role and the cast he works with is great and he is really enjoying it.

Joy asked John if he ever “played doctor” with the Olson twins. John looked offended by the comment. Elisabeth said, keeping with the Supernanny theme, that Joy needed to go sit in the naughty corner.

The ladies managed to talk John Stamos into participating in the Valentine’s Day craft segment. Rosie and Jo Frost decorated some wooden boxes with various items like buttons, photos, and stickers. The boxes can then be filled with candy to give to children. John decorated a wine box for his mom by putting M-O-M stickers onto the plain wooden box. I think his declaration that he is “crappy with crafts” appears to be true. Check the official website for more details on the crafts. They should post information there later today.

Anita Baker finished off the show, performing a song, accompanied by saxophone player David Koz.

The View, Rosie O’Donnell, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, John Stamos, Supernanny, Jo Frost, ADHD, Anita Baker, David Koz