Tiny Tearaways, Super Nanny, Bad Behaviour, is there no end to the number of TV programmes about badly-behaved children?

Swearing, kicking, spitting, hurling abuse, they have been so badly brought up (to me they seem to have either had no discipline whatsoever or to have been spoiled to the point of ridiculousness) that they have developed personalities more suited to penal colonies than family homes in Britain.

Yet rather than seek help (bit too late for that in some cases, if you ask me) and tackle matters behind closed doors, parents choose to try to reform their offspring in front of millions of people. Night after night, viewers tune in to witness their attempts to curb their children's disruptive behaviour.

It's bizarre, to say the least. Imagine, all your friends, neighbours and colleagues, knowing what goes on in your house. How nightmarish your life is, how out of control (as if the neighbours didn't know already, with missiles hurled daily into their back garden) little Johnny or Jenny has become.

How awful for your child. Some toddlers will be too young to understand what is going on. They may grow out of their bad behaviour and become sensible, polite, upstanding youngsters. Yet to everyone who lives within a 20-mile radius of their home, they will always be "the terrible kids from the telly." Mud sticks, as they say. For years people will point and stare every time the "dreadful child who went berserk in Tesco" walks by.

Surely, we have had enough of these programmes. I'm especially sick of the ones where the so-called professional hired to sort things out does it all over the phone. How lazy can you get? Their heart can't really be in it if they can't even be bothered to see the children for themselves.

Is this the future? Is this what we can look forward to? Will nannies and childminders simply relay instructions to our kids over the phone? Or send the odd text reminding them to take their elbows off the table?

A lot of their advice is simple common sense. What is blindingly obvious in all these programmes is that the parents' behaviour and language is mirrored in the child. I'm not saying this is always the case - I haven't seen too many parents going crazy for sweets at the supermarket checkout. But if parents didn't go around effing and blinding, their children wouldn't. And if parents didn't buy absolutely everything they fancy immediately, and heap toys upon their children on a daily basis, their children would not grow up with an aggressive "I want it now" attitude.

For anyone who has not had children, these programmes must put them off for life. There are so many of them, that it is easy to believe that all youngsters are like this. Some couples must look around their orderly homes, and think about their orderly lives, and quickly conclude "no way."

These programmes make me feel guilty for telling my children off and sometimes talking to other parents about their bad behaviour. I feel guilty because compared with the bunch on the TV they are little angels.

That's what we need, some sort of balance.

Terrific Toddlers, Lovely Little Ones, Cherubic Children. Only no one would watch those, apart from the ultra-proud and, most probably, horribly smug parents. For the rest of us it would be far too nauseating.

Updated: 10:42 Tuesday, May 10, 2005