I had almost forgotten about the once-infamous “Octomom”, i.e. Nadya Suleman. Then I got this article via Google Alert. We all knew it was coming-it was only a question of when. When is the reality show coming to a network near you????

Nadya Suleman, the mother of octuplets born Jan. 26, has inked a deal with the British production company Eyeworks, which plans to begin filming a reality TV series based on the controversial single mother and her 14 children.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m a little burnt-out on the big-family-I-Gave-Birth-To-A-Million-Kids shows. It’s losing its appeal, its freshness, its ability to cause morbid fascination. At least for me.

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In Kid Nation, a new CBS reality show premiering this fall, forty kids between the ages of 8 and 15 are unleashed into a New Mexico ghost town where they have to fend for themselves for forty days without any adults.

Doesn’t that sound fun??

Well, this party pooper doesn’t think so:

To at least one parent of a participant, who wrote a letter of complaint to New Mexico state officials after the show had completed production, the experience bordered on abuse and neglect. Several children required medical attention after drinking bleach that had been left in an unmarked soda bottle, according to both the parent and CBS. One 11-year-old girl burned her face with splattered grease while cooking.

Other complaints include:

The children were made to haul wagons loaded with supplies for more than a mile through the New Mexico countryside, and they worked long hours — “from the crack of dawn when the rooster started crowing” until at least 9:30 p.m., according to Taylor, a 10-year-old from Sylvester, Ga., who was made available by CBS to respond to questions about conditions on the set.

Taylor and her mother, and another participant and his mother, all spoke enthusiastically about the show and said they believed the conditions on the set were adequate. But Divad, an 11-year-old girl from Fayetteville, Ga., whose mother wrote the letter of complaint and who was burned with hot grease while cooking, said she would not repeat the experience. She said there was no adult supervision of the cooking operation when she was hurt, although there often was an adult “chef” present in the kitchen.

CBS might need some help with their ratings, but a show that depicts cruelty to children sounds like a contract with the devil. Kid Nation debuts on September 19, 2007. I’ll be curious to find out what people think.