Since fronting two BBC television series — Little Angels and House of Tiny Tearaways — Professor Tanya Byron is a household name.

Yet despite being seen on our screens dishing out no-nonsense parenting advice, she does not believe in giving unsolicited guidance.

So fret not if she sees your child having a hissy fit, which is what happened to one poor mother recently.

When the mother saw Byron, she exclaimed, ‘Oh you’re the last person in the world I’d want to be in front of’, but Byron had actually been in silent sympathy because her own son Jack, now ten, used to be in her words, a ‘major tantrum king’.

Equally comforting is the introduction to her latest book, Your Toddler Month by Month, in which Byron writes: “There is no need to aspire to being a perfect parent. There is no such person.

“There are no prescriptive rules — different people have different values and belief systems in terms of how to bring up their children,” she explained.

However she does believe in setting clear boundaries and the importance of saying no to a child — something she says many parents have become unsure about.

She said: “Some are concerned if they are too firm with their discipline it will damage their children emotionally, whereas in fact the reverse is probably true.

“Clear boundaries give young people a good sense of self-esteem and they know where they stand in life.”

Byron has been quoted as saying visiting Brent Cross is a ‘nightmare’ because she is often bombarded by desperate shoppers looking for quick-fix solutions to problems.

“For me the difficult thing is when they ask for help and I always say, ‘I’m really sorry, I can’t. I don’t know your child, I’ve not got your history’.

“It’s the notion that somehow I can give these magic answers, but it doesn’t work like that. You need to do a full assessment — you need to really understand the problem and once you’ve done that you can do the magic.”

Despite being one of the first to front TV parenting programmes, Byron is disturbed by what is currently being screened and is passionate that children and families are given a realistic framework to work through any concerns.

“What I see on television are children with, to me, obvious clinical issues, being treated with a sort of herd mentality and that makes me absolutely furious.”

Byron summed up her own parenting style and that of her actor husband Bruce — who plays DC Terry Perkins in The Bill — as quite relaxed.

“I’ve never done a sticker chart with my kids,” she admitted. “For us it’s all about respect. I am very boundaried with bedtime and they eat what gets put in front of them or they don’t get anything else.

“I’m really hot on manners — I despair about the number of kids who don’t say please or thank you. But my kids are getting older now [her daughter, Lily, is 13] so it’s less about the specific routines and more about negotiating, trust, boundaries and expectations.”

But if her home life sounds like an episode of The Waltons, it is reassuring to hear of what happened recently.

Byron recalled: “I was terribly annoyed with the kids and they both looked at me and said, ‘You really shouldn’t be cross like this. You spend your whole time telling parents to be calm and reasonable and rational with their kids’.

“My daughter held open my book and said, ‘Look Mummy, see that bit there — you just didn’t do what you’d written’, which we had hysterics about.”

Your Toddler Month by Month, is out now, published by Dorling Kindersley.