Four above average beautiful girls leave for Miami for three months. That’s already a good start. Just like in the previous seasons of the series Au Pairs (BNNVARA) they will live with families to look after their children. The cameras accompany them from their departure from their parental homes in Tholen, Haarlem, Hem and Wierden on their overseas journey to the homes of the American parents and their children.
Tuesday evening was episode two, Emma (23), Noah (19), Imre (19) and Wendie (23) have just arrived at their host families. They are cautiously optimistic about what they find behind the front door, even though barely a bed, let alone a room, has been made available for two of them. The viewer already has a little more knowledge about their clients. In separately recorded interviews, the parent(s) introduce themselves and their children. Two single mothers and two father/mother couples. You hold your heart. And whether these parents need help. But whether a young, Dutch girl is the right person for this? How Noah’s host father only drills his shivering dog, and then barks his seven-year-old son to attention. The commando regime over a daughter and two sons of Emma’s beautiful host mother, the bouncing energy and the mess in the house of Wendie’s host mother with three daughters.
like junkies
But what really surprised me was the family where Imre (with her dog) ends up. I know kids play games. I also know that children whine. And I have also watched a parenting program where a nanny puts things in order in a problem family, and implemented some of it in my home. But two boys who like junkies beg their father to buy more, more, even more coins to play Roblox… And above all the sullenness with which the father, a doctor, gives in. Five hundred dollars a month goes through it. Per child. Or more if they get their hands on their mother’s phone.
Suddenly you find the four girls, each of whom is best in their own way… erm… special, very level-headed and well-educated. They don’t beep, at least not yet. They sleep meekly with the daughter of the house of fifteen in bed…. Hope it turns out fine. They say they like to eat healthy. Carefully inquire whether it is sometimes a good idea to just give the four-year-old daughter who is having a tantrum over a non-working wand just one of her three other wands.
Deprived of puberty
Four girls lost among the adults, that’s what the second part of it went The golden light also about. Top gymnasts Suzanne Harmes (36), Verona van de Leur (36), Gabriëlla Wammes (37) and Renske Endel (38) tell how it went in their youth behind the closed doors of the sports hall. The coaches let them win medals, but robbed them of puberty. Literal. Most didn’t get their period until they stopped gymnastics. And at least two, twenty years later, still have issues with being thin and eating.
The idea of a grown man trying to delay your period is shocking
Much has already been written and said about gymnastics coaches, their training and their pupils, and also about this VPRO series, which is based on publications in the magazine heroes† But it is still enlightening to hear these athletes very calmly and soberly and to see how something like this works: being slowly driven into a trap by someone who takes over all power and control.
And that doesn’t help dear father or mother, because they had meanwhile started wanting what the coach wanted. Or because they didn’t want anything anymore.