World's Strictest Parents is a TV show in which parents send their out-of-control teenagers to live with strict families, typically in a foreign country. 2 teens, usually a boy and a girl, will be sent overseas for a week, and during this time, face discipline and a tough regime from the foreign parents. The teens involved will usually be partying constantly, and have problems with drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. The teens usually would've dropped out of school/college as well.
This series contains examples of the following tropes:
- Comically Missing the Point:
- Kai when he is told that he’s not allowed cigarettes.
Strict Dad: Enjoy that cigarette, it’ll be your last.Kai: Can I smoke (Beat) pot?Narrator: I think that’s a no, Kai.- The part when Karli and Zach drew inappropriate murals on the walls. Zach argued that "[Karli's drawing of a mushroom could've been] any kind of mushroom, and [that] the ones that are hallucinogenic don't have spots on them", even though the issue was the symbolism; the actual type of mushroom was irrelevant. note
- Control Freak: Some of the strict parents are unfortunately this as several of the parents enforce their rules and policies to the point where they often become unreasonable towards their children and the kids they take in for the well. One of the most notable examples is Sam and Amy Wright, who constantly spy on their well behaved kids, make them say ma’am and sir and went through the troubled youths belongings on the first day without their knowledge or consent while these kids were being given a tour of the property.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Many of the girls featured on World's Strictest Parents are this.
- My Beloved Smother: Several of the strict moms are shown to be this, especially Wanda Kimbral, who demands that her children treat her like a queen. That is especially shown when in one scene she gets one of her kids to review his homework in a stern way, with him reluctantly complying to do so.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Usually, the cameraman will remain silent, and just film the action. However, when Peter got a tattoo from an unlicensed parlor in India, the cameraman had to step in.
- Sleeping Dummy: Henry invokes this trope in the New York episode; he wants to enjoy NYC at night, so he stuffs some pillows under the covers, presumably from watching movies in which the characters pulled this off
- Smoking Is Not Cool: Most of the show’s teens are smokers and the rule that the teenagers break most often in the show is the no smoking rule with many of the parents outright banning smoking on their property. Some of these parents even admitted that they lost family members to smoking related illnesses.
- Strict Parents Make Sneaky Kids: Played with. The premise of the show has strict parents try to reform out of control kids who are biologically not their kids but many of these teenagers try their hardest to test these parents by being sneaky most of the time. Some of these attempts at being sneaky involve hiding clear colored alcohol in water bottles, smoking in hidden areas outside, and hiding contraband items in discreet places around the house they temporarily live in.
- Took a Level in Kindness: This is the format the show and many of its versions take with most of the teens sent away to live with strict parents. The teens included have issues involving selfishness, narcissism, drug addiction, refusal to obey parents and authority, etc. However the episodes usually end with the teens learning their lesson and going on to become better and nicer people.
