The Van Acker Family

The Van Acker Family is the fifth episode of Season 7 of the American Supernanny show.

Episode Summary[]

Jo visits the Van Acker family in Oak View, California where Kevin (35) & Jessica (34) have two children: 6-year-old daughter Emma and 3-year-old son Dylan.

While parents describe Emma to be a well-behaved and a very spirited little girl, they both have trouble when it comes to raising Dylan. He rules the roost with an iron will. What he wants, he gets. Despite being only 3 years old, he refuses to be potty trained but still uses diapers. In addition to this, Dylan refuses to eat a healthy and nutritious food, but sugary snacks which caused him to develop anemia.'

Can Jo help the Van Ackers control their son? Can she help the parents get Dylan to eat, be potty trained and end his reign of terror in the Van Acker household?

Plot[]

Submission reel[]

Kevin and Jessica introduced the Van Acker family. Eldest Emma is described by her parents to be a very spirited little girl and can be sassy and mischievous at times. However, it's Dylan who really gives their parents a run for their money with his constant screaming. Potty training is a struggle within itself because of he prefers to wear diapers. However, mealtimes are the biggest struggle as Dylan refuses to eat anything but sugary snacks, causing him to develop anemia.

Observation[]

Jo comes in and Dylan is already tired. It's lunch time. Dylan is given chicken nuggets, watermelon and carrots. He screams at Jessica for trying to cut his food and turns his head away and squeaks every time she tries to put the food towards his mouth. He pretends to put some watermelon in his mouth but doesn't. Kevin tells him to eat but he just shakes his head no. He finally eats a carrot but just spits it out. Finally, after 10 minutes his parents give up and let him leave and he asks for a snack. He goes into the pantry and eats an ice pop.

Dylan screams while Jessica helps Emma with homework. She orders him to stop, which just encourages him. Finally, Jessica puts him in his room until he behaves. Jo goes in and notices he was playing with his trains instead of thinking about what he did.

Dylan yet again pitches a fit because he needs to pee and orders Jessica to put a diaper on him. Jessica tells him he should use the toilet, but he responds with "diaper." She asks him if he needs to pee or poop but he responds with "diaper." She puts diaper on him, and he runs out saying he peed in his diaper, much to Jessica's embarrassment. She takes it off of him. Dylan runs in the living room with his training potty and claims he's ready to use it. Nothing was coming out. Dylan justifies that it was because his "wiener" is too little. Jessica tells him to use the toilet, but Dylan says he can't because he's scared. Jo believes Dylan doesn't like to do it not that he is scared to do it.

It's dinner, and yet again he where Dylan is given a corndog and corn, He was playing with the corndog, which Jessica tells him to stop. He spits out the corn.

Parent Meeting[]

Jo is worried about Dylan's unhealthy eating habits, attributing them to his ability to manipulate his parents into giving him snacks. Jo criticizes Jessica's use of a bedroom timeout, and the parents admit to being lax in disciplining Dylan, making them easy to manipulate. Jo claims that Dylan isn't "scared" of sitting on the potty, but he simply does not want and like to do it.

Teaching[]

After bringing in a list of items with high Iron content to make sure Dylan can progress in healthy eating habits, Jo helps Kevin shop with Emma using the involvement technique & helping to get the items. The list shows on-screen as:

Red meat
Egg yolks
Mollusks
Artichokes
Beans
Lentils
Soybeans
Iron-enriched cereals and grains

Jo says shopping for the items is easy, the hard part is getting Dylan to eat them.

Sure, enough it is. At dinnertime, after Jessica and Kevin cooked peas, chicken & corn for him, Dylan throws a major fit. Once the fit escalates, Jo steps in to teach the parents how to give a proper timeout by giving the firm warning. Dylan's fit continues. Jo believes Jessica didn't step up and initiate the timeout, so Jo steps up & puts him in timeout herself. After the timeout is finished, Dylan continues to act up and dumps his plate. Jessica steps up and does a timeout effectively, but Dylan must still eat his dinner. When attempting to run away, Dylan accidentally knocks into a cabinet, although he isn't injured. After one hour and sixteen minutes, Dylan settles down and when Kevin encourages him to eat, Dylan finally takes two bites of his food. Despite this, Dylan's long resistance is indication that more work is needed.

The next day, Jo explains with one child using up all their parents' energy, it sometimes means that the second child who is more well behaved gets overlooked and parents' frustrations with the more unruly child can be taken out on that well behaved child. This is one of the cases when Kevin gets agitated by Emma even though she did nothing wrong. At the dining table, Jo introduces some activities that the kids can do when Emma asks Jo something. Jo tells her to wait a minute, which Emma does. However, this doesn't stop Kevin from being agitated with Emma and he snaps at her to say excuse me and nothing is that important unless the house is on fire, even though Emma wasn't trying to be rude. Kevin says that Emma wants to be in the center of attention and push buttons but sometimes he and Jessica have to deal with Dylan because he's younger. Jo pulls Kevin aside to talk to him while Jessica is seen doing the activities with the kids. Jo asks Kevin what bothers him the most about Emma that he needs more patience with. Kevin expresses that he gets annoyed with her interrupting, her bossiness and her attitude. Jo suggests addressing it in a calm and composed way and not in nit picking way because if Kevin only gets agitated with Emma over certain behaviors, Emma will become afraid to interact with him. Kevin understands this and expresses that he doesn't want this "wait till your father gets home" attitude.

Later on, Jo addresses another big challenge, Getting Dylan to use the bathroom. First Jo establishes that Dylan will only wear diapers at night but has to wear underwear during the day. That afternoon, Jessica and Dylan goes to Dylan's room and has him put underwear on. Dylan is not having it and after taking away the diapers, Dylan loses it. He throws a fit in his bedroom and then he follows his mom around the house without his pants on. The parents, especially Jessica stick to their guns but Jo also shows another angle. After an hour and half, Dylan finally decides to put on underwear. Later on, Jo takes Dylan to the bathroom and shows Kevin and Dylan the potty-training technique. Jo explains that Dylan is a big boy and can use the big potty or his very own potty but not in his pants. Later on, Kevin takes Dylan to the bathroom since he needed to go. Dylan freaks out initially but after Kevin tells him a story once he sits on the potty, Dylan finally uses the bathroom.

DVD Meeting[]

The first clip shows Jessica sending both kids to timeout. Jessica and Dylan are seen on the couch and Dylan is playing on the couch and accidentally kicks Jessica. Jessica warns him. A few moments later, Dylan does a forward roll and accidentally kicks Jessica again, so he is sent to timeout who goes on without any fuss. Meanwhile, Emma decides to playfully tease Jessica with a sock puppet and since Jessica didn't think it's funny, so Emma is sent to timeout too. However, when the kids look at each other since they are near each other, Jessica snaps at them and say they will get 3 and 6 more minutes if they look at each other, which Jo believes it is micromanaging. Jo points out that Jessica should be using authority should be used to control the situation and not micromanaging the kids. Although Jo did like the technique being followed through, the kids didn't do anything serious enough that would warrant a time out.

The next clip is the family eating outside. Kevin made ribs, corn on the cob, and kebabs made of tomatoes, zucchini, and pineapple. Dylan has eaten so much more than he did in the past and the parents are so proud of him. However, Jo suggests Dylan should get more praise that is detailed.

In the final clip, Jessica does really well with Dylan's potty training and helping him get through it. Now Dylan is getting less resistant with the potty, Jo wants to speed up the process.

Reinforcement[]

Dylan is playing with Lego's and Kevin helps Dylan get through the process faster by simply giving him less to work with and trying to focus more on the potty.

Finally, Jo wants to give more praise to the kids in the family using a magical phoenix which with its feathers, can be written on to give kids praise and can be turned into a story. Emma enjoys this praise delightfully. This praise will encourage the kids to continue their good behavior because they are given attention for it.

Family Members[]

Person	Age (Then)	Age(Now)	Relation to Family
Kevin Van Acker	35 (born March 15, 1974)	51	Father
Jessica Van Acker	34 (born August 31, 1975)	50	Mother
Emma	6 (born November 28, 2003)	22	Daughter
Dylan	3 (born October 10, 2006)	19	Son

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

The child was disciplined via one of Jo Frost's techniques, but not in a way that she approved of.

Behind the Scenes[]

This episode was filmed in February 2010.

Transcript[]

The Van Acker Family/transcript

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

This was the 5th episode where the parents witnessed an accident. This also happened in The Amouri Family when Julian fell from a cabinet during bedtime, The Addis Family when Eden was running in the rain, The Krolikowski Family when Thomas hurt his head by jumping on Johnny's bed, and The Phelps Family when Aiden fell down the stairs during Jo's Observation.
- The latest episode to feature an accident was The Corry Family when Blakely hurt her eye after jumping off the couch (The Cameraman witnessed it and told Jo what happened). Ben took Blakely to the ER and got stitches for her during Jo's Teaching. This list does not include The Sutherland Family as Amy burning Rio by accident, happened before the episode begun production.
Because of Dylan being underweight and his poor diet, led to him having anemia, as he was known to have been getting weaker.
This episode was noted to have incorrectly used the Good Eater technique since Jo placed Dylan in timeout instead of happily encouraging him to eat his food.
- This later happened again in The Colombo Family where Carlo refused to eat his polenta that was given in which Jo threatened to place him timeout as she counted up to five if he didn't eat it. However, Carlo was later then given a high five as Jo encouraged him to eat his broccoli despite her previously threatening to place him in timeout for not eating his food.
- Some scenes in this episode can be regarded as a callback to the UK episode The Bixley Family. Primarily due to both episodes involving a child refusing to eat their food. However, unlike with the latter episode what Dylan did that caused him to become a fussy eater remains to be seen.

Pop Culture[]

In the opening of the episode the announcer states “It’s Jo versus a three-year-old volcano!” This is a reference to the 1990 film Joe Versus The Volcano.
Lego's are mentioned.
Thomas and Friends toys along with the play table can be seen in Dylan's room.
A Nintendo Wii console can be seen near the TV.
It is unknown what plushie it is, since it's blurred due to copyright infringement.

Events post-episode[]

Jessica and Kevin divorced but the reason behind their relationship ending has yet to be confirmed.
Jessica remarried and her last name is now Classic.
Kevin remarried to a woman named Traci, she also has children from another marriage.
Dylan was possibly diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome.

Fan Reception[]

The Van-Acker Family is a very disliked episode by fans. Whilst many understood his behavior due to his age, Dylan was heavily disliked by fans for his relentless crying, continuous tantrums, and fear of the potty. Many often considered him as one of the most annoying, or even one of the worst children to have ever appeared on Supernanny.

Whilst Jessica and Kevin were praised for their efforts before and after Jo's visit, they were however criticized for allowing Dylan to eat all the sugary things he did, and as a result led to him having anemia. Many also criticized the way how the Good Eater technique was used in this episode. Instead of positive encouragement, coercion and pressure was instead used to get Dylan to eat. Many pointed this out to be completely missing the point of the technique; rather than use threats or even force (as shown in this episode), the Good Eater technique was meant to happily convince children into eating food they don't like as it was shown in previous seasons throughout the series.

This kind of force was also used in later episodes, especially in the The Colombo Family where Jo threatened to put Carlo in timeout if he didn't eat his food. Emma was sympathized by people for the timeout she was given in this episode, as many stated she should not have received it.

In general, The Van-Acker Family is a disliked episode of Supernanny.

Season 7
The Atkinson Family • The Peterfreund Family • The Swift Family • The Young Family • The Van Acker Family • The Fernandez Family • The George Family • The Miller Family • The Colombo Family • The Potter Family • The Merrill Family • The DeMott Family • The Federico Family • The Evans Family