In prepping a children’s program where I’d be recording all the Duggars from TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, I read a lot about this family on the Internet.

Boy was that unhelpful.

I wanted to make sure I got their characters right while scripting the dialogue for an episode of Life at the Pond.  And even though well over a million people watch this show weekly, the Internet was fraught with misinformation. I’ll spare you the gory details, a quick Google of “Duggars” will provide a couple hundred thousand results and you can get a bowl of popcorn and make a day of it.

duggars

But there was one common theme, sometimes from quasi reputable sites, that permeated the Internet:  The Duggar children are captives in their own home.

Before traveling to Arkansas to record, I’d only spoken on the phone with Jim Bob Duggar, the father of all 19.  I watched the TLC program, and that was my only exposure to the children.  They seemed pretty well behaved, which explains why I wanted to use them in this episode in the first place.

Jim Bob was kind enough to invite my entire family into his home.  We ended up spending parts of three days there, and I can tell you first hand, this is no ordinary family.

You won’t find a television in their giant living room.  The Internet is greatly restricted. The girls’ room (9 of 10 sleep in one room – the only exception is temporary, newborn Josie) didn’t have Hanna Montana or boy band or vampire posters or anything like it.

Lady Gaga did not make the cut.

The most prevalent thing on the walls of the Duggar house are family pictures and scripture. So, yes, you could say quite accurately popular culture was shielded by the walls literally built by the Duggar family.

Funny thing is, people tend to assume a child not immersed in popular culture is a child missing from reality.  In some cases, that is true. Not the Duggars.

My wife and I spent considerable time talking to the three teenage girls, Jill, Jessa and Jinger.  They are sharp, fun and informed.  They know what’s going on out there.  But it isn’t at all a part of their every day life. And, to the shock and dismay of so many, they’re okay with that.

While, admittedly, I admire the Duggars for much of what they do, I didn’t expect what I saw in these three girls.  The world has yet to beat them into submission.  They don’t watch the Disney Channel, so they’ve yet to learn that adults are buffoons and parents are embarrassing.  They don’t listen to the local rock station, so they’ve yet do discover life is supposed to be one promiscuous event followed by another.  They don’t attend public school, so they’ve yet to learn teenage girls are required to be filled with angst and riddled with insecurities.

Big group of young jumping people.

As we spoke to the three of them, one word kept jumping out at me:  Freedom.  These girls were experiencing freedom teenagers rarely taste.  Completely free to be themselves.  The exact opposite of the words so often used by media folk to describe the 19 kids.

While many times teenagers can’t wait to get away from adults, these three were anxious to engage in conversation.  And they were delightful. All of the Duggars were.

And here’s another thing that springs from the Duggar house throughout the day:  Humor.  The TLC show captures some of that, but I was surprised by the amount of laughter and joking in that home.

Again, it goes back to freedom.  While the left reflexively assumes it’s a world of “don’t do that” leading to a house of misery, reality is quite the opposite.

As the Duggar family proves.