Peterfruend Family

**The Peterfreund Family** is the second episode of Season 7 of the American *Supernanny* show. It first aired on ABC on November 12, 2010.

## Episode Summary

Jo visits The Peterfreund Family in Arizona where for the first time, she works with a family who has a newborn son.

Parents Keith and Sonya are so overwhelmed with their three older boys: Jett (5 years old) Gage (3 years old) and Trey (2 years old) that they're not remembering their Newborn baby Myles' needs, getting to the point that they are overfeeding him.

Mom literally has to run through the house after the active older boys with Myles hanging off her arm, head bobbing dangerously. Keith works as a flight attendant and travels frequently, leaving Mom to care for all four boys on her own.

Neither Sonya or Keith are consistent about discipline and their go-to punishment is "saucing" the three older kids, putting a dab of hot sauce on their lips. Can Jo show these overwhelmed parents of four how to parent effectively without using condiments?

## Submission Reel

Jo has arrived in Chandler, Arizona. She is very excited about meeting her “first” family with a newborn (Even though The Wilson-Knutson Family featured Newborns first). Father Keith (39) is a flight attendant and Mother Sonya (36) is home with the kids all day. Jett (5), Gage (3), Trey (2) and Myles, their two-week old newborn.

As mentioned on the paragraph above, Keith works as a flight attendant and is usually gone from Monday-Friday. Chaos erupts while Keith is gone, as Sonya is constantly holding Myles while he head dangerously bobs his Head.

Jett, being the oldest is spoiled and disobedient to his Parents. Gage is extremely headstrong and Keith describes him as doing “whatever he wants when he wants”. Trey, being in his terrible twos, makes him the hardest to deal with. The parents are trying to get Myles to sleep longer, however with the older boys running around like animals, it’s really hard.

Fighting in the house can sometimes get extremely rough and dangerous. Keith and Sonya have tried nearly everything to discipline their wild sons, mainly Timeouts and Soap, but most of the Time they backfire. Because of this, they’ve resorted to putting a dab of hot sauce on the Kids lips. Which is shown in a very shocking and disturbing scene where Keith attempts using Hot Sauce on Gage as he screams in terror.

## Observation

Sonya is seen struggling to control the kids, mainly when they get on the roof of a Playhouse, the only problem was that she couldn’t do anything since she was carrying Miles. When she went inside to feed Myles, Gage is shockingly caught throwing a football at him, which could’ve killed Myles if he wasn’t careful. Thankfully, Sonya does manage to get Gage away from the baby, after feeding Myles, Jo realizes that Myles doesn’t feed like he normally does and assumes Sonya could be overfeeding without knowledge, as without an exact chart to tell the time of when you need to feed a baby, you can’t properly remember when it was last fed. Thus, Sonya has resorted to using her memory. We then see more of her struggling with the kids.

A while later, Keith returns from his Flight Attendant Job, and goes to Gage and Trey’s room, only to find a giant mess, he picks up Trey and uses him in which Jo describes as a “Human Magnet”. Later Miles pees his diaper. However, Keith believes he needs to feed him. After Miles almost spits up, Jo leaves.

## Parents Meeting

At the Parents Meeting, Jo confronts Keith and Sonya about how they use Hot Sauce as their Discipline method (despite it not being shown being used outside of the submission reel scene) and how they don’t address the needs of Myles when needed.

## Teaching

Jo enters the House. Not with a Routine like she usually does, but with something brand new, a baby log. Seeing as how Keith and Sonya only rely on their memory to keep track of everything for Myles, she brought it in so they could keep track of it.

With Keith out of Town as a Flight Attendant a lot. It's hard for Sonya to keep track of the Kids, so Jo brings in the Roaming Technique for a trip to the park. Before the trip, Miles was sleeping, so Jo decided to have a stuffed bear in place of Myles. At first, the boys were apprehensive of the technique, but eventually they were able to use it perfectly, And had no embarrassment, mainly because there seemed to be Nobody else at The Park.

Next, Jo decides to bring in the proper discipline as the parents have been using Hot Sauce, So she brings in the Naughty Bench and has Hot Sauce back where it Belongs, the Pantry. Later, Trey gave Keith the opportunity to use the Naughty Bench when he began crying and hitting the computer for unknown reasons. When Trey goes there, Keith constantly communicates with him, but Jo manages to snap him out of it. During this, Keith asks Jo if there's a record of how long she’s done a timeout, and she says 3 1/2 Hours. Eventually Trey gave in and apologized to Keith for not listening. Keith finally knows that because of the Naughty Bench, hot sauce won't be used anymore.

Jo decides it would be best if Keith gets to spend more time with Myles, since he usually never gets to spend quality time with him because of his job as a flight attendant, so Jo has Sonya leave the house. Whilst Sonya is away Jett is refusing to eat his lunch, and then the boys play outside. When Sonya gets home Jo decides to have a heartwarming moment, where Keith gives Myles a bath, during this Keith admits he hasn’t actually given Myles a Bath since he was born.

The next day. Jo returns to see how Keith and Sonya are doing with the baby log, and is glad to see they’re keeping up with it.

Before Jo leaves, she brings in an imagination box. The box will be used for the family to perform a Story together, where they dress up and have fun. Trey and Gage say they liked the dress up. Afterwards Jo leaves for a few days.

## Reinforcement

After the DVD meeting, Jo decided to take Sonya and the boys out to a train museum. However, Trey began to throw a tantrum because he wasn’t allowed to climb the train they were observing. However, whilst Gage and Jett were climbing the train as well, Jo thought it was alright for Jett to climb it, since he’s the oldest. Trey continued to throw his tantrum so Jo stepped in and told Trey that if he continued, he’d hold onto the stroller. Trey’s tantrum eventually calmed down and he didn’t throw another one.

After this, Jo decided to set some timeout reminders, so that Keith and Sonya stop talking to the kids during their timeouts. Later, in the afternoon, Gage, for some weird reason, urinated in the waste basket, causing him to be put into a timeout. Sonya never communicated with Gage throughout the timeout, showing that the reminders did work.

Before Jo leaves, she points out how Keith is away every week, so she decided to give him an airplane with a picture of his family on the front window, he also writes things on them for them all to remember whilst he’s away as a flight attendant. And with that, Jo’s work with The Peterfreund Family is done.

## Family Members

 Sonya Peterfreund
 Jett Peterfreund
 Gage Peterfreund
 Trey Peterfreund
 Myles Peterfreund

## Trivia/Errors

* This episode is stated to be the first time Jo helps a family with a newborn. This is a continuity error for the series, as The Wilson-Knutson Family, was the first with newborn twins Will and Jesse.
* Jo mentions the longest time she’s ever done a timeout was 3 1/2 hours. This is another Season 4 callback, this time to The Benjany Family, where Jo, Lisa and Richie had to discipline Zoe for that amount of time. However, once again. This is a continuity error as the longest tantrum ever recorded was Cameron’s tantrum in The Smith-Clarke Family by 4 1/2 hours (although it’s likely this is because, this episode was in the UK series, and not the US one)
* Keith and Sonya’s use of hot sauce is similar to a 2010/2011 case where a mother named Jessica Beagley disciplined her adopted Russian son, Kristoff with a bottle of hot sauce before sending him to a cold shower. Jessica was featured on an episode of Dr. Phil where she discussed it. The Dr. Phil episode aired a month prior to this episode and could’ve landed Keith and Sonya in jail, had it happen around the same time.
	+ The Froebrich Family also used Hot Sauce
	+ As for Jessica, she was arrested and sentenced to three years of probation and $2000 Dollars of Fines (Some argue she should’ve been given a Life sentence) however it’s currently unknown if Kristoff was ever taken back to Russia by Child Protective Services or stayed in the US, being adopted by a different family.
* It's unknown why Jo mentioned hot sauce in the meeting. Despite it being the parents discipline technique, it was never shown being used outside of the scene with Gage in the submission reel. It could be possible this scene was filmed in the observation in its entirety but wasn’t used, leaving only five seconds off it in the submission reel, since it could’ve been majorly controversial, especially after the afromentioned Jessica Beagley ordeal
* Trey is in 4th place, for the most times returned to Time-Out in the series, being returned 43 times. Shorty from The Fernandez Family holds the 3rd most times returned, being returned 67 times, Tommy from The Winter Familyholds the 2nd most times being 72. And Tia from The Williams Family (U.K.) and Rhys from The Howat Familyare tied for the most times returned to timeout. Both were returned 100 times respectively.
	+ It could be possible, that Zoe might be in the top 3, or even the child with the most times returned to timeout, due to her aforementioned 3 1/2 hour timeout. However, Jo, nor Richie and Lisa never actually state how many times Zoe was brought back to timeout. Leaving it unknown as to if she cracks the top 3 or not.
* This episode was posted on YouTube through a different channel before Supernanny uploaded it on hers. Other families having this include The Atkinson Family, The Swift Family, The Colombo Family, and The Potter Family.
* This is the first episode in Chandler, Arizona. The second one was The Sutherland Family.

## Pop Culture

Whilst not an indirect pop culture reference entirely, at the start of the reinforcement, Gage and Trey say “I like Trains”. Which is a quote popularly associated with the I like trains kid, from the ASDFMovie YouTube series. Coincidentally. Both ASDFMovie 2 (I like trains kids debut episode) and the Peterfreund Family were both released in 2010. With this episode airing 10 months after ASDFMovie2’s release.