The Roloffs reflect on life as LP reality stars

From The Vancouver Sun in Canada:

When we last left Matt Roloff, chatting on the phone two years ago from his family's 14-hectare hobby farm near Portland, he and wife Amy and their four kids were still getting used to camera crews from Discovery Channel recording their every move.

Today, on the eve of the fourth season of their now top-rated TLC show, Little People, Big World, the Roloffs are reality TV veterans and the family's comfort level, and perspective, on what the show has accomplished has undergone an evolution. That's because it's a show that's as much about the lives of a dwarf family -- Matt and Amy are dwarfs, as is 18-year-old son Zach, while Zach's siblings, twin Jeremy, 15-year-old Molly and 12-year-old Jacob, are average height -- as it is about a normal family dynamic, whether that means scrapping with your spouse of 21 years, yelling at your kids for being too messy or, in Matt's case, being arrested for DUI. When the show first aired in 2006, says Matt, only he and Jeremy, hams by nature, were comfortable with the invasiveness, with the notion that everything you did or said was being filmed and then watched by millions of strangers.

It was hardest, at first, on Zach, who shied away from having to grow up in the spotlight as a shy dwarf with an average-size twin brother. But these days, says Matt, Zach and the rest of the gang have adjusted and, in fact, "we're getting more and more boring," especially as other reality shows feature other families dealing with disabilities.

"The notion of us being little people is becoming less a big thing," says Matt, on the phone from the farm last week to talk about the show's 20-episode season four premiere next Monday. "We're just another family."

Well, not quite, as evidenced by the turnout last fall for their annual pumpkin fest, which saw 50,000 people descend on Roloff Farms, most from outside the community.

And they still get thousands of e-mails from fans, though in the early days those e-mails tended to be from others with handicaps, thanking the Roloffs for showing a largely uninformed public just how "normal" it is to be disabled.

He thinks the show is a success because his family doesn't "tidy up" for the cameras, but puts it all out there, creating an authenticity that resonates with viewers.

"We should call it Little People, What Not To Do," he laughs.

Amy's discomfort with the lack of privacy was also an issue in the beginning, but she's come around, says Matt.

"Amy has changed the most. She's much more embracing the show, way past tolerating it, which is what she did.

"Now she sees it as a part of her life and sees it as a way to get out a message, to do charity work . . . not just improving the lives of little people, but endeavours in our community and the world at large."

And while the show has underwritten house renovations and ensured the kids' education, Matt will tell you that the best thing that ever happened to his family was buying that farm after he and Amy married in 1987.

"The most important learning happened before the show, with the farm, the work, the creativity for the kids. We've always been more about teaching our kids to fish than about giving them a freezerful of fish."

And when the cameras are turned off for the last time?

"The kids will all go on and do well. They'll drift back into society."

Matt, who is 47 and has diastrophic dwarfism which affects his joints and cartilage, says he's "already looking at the light at the end of the tunnel" for the show, and will happily retire to a lounge chair by the pool. "I want to slow down, do some reading, finish a lot of the projects around the farm."

Ironically, he says, it will be 45-year-old Amy who steps it up, who will likely start travelling more, who will get out there and spread the message, educating and altering societal notions of what it means to be a dwarf, what is means to be handicapped. As for the new season, shows will find Matt returning to Iraq with an orthopedic surgeon who will perform leg-straightening operations on Ali and Bara'a, two Iraqi children with dwarfism.

Meantime, the Roloff twins are talking college, Molly is coming into her own as a teenager in Grade 8, and there's a trip to Amy's folks in Michigan, where Jacob has a nasty wilderness experience. You know, family stuff.