The Potter Family

Episode Summary
Jo visits the Potter family in Rochester, New York where parents Joy (35) & Chris (43) have 4 children : 10-year-old Noah, 7-year-old Ryan, 5-year-old Jake, and 4-year-old Alexa.

In the submission tape, the parents have a very hard time when it comes to the children respecting the house or anyone living in it. Additionally, both parents are polar opposites when it comes to discipline.

Joy is often passive and lets the children walk all over her. However, according to Joy, Chris is too "old school" when it comes to disciplining their children who does it yelling or manhandling them.

The oldest son, Noah has a strained relationship with Chris due to his constant yelling, which scares him and his siblings. Noah also doesn't listen to his parents, and fights with them and has a bad attitude with them.

In addition, Chris feels that Joy is undermining him by challenging his parenting style that his parents did when he was a child.

Jo also warns Chris that his behavior could break Noah's spirit if things do not get better while Joy sadly admits to Jo that her marriage is "on the line" if it does not work out.

Can Jo help the Potter family change before it's too late? Can she help Chris control his temper & fix his relationship with Noah? And can she prevent the family from tearing apart?

Observation
During the mid-day, Noah and Ryan go upstairs to play video games, but Joy feels that they played enough. Ryan goes into a tug of war with his mother by arguing with her, when she asks him to pack up the Playstation and refuses to do it, but Joy pacifies by what Ryan exclaims he will do with the game controller. Ryan responds, "It's not your job!" but Joy says she is his mother and he should do what she commands although he ignores her. Overall, Jo says that Joy has let Ryan disrespect her by not giving him any follow through or discipline.

Joy goes to work and leaves Chris to look after the children. Chris insists for Noah to tidy his Legos up but Noah refuses to do it, due to his father's rage which scares him so he threatens to dispose them as Noah went downstairs. Then, Jo searches for the poor boy and finds him in the ottoman hiding away from his father which she thinks is not safe. Chris still wants Noah to obey his orders when he asks him to pick up his shoes, but Noah refuses to listen and ignores him because he says he is 'mean' and 'scary' to which his father aggressively scolds him for disobeying his commands and drags him up the stairs to his bedroom and leaves Noah dismayed.

Jo has a conversation with Chris, who then explains his explosive temper and childhood to her. Jo also talks with Joy about how harshly Chris manhandles and shouts at the children and her relationship with him.

Parents Meeting
Jo tells the parents that they need to be on the same page when it comes to discipline. Chris was too harsh while Joy was too soft. Joy made empty threats, and Chris resolved punishment by yelling and manhandling the kids. Jo tells them that this needs to change, and the broken relationships (between Chris and his children, and Chris and Joy) has to be mended.

Teaching
Jo demonstrates the House Rules to the children and has each child read along. Shortly after that is sorted out, Ryan breaks one of those rules by refusing to get in the house when he is ordered to by his mother. So he is sent to the Naughty Chair for 7 minutes. During that process, Ryan escapes several times until he finally sits down in the naughty chair for his 7 minutes. Joy knows that Ryan needs some time to calm down until he is ready to apologize to his mother. Eventually, he does say sorry when Joy returns and they hugged each other.

Jo takes Chris to a gymnasium so he could see how he could get a grip on his anger. Chris meets a professional boxing coach named Don. He does some boxing with Don and Jo and that helps Chris calm him down with his rage especially. The emotional punches that Jo used on with Chris are to prevent Chris from manhandling the children emotionally.

Afterwards, Jo wants to help Chris and Noah resume their relationship as father and son. She takes both of them out to a nearby park to launch a rocket. Chris and Noah work together on how to build the rocket and while building it, the pair are talking to each other about what Noah wants to be when he grows up which is to be an engineer. When it is time to launch the rocket, the rocket has a pretty successful launch up high in the sky. It lands approximately 15 seconds later after it is in the high sky.

Chris sits down with Noah in the dining room table and wants to talk to his son about how he has mistreated his children including Noah. Chris starts to cry when he begins talking to his son claiming how bad his behavior was in the past. After he apologizes to his son for everything wrong he has done to him, they have a moment of hugging and kissing each other expressing on how Chris loves his oldest son Noah.

In the evening, Noah begins to argue and fight his mother over not launching the rocket and he was told to go to bed early, but he refuses. The conflict gets worse as Noah calls his mother a "liar", so Jo steps in to help than having Chris to use physical punishment on Noah. Joy succeeds her plan which is to confiscate the rocket and then Noah storms into his room and slams his bedroom door out of exasperation.

Parents Evaluation
Jo leaves the family alone for a few days and then she returned to see what was going on.

Clip 1: Chris and Noah were working harder with rebuilding their relationship with each other. They both went on a bike ride in the neighborhood talking about building a home go kart. Chris thought that was an interesting idea when Noah wanted to build a go kart and that Chris and Noah could make 3 more go karts for Ryan, Jake and Alexa.

Clip 2: Noah was eating dinner until he suddenly noticed a piece of hair on his plate. He complained about the hair on his food to his mother and she saw that he didn't eat enough. Noah said that he was fine with that and that he would be hungry later. Chris later came over to ask Noah if he wasn't Noah and he told Chris in a rude way that he wasn't hungry. Chris had also told Noah that the family will be having dessert but Noah wouldn't be having it at all.

Clip 3: Alexa was sent to the Naughty Step for 4 minutes after hitting Ryan multiple times. Chris got himself into trouble with Joy when he told Alex to stay seated while she was on discipline. Alexa stayed seated for her 4 minutes and then she apologized to her mother and then they hugged each other afterwards.

Reinforcement
Jo and the family decide to make special reinforcement paper chains. These paper chains include what the family has improved since Jo first arrived in the household. All the 4 children enjoy writing what they achieved in their new lives thanks to Jo's help. After that, Jo's last thing before she leaves is to help Chris and Joy reach out to one another so they could continue to remain husband and wife. The parents then have a conversation about how proud Joy is of Chris for how they worked hard to save the household and they have a moment of hugging and kissing each other. Afterwards, Jo leaves the family for their benifits with emotional goodbyes as the episode ends.

Family members

 * Christopher "Chris" Potter, 43 years old (Christopher Lewis Potter (born August 1, 1967, died October 29, 2019) - died from undisclosed causes
 * Joyce "Joy" Potter, 35 years old (born August 9, 1975)
 * Noah, 10 years old (born December 18, 1999)
 * Ryan, 7 years old (born June 10, 2003)
 * Jake, 5 years old (born December 29, 2004)
 * Alexa, 4 years old (born May 9, 2006)

Behind the Scenes
The episode was filmed in September-October 2010.

Events Post-Episode

 * Christopher "Chris" Lewis Potter died on October 29, 2019 from undisclosed causes.
 * Chris and Joy later separated and eventually divorced in 2014.
 * Joy married John Frazier in 2014 and she is also the stepmother of John's biological children Jordan, Nina and Alec.

Trivia

 * The Go to Bed Early technique was used in twice in this episode with Noah. It was first used when Noah got into a fight with his father over refusing to clean up his Legos which scared him when Jo observed the family. It was used again when he fought with his mother over not launching the rocket.
 * Chris and Joy got married on May 2, 1998 and then they later separated and eventually divorced in 2014.
 * Joy married John Frazier after she and Chris divorced and she is also the stepmother of John's three biological children Jordan, Nina and Alec.
 * As of 2022, Noah is 22, Ryan is 19, Jake is 17 and Alexa is 16.
 * Chris would have faced charges of Child Abuse because of his use of punishment, but however since he died in 2019, there is no way he can face charges.
 * Some people considered Chris yelling at Noah to be worse than Phil when he was yelling at Morgan in The Davis Family.