Nanny 911: The Graham Family
Dr. Steve Says "Every Family Is Dysfunctional"
Recap By Shelley Tam
January 14, 2006
Steve and Jeanine Graham live in a beautiful house in New England. They have four beautiful boys and desperately need help figuring out how to raise them. Steve is an ER doctor and Jeanine stays at home to care for the kids. The boys are:
Zachary - 13 - Jeanine's son from a previous relationship. She describes him as lazy and sleeps 'til noon everyday. He's also an instigator of a lot of the trouble that goes on.
Trevor/Reese - 5 - Twins who are super competitive. They are each other's best friends and worst enemies at the same time.
Max - 6 - The odd one out. Zach is too old to play with him and the twins have each other. Poor Max feels left out. Sometimes he's so upset, he refuses to eat.
The Graham household is really something to behold. The parents rely on video games and TV as their babysitter (which is the norm these days) and ignore the bad behavior while the kids beat the crap out of one another. Now granted, most kids fight. I remember all the hell-raising I did with my siblings. But when the Graham kids fight, they fight with all the intensity of Mortal Kombat!! They've given each other black eyes, stitches, bruises, scrapes. It's a good thing that Steve is a doctor, because with all the injuries the medical bills would get expensive.
The Graham family doesn't really communicate with one another. The boys resort to crying and whining when they want something. When they get angry, they work themselves to up to such a hissy fit that they turn beet red. The parents say have "tried" discipline but nothing has worked.
Jeanine says that she often feels helpless. To cope, she pretty much ignores her sons' behavior while her husband often comes home and hides in his closet. For Jeanine, being a stay at home Jeanine, every day is a bad day. She worries that the fighting will never stop. Steve even acknowledges that his wife is living a daily hell.
The nannies are shocked by all the hitting and slapping. "If those boys keep it up, they're going to need the other 911."
Nanny Deb is dispatched. Deb thinks that while Jeanine is appalled with the beatings, she does nothing about it and Steve doesn't seem to think anything is wrong with it.
Nanny Arrives/Observation
9:11 - The day starts off with Jeanine doing housework while Steve reads. The kids, since their parents are ignoring them, settle in to play video games. The house is eerily quiet and even the dog is silent. All you hear is the clicking of console buttons and kids' exclamations during their game "Die! Die! Die!! Kill! Kill! Kill!" They get pretty worked up about their games. Nanny Deb is appalled at their words and concerned that they are spending so much time playing video games. When Jeanine tries to get them to do something else, the kids all go off the deep end. After they're done with the games, the kids are wired and proceed to reenact their games by beating the crap out of one another.
Steve thinks that this is all normal. In fact, it's obvious that Steve doesn't think that his family needs any help and that Nanny Deb is wasting her time. So who called Nanny 911 then? He's convinced himself that this behavior is normal (because he's a doctor, damn it) and doesn't think that any of the violence in his house has to do with the video games. It doesn't bother him that they fight and hurt one another.
The entire day is one non-stop fight. The kids just move their fighting from room to room. The twins are upstairs. They start playing and it escalates into a fight. Jeanine goes upstairs later to break it up but she's pretty calm about it. She turns the TV on to calm the kids down and fixes them a nice bowl of ice cream. Nanny Deb clearly disapproves since Jeanine is essentially rewarding the kids for bad behavior.
Max really feels left out b/c the two youngest have each other. He tries to play with Zach but as Steve says "Zach shouldn't be burdened with having to play with his siblings." Zach tells Max to get lost. Max is so hurt that he starts to cry. He locks himself up in his room and sits there, alone, upset and crying. Where are his parents in all this? Oh I forgot, both parents have better things to do than to tend to Max's needs.
Nanny Deb's Feedback.....
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