Stepping off the school bus just two blocks from home, Manhattan sixth-grader Amedeo White follows the exact same drill every afternoon — the 11-year-old pulls out his cellphone, dials his mom and delivers a running commentary while walking back to their apartment.
“Passing the deli now,” he reports. “Waiting for the walk signal.”
Literally giving a step-by-step account of your movements is par for the course when your mother is as overprotective as Amedeo’s. The ultimate “helicopter mom,” who hovers above her three kids 24/7, Cayle White would prefer that they’d never left the womb.
Amedeo’s closely monitored after-school routine is among a number of cringe-worthy moments featured on Discovery Life Channel’s new reality TV series “World’s Worst Mom,” which premieres Jan. 22 and reveals how paranoid today’s parents have become about their children’s safety.
In the show, a bunch of obsessive Type As are subjected to an intervention from Queens author and public speaker Lenore Skenazy. The 55-year-old famously earned the title “World’s Worst Mom” in 2008 after she let her then-9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone, and then wrote about it in her newspaper column.
Now the founder of the so-called “Free Range Kids” movement, Skenazy has been parachuted into people’s homes, much like “Supernanny,” in an effort to banish irrational phobias and force anxious moms to loosen their grip.
“Some kids are losing their childhood because their parents are so overprotective,” Skenazy tells The Post. “Fear is being shoved down their throats at every juncture.
“Yes, you have to be vigilant, but not to the degree where you are micromanaging and stopping them from thriving and becoming independent.”
In some of the more extreme examples on TV, one mother insists that her 13-year-old son use the women’s public bathroom in case of male predators. Another is so terrified of her 10-year-old choking, she spoon-feeds him like a baby.
Skenazy’s Rx? A healthy dose of common sense.
White, an actress and entrepreneur, volunteered for “World’s Worst Mom” because the family was “paralyzed” by her fears.
“I really felt like we were stuck,” she explains. “I was holding the whole family back, and something had to change.”
One of her biggest issues was germs, whether it was picking up the flu from touching an elevator button or contracting food poisoning from meals.
“You always hear horrible stories about people getting E. coli from undercooked meat and children dying left and right,” says White, who would microwave already overdone food to kill off potential bugs.
“My kids would be begging me for something juicy and tasty, because everything I made would be dry or burned,” admits White, who would also use hand sanitizer once every 20 minutes.
Unfortunately for her kids, her philosophy was always “Better to be safe than sorry.”
Mercifully, the Whites were not a lost cause. After Skenazy insisted the family go for a barbecue in a park — with tightly wound Mom banned from interfering with the cooking process — White realized that steaks with a tinge of pink don’t necessarily spell a death sentence.
In another challenge, Amedeo, armed with a map, embarked on a two-hour odyssey exploring Central Park to walk the family dog. He wasn’t allowed to take a cellphone, and even asked a stranger — something that would have been unthinkable in the past — for the time.
“When he came back, he seemed really proud of himself,” admits White, who spent the entire couple hours on tenterhooks. “Even his posture was better.”
As Skenazy points out: “There is no greater gift to your kid than confidence. It was amazing to see the transformation.”
Mostly reformed, White claims to have a much more relaxed attitude to parenting these days. Amedeo, now 14, takes the city bus to school (without having to give running cellphone commentary). And his brothers, Felix, 11, and Ziggy, 5, have learned to appreciate more lightly cooked food.
“One of them dropped something on the floor the other day and it was well beyond the five-second rule,” laughs White. “It was probably there for a minute and I said: ‘Oh, go on, eat it!’ ”
Another New York family to benefit from Skenazy’s wisdom on the show are the Almontes of suburban Rockland County, whose home resembles a pampered prison thanks to Mom’s insecurities.
Sometimes I feel like I’m in a box and nobody can come into it and I’m not allowed out of it.
- Brianna Almonte, on living with her overprotective mom
“Sometimes I feel like I’m in a box and nobody can come into it and I’m not allowed out of it,” 10-year-old Brianna explains to Skenazy on the show.
That’s because Phyllis Almonte won’t allow playdates, particularly sleepovers, because she’s “worried about Brianna being in strangers’ houses, changing clothes and privacy.”
She even accompanies Brianna into the stall of the ladies’ room at the mall in case she comes into contact with germs or a stranger makes an approach while Phyllis waits outside.
Son Zach, 12, is banned from riding his bike anywhere outside of their driveway because Almonte fears he could be hit by a car on the road. “It feels like I am 2 years old still and my mom has to watch and correct what I am doing if I make a mistake,” laments Zach. “It feels like I’m trapped almost.”
If that’s not bad enough, when the kids are playing in the backyard, they have to keep in touch with their mom via walkie-talkie.
“I constantly fear that they will get abducted or hurt,” Almonte, 47, an executive assistant, admits to Skenazy on the show before tearfully adding: “I know what I’m doing is not good, but I can’t help it.”
In her case, the intervention takes the form of an organized playdate in which Brianna is allowed to host a group of girls from her school for a swimming pool party. It’s a roaring success, with Almonte bonding with the other moms and arranging a reciprocal playdate in the future.
In the meantime, Zach gets to cycle to the park less than two miles away, where he is able to play basketball with his friends. While Almonte can’t resist driving to the courts to check up on him, she concedes it’s time to cut the apron strings.
“I learned from Lenore that you have to teach your kids right and wrong, talk to them and it all boils down to trust,” she tells The Post. “I can’t keep them inside this bubble forever, or they won’t know how to handle themselves in the real world.”
The highlight of the show is Zach overcoming his fears and zooming down a giant slide at a water park, moments before his water- and heights-phobic mom follows suit.
“Self-esteem doesn’t come from being told: ‘Oh, you’re great!’ It comes from doing something hard,” observes Skenazy. “Part of our job as parents is to encourage kids to take that extra step.”
When she leaves the family, the more relaxed mom looks 10 years younger while Brianna and Zach, now 13 and 15, have a newfound spring in their step.
“Instead of thinking of all the things that could go wrong,” says Almonte, “I’m thinking about all the things that could go right.”
How to get a grip
Here are Lenore Skenazy’s top tips on how to tear off the Bubble Wrap.
Don’t buy into the over-the-top kids’ safety market: Skenazy is all for bike helmets and car seats, but does your healthy baby really need special kneepads for crawling, “walking wings” or a smart bootie that connects to your iPhone and gives readouts of their blood oxygen levels?
Disappointment isn’t dangerous: “My son came home with a nonironic bowling trophy for eighth place out of nine teams!” recalls Skenazy. Prepare your kids for real life, where you don’t get a medal for breathing the same air as everyone else.
Stop “worst-first” thinking: Look at the dwindling crime statistics and gain perspective.
Facebook isn’t a catalog for pedophiles: “Many parents won’t post their kid’s image because they have this idea that some predator in Nebraska is going to single out their child in Park Slope … and abduct them,” says Skenazy. Studies by the Crimes Against Children Research Center show such incidents don’t happen.
Lose the restroom worries: “There’s nothing worse than an embarrassed-looking boy in the ladies’ bathroom asking: ‘Hey, what’s a sanitary napkin, Mom?’” Teach your kids not to go off with strangers, but recognize that society has developed an inflated sense of danger.