Reaction to the "Cutting Edge" Programme
Kathryn Flett
Sunday July 27, 2003
The Observer
C4's Cutting Edge: Bad Behaviour, focused on a less privileged problem child: seven-year-old Georgina, only offspring of Fred and Diane. The effect of generations-worth of marrow-chilling lovelessness made for a story that was, by turns, terrifyingly sad and extraordinarily moving but, finally, left you filling as though your heart had been pumped full of helium.
Fred and Diane are not, by their own admission, your 'average socially acceptable couple'. Diane is 38 but disguises her relative youthfulness with a studied and self-loathing brand of dowdiness, while Fred is 20 years her senior and several inches shorter than his wife.
Diane works for the Inland Revenue, while Fred, ex-RAF, now makes wedding videos and enjoys playing one of those old-fashioned bells-and-whistles, oompah-pah-bossa nova electronic organs you might have thought had gone the way of Ford Anglias and the Ronco Buttoneer. Their home was a stylistic relic from about 25 years BCR (or Before Changing Rooms ).
When Diane got pregnant at the age of 30, she was 'immersed in my career', while Fred already had two adult children and wasn't sure he could face doing it all again, so, into a highly hostile atmosphere, little Georgina arrived prematurely at 32 weeks. 'It wasn't our baby; it was a blob in a box,' said Diane.
Seven years on and Diane was still enraged by motherhood: 'Why does anybody have a child? It's just bloody hard work. I suppose if you've got the love there it isn't, but all it was was bloody inconvenience, expense and a curtailment of our social life. For WHAT?'
Despairing of Georgina, whose wilful bad behaviour was testing the admittedly fragile limits of their endurance, the couple had contacted social services, begging them to take their daughter into care. 'I just want it removed,' explained Diane, the mother who had never kissed her daughter goodnight. But while they waited for a decision, Fred trawled the internet searching for some sort of last chance, and - praise be - found Warwick.
We only saw Warwick once, but then so did Fred and Diane - they stayed in touch daily by phone - while Georgina never saw him at all. An ex-teacher, Warwick has a simple and highly effective system for dealing with difficult children based on rewards for good behaviour, sanctions for bad and firm-yet-loving boundaries. But, of course, it wasn't Georgina who was the problem, it was Diane and, if only because of his collusion, Fred. To their considerable credit, the couple not only accepted being told this, but worked on changing themselves even as they tried to change Georgina, a bright, pretty, desperately lonely little girl who had been misdiagnosed with learning difficulties and prescribed Ritalin for her angry hyperactivity.
Looking back through old home videos, Fred and Diane came across footage of four-year-old Georgina crying and swaying from side to side, desperately trying to attract the attention of her mother who sat rigidly, ignoring her, radiating rage.
Thanks to Warwick, the scales had been lifted and Diane could now see the horror of this almost as intensely as we could: 'If it wasn't me, I'd be reporting the mother to social services. You want to get into that film and cuddle her, don't you?' She wasn't referring to herself, but at that point Diane looked like she could use a cuddle, too.
It wasn't entirely plain-sailing but six months later, the family had been transformed into something functional. They'd fucked Georgina up, her mum and dad, but with the right kind of help, they'd been intelligent enough to change and so they deserved to end up, eventually, with the daughter they got, which is to say the one they'd probably always dreamed of having. This was a very special and powerful film.
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