Train Your Baby Like a Dog, review: the technique seemed to work but it didn't make for thrilling TV
They demand attention, food and toys. They make lots of noise and you’re forever cleaning up their bodily emissions. Yet they’re cute as anything and joyous to cuddle. Yep, you can certainly see the similarities between babies and dogs. But Train Your Baby Like a Dog (Channel 4) took the comparison several steps further.
The somewhat tenuous premise of this frothy documentary was that there’s a revolutionary new parenting technique on its way: raising your child like you’d house-train a puppy. Was it as barking mad as it sounded?
A leading advocate of this new approach was animal behaviourist Jo-Rosie Haffenden: a bespectacled, brisk dispenser of common sense in a belted Barbour jacket, like a cross between Barbara Woodhouse and Jo “Supernanny” Frost.
Haffenden wanted struggling parents to turn their backs on discipline and the dreaded “naughty step”, putting more emphasis on rewarding positive actions than punishing bad behaviour. She’d tried it with her own son, not to mention her seven dutiful dogs and a selection of other beasts: goats, chickens, ponies, pigs, parakeets, great white sharks. I may have made the last one up.
As a parent and dog-owner myself, I was more impressed by the magic she’d worked on her pets than her child. Her pack of hounds helped Haffenden with household chores, while her labrador sidekick Tango was possibly the wisest creature on-screen here.
Now she wanted to extend the method to troublesome tots. As she said: “If everyone parented their child the same way we train our dogs, we’d end up with much more confident, compassionate, caring human beings. Our homes could be transformed from exhausting battlegrounds into oases of calm.” Doesn’t that sound tempting? The narration went to town on the dog analogies, with nudge-wink references to “hounded parents” and “bringing unruly kids to heel”.
Cameras followed Haffenden as she tackled two problem toddlers. In Bristol, three-year-old Greydon's daily tantrums and violent outbursts were making his parents' lives a living hell. With a second child on the way, they needed coping strategies and fast.
Haffenden soon taught them about “the ladder of aggression” and how to read Greydon's body language so they could stop impending meltdowns in their tracks. She made them “puppy proof” their house, insist on good manners, and how Greydon needed to play independently and find an outlet for his energy. Good boy!
Weedy parents Jo and Garrett were frustratingly useless, while their daft lifestyle choices – naming their children Greydon and Phineas, addressing them as “buddy” and “dude”, overgrown man-child Garrett having a houseful of boys’ toys that Greydon wasn’t allowed to touch – meant my sympathy was limited.
Haffenden then tested her canine training techniques on 18-month-old Dulcie from Croydon, whose refusal to sleep in her own cot and nightly screaming fits were pushing her shattered mother Rosie to breaking point. Not only was Dulcie rarely asleep before 10.30pm, but she had to be fed chips and cuddled into submission on the sofa every night. Hey, don’t we all?
The dog-trainer’s fixes were serving Dulcie “baby tapas” for tea (thankfully, not as pretentious as it sounds) and turning bathtime into a relaxing routine rather than gladiatorial combat. She wasn’t above using gimmicks, either: lavender balm, a teddybear that played womb sounds, white chocolate buttons as a reward, rather than a mutt’s meaty treats. It all rebuilt the trust between mother and baby. Dulcie promptly fell asleep in her cot for the first time ever and it only took half an hour, rather than all evening. Good girl!
“She’s a miracle worker,” gushed Rosie gratefully. “A child whisperer.” She’s now looking forward to the arrival of a little sibling for Dulcie.
Haffenden’s mutt-tested methods had successfully transformed two families. “It’s just another species,” she concluded. However, this concept has proved contentious among the nursery industry and autistic charities, who say it’s dehumanising and developmentally dangerous. Indeed, a petition had been set up calling for the programme to be pulled from the schedules. This afternoon it had 25K signatures and counting.
As a pilot run for a new format, this wasn’t entirely successful. The premise, already stretched, could soon run out of steam. Haffenden was perfectly nice but lacked the charisma to convincingly carry off a star vehicle. She was also based in Southern Spain, so was endlessly jetting backwards and forwards, which will please neither the eco-lobby nor the production's accounts department.
As a one-off, it was diverting enough but if a full series gets the green light, Channel 4 could be in the doghouse.
