The Del Re Family

Episode summary[]

Jo visits the Del Re family in Staten Island, New York where Joe (39) & Adele (42) have three children: 9-year-old daughter Clarissa and 4-year-old twins Peter & Deanna.

The twin little ones are acting out in drastic measures which overshadows their big sister Clarissa. They fight and throw violent temper tantrums.

Peter is the ringleader of this twin gang. When he doesn’t get his way, he can lash out violently or harm himself.

Deanna is very stubborn and defiant. She refuses to give in and will argue until her parents give up. She also will not accept no as an answer.

While in time out, Deanna pees in her pants. She has to put on new pants as a result.

Adele & Joe have resorted to yelling to control their kids. They don’t agree and sometimes compete with each other which ends up into arguments. Adele throws in the towel while Joe sharply addresses their behavior.

Despite Clarissa being well behaved, Joe has a hard time trusting her which leads him to interrogate her like she is a suspect.

Can Jo help the Del Re family find a peaceful solution to their problems and teach them to calm down the tantruming youngsters? Can she get Joe to trust Clarissa?

Episode Recap[]

Submission Reel[]

Observation[]

Parent Meeting[]

Teaching[]

Adele does sock puppets with the kids. While the girls are completing theirs, Peter started to act out. Adele pauses the activity to deal with him. When Deanna shows Adele her finished sock puppet, Peter headbutts her in the face, causing her to break out. Jo puts Peter in timeout. After consoling Adele, Jo demands that Peter hug his mother and apologize for hurting her badly, which he does.

DVD Meeting[]

Clarissa asks Joe if she can go to her friend's house for a sleepover. Joe doesn't know how if he should let her or not. Clarissa promises to behave and call him. Joe insists that Clarissa calls her friend back. Later, Clarissa once again promises that she will listen and call her parents if anything goes wrong. Joe says that he's going to trust Clarissa and gives her her bag, which makes her happy. Joe and Adele drop Clarissa off at the sleepover. The next day, Clarissa tells Joe that it went well. He then tells her that she passed. Jo is pleased with his efforts.

Reinforcement[]

Before Jo arrives to start reinforcement, Adele put Deanna in timeout for throwing a tantrum and refusing to do as she was told. She escaped from timeout multiple times and eventually she did her time. When it was time to apologize, Deanna kept crying, so Adele walked away. All of sudden she had to pee on the floor leaving her mom clueless. Jo came in to the scene of a crime and the told Adele to leave Deanna with the mess for a couple minutes. Jo told Adele that mess when Deanna peed meaning that giving the middle finger. She told her that the house is a brick house, not a straw house, and to show Deanna that she means business. After Deanna apologized and hugged her mom, Adele told Deanna that is not okay to pee on the floor, she will go to bed before her siblings sometime after dinner, and told her to take her dirty clothes to the laundry basket. Deanna complied.

Family Members[]

Person	Age	Relation to Family
Adele Del Re	42	Mother
Joseph "Joe" Del Re	39	Father
Clarissa	9 (born May 23, 1999)	Daughter
Deanna	4 (born April 17, 2004)	Fraternal Twins
Peter	4 (born April 17, 2004)	Fraternal Twins

The child was disciplined via one of Jo Frost's techniques.

Behind The Scenes[]

This episode was filmed in December 2008.

Trivia[]

Joe is hated for his treatment of Clarissa. People have often compared him to Adam Goldberg, from the episode after this.
People have noticed that Adele sounds a lot like Lois Griffin from Family Guy.
This is the first time a child wets themselves despite being potty-trained, and it was Deanna during time-out, which she did in retaliation to annoy her mom. The next child to wet themselves would be Kaiden from The McKinney Family, which was during the observation.
This was the first time where we see Jo wearing her ponytail instead of a Frenchtwist or Bun.