The 10 Most Uncomfortable Reality Shows About Kids

Reality television, while endlessly entertaining, recieves its fair share of criticism, the chief complaint being that it exploits those who participate in it. While it can be argued that adults old enough to sign their own contracts with a network know what they are doing (to some extent), it's harder to say the same about the children. But, you would never guess that by the amount of icky shows that seem to focus on them.

Just last week, the National Geographic Channel premiered the documentary special Pint-Sized Preachers, which entered into the world of child evangelists and followed the story of three kid preachers in particular. Obviously, Pint-Sized Preachers is just the latest in a long line of disturbing shows revolving around seemingly "ambitious" children and their "supportive" parents.

The little documentary got us thinking about all the awkward reality shows about kids, and after hours and hours of slaving away over the Google searchbar, all we can say is this: One, there are a hell of a lot of pageant reality shows out there, and two, maybe Antoine Dodson was on to something: The circumstances may not be the same, and you may not need to "hide yo' wife," but judging by the shows that are our picks for The 10 Most Uncomfortable Reality Shows About Kids, you should most definitely "hide yo' kids."

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Written by Tanya Ghahremani (@tanyaghahremani)

OK, so not every episode is about a kid, but a fair share are, so it's enough to count on this list. The show, which has been airing in Canada for the past four years, basically features a new mom each week who is throwing some sort of lavish, over-the-top party for their super-spoiled kid for whatever reason. It's sort of like looking into the futures of those bratty chicks on My Super Sweet 16 or something.

Take this clip, which features mom Lisa, who's throwing her son, Chase, a Vegas-inspired bar mitzvah party. As in, he's turning thirteen. "We are Vegas," Lisa insists early on, flashing her rather gaudy jewelry at the camera. "We're blingy, and we love to party." Chase seems to agree with his mom. "I love Vegas, I love the girls...the dancers...poker, the blackjack, all of it." Shit, is he even tall enough to see over the card tables?

Vegas is a beacon for all sorts of debauchery and mayhem, so is it really appropriate for a kid? Don't worry, guys, Lisa comes to realize that too during the planning process, and she throws a pretty My Super Sweet 16-worthy tantrum over it. Party still goes on though.

Yeah. Look at your life. Look at your choices.

Want a recipe for disaster? Combine a bunch of crazed stage moms, their eager-for-approval children, Danny Bonaduce, and the promise of a $50,000 cash prize and an entertainment contract and put it on camera.

Wait, VH1 did that, and it was this show. The kids did everything from singing and dancing and acting to having themselves "branded" for Hollywood—that is, their parents were asked to come up with a "brand" for their child's image, like a product or something. That's right. Like, actually comparing their child to selling a product. But hey, they know their kid's a star, so it's totally OK, right?

Previously titled both 17 Kids And Counting and 18 Kids And Counting, it's sort of easy to see why this show would be on this list. These guys just don't stop. If you're not familiar with the show, those cheery guys in the photo are the Duggars; somewhere in the mass of people, there's Jim and Michelle, who don't ever use birth control during sex because it's against their conservative Christian beliefs. What resulted from that was 19 children and a reality-show deal.

It's like a 30-minute commercial for condoms and the pill, really, because you'll want to stock up with a year's supply after watching an episode. But fret not, there's hope: All the kids' names start with the letter "J," so they totally have to stop before they run out of names. Yup, that's what we're telling ourselves.

The formula for this show is similar to most of the other ones about stage parents: Overbearing, oftentimes ridiculous, parents push their offspring, who sometimes appear reluctant but usually give in to their desire to please anyway, into performance activities such as dance, acting, and singing, in hopes that their child will get famous and they'll be able to live out their unfulfilled dreams vicariously through them.

Yeah, Showbiz Moms And Dads, which aired on the Bravo network last decade, was really no different. It featured moms like Debbie Kingensmith here freaking out over their poor kids who would probably rather be doing something else instead, like having a childhood.

According to this show, some kids have psychic abilities and no one knows how to manage them. Yeah, we weren't aware of that little slice of unpleasant info either, but it seems to be pretty common knowledge to the host of this show, Chip Coffey, who goes around the country and unites kids who have "abilities" with adults who do as well and lets them bond and stuff.

It's maybe not as bad as those pageant reality shows, but it's certainly more troublesome—though, half the time, most of the stuff the kids say is pretty vague ("I'm getting that he collected something..."), the fact remains that we saw The Sixth Sense. Haley Joel Osment saw dead people in that movie and he was creepy as hell, and now there's a reality show about kids who can do that shit? No thanks.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past two years, you probably know who the Gosselin family is (forgive the awful cliché, but it'd be a valid excuse). Famously making their transition into full on famewhores over the years right before our eyes, the formerly married couple of Jon and Kate are mere shadows of their old selves—crazy, manic shadows with bad highlight jobs and too many Ed Hardy T-shirts.

When Jon and Kate's marriage dissolved, thanks to their inability to handle their sudden reality stardom, Jon left the show (or was kicked off, whichever) and it was renamed Kate Plus 8, which still rhymed quite nicely. But the fact of the matter remained, that the kids, their kids, went through all of that with cameras documenting their every move, enough to drive anyone mad, let alone someone under the age of ten.

It seems almost wrong to watch any clips from the show now with the fact in mind that, seriously, these kids probably never had a shot at being well-adjusted (and they seem to know it, too). One day, when they read all the tabloid stories about their parents, it'll only get worse. Or maybe they'll just laugh at all the ridiculous Ed Hardy outfits their dad wore. Either way, the future's not lookin' too bright.

Around the same time that Toddlers and Tiaras began airing on TLC, WEtv came out with its own show about child beauty pageant contestants and their mothers, called Little Miss Perfect. Unlike its rival, this gem followed a group of girls competing in a single "Little Miss Perfect" pageant in Florida. Judging by this unsettling clip, it's really no better than its counterpart.

"I think I'm doing her more damage than helping her," says one early voiceover, presumably a mother. We would applaud the self-awareness if we didn't have the sneaking suspicion that she's continuing to damage her daughter to this day.

If you were forced to read William Golding's Lord of the Flies in high school like we were—for all you slackers out there, the novel revolved around a group of kids stranded on a deserted island with no adult supervision—you would probably agree that developing a television show around that concept isn't the best idea ever. So, you know, that's exactly what producers did when it came to Kid Nation, because they're awfully responsible and stuff. "Hey, the critics are just going to have to deal with it," they probably said.

Well, they didn't. Critics tore the show apart when it was revealed that producers were sending 40 kids between the ages of eight and 15 to a completely empty town in New Mexico and leaving them to create a system of government and basically run the town themselves without any adult help. Breakdowns and existential crises abounded. Reality TV at its best and humanity at its worst.

Also, this one kid was a total asshole.

A fairly new show on the Lifetime network, Dance Moms is exactly what it sounds like it is; the series follows a bunch of child dancers and their bossy moms as they try to move up in the dance world. It's already clear, based solely on the trailer, that the girls are not only overworked, but also over-sexualized, making it one of the more controversial and outrageous shows about kids in recent history.

Luckily, it's on the Lifetime network, so it's pretty easy for us to avoid.