Switching a Pagan witch with a local motocross racing mom not only makes excellent television, it teaches families what they’re made of.

Stephanie Starling of DeLand was sent to live in Seattle while “fairy goddess” Laura Sweany-Ernst stayed at the Starling house for ABC’s “Wife Swap,” which airs tonight at 8.

After 200 hours of filming, Stephanie’s emotions were as mixed as the rest of the family — so many moments felt scripted, pushed by the network for ratings, like the muffins she baked as offerings to a tree. But others, like Sweany-Ernst’s insistence on thinking about the Earth, taught them lessons of conservation.”I have to admit I had a good time,” said Starling, who left her husband, John, daughter Samantha, 15, and son Justin, 13 in Sweany-Ernst’s care.

“Would I do it again? Never in 100 years.”

The premise of the show is simple enough: Exchange one mother for another, let the family show her how they live for a week, and then in the second week, the new house mom makes all the rules.

But there’s a catch. The rules are never easy — it comes down to a family’s values.

“You can’t subject your credibility to something that isn’t you,” said Starling. “I won’t do certain things for ratings.”

The rules set for the Starling family by their Pagan mom were to compost all garbage, pay more attention to Samantha’s photography and — this was their favorite — stop racing motocross. With over 2,000 wins under Justin’s belt, and Stephanie’s blossoming writing career for motocross’ Playground magazine, that just wasn’t going to happen.

“I told her I’m just going to go right back to it,” said Justin, who has won the ultra-competitive Loretta Lynn race in 2002, where more than 30,000 boys in his age group attempted to qualify.

But the attention to Samantha’s art caught her parents’ eye as something they hadn’t embraced — though the home-schooled 12th-grader insists she doesn’t feel “dragged behind” her brother the way ABC claimed in a news release.

“We always follow Justin around, but not to the point of (me) being the red-headed stepchild,” she said.

In Seattle, young boys Sterling, 14, Dane, 11, and Cameron, 8, were given the rule that they had to try the sports they’d been scared to approach their mom with, have a little fun and take out the garbage instead of raking through it for compost.

Stephanie Starling was proud of the day she got each of them on a motocross bike.

“I found they had secret lives they didn’t tell their mom about so they cried because they were sad and cried because they were elated,” she said. “They’d never sat on a motocross bike before — they were just boys being able to have fun.”

And though the DeLand family may not be dancing in fairy outfits or building altars to worship the Earth, John Starling said he catches himself thinking about the environment.

“They really feel Earth was put here to grow and reuse in a proper way,” he said. “It taught me to save water, don’t drive to Wal-Mart four times a day.”

Now that the Starlings are settled back into their homes, they’re worried to see if they come across as the devil children and the Mom who loses it. Regardless of the show’s outcome, Stephanie says they’ve been e-mailing the family across the U.S., exchanging updates and making promises to visit.

“Believe it or not we’re friends,” she said. “No matter how many twists or turns there are, we come full circle.”

Source: Daytona Beach News-Journal

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Lifestyles, Cultural. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.