Assure yourself that over the half-term households up and down Britain were echoing to Daniel's refrain; in some homes

I can think of such a request coming at some point after breakfast and repeating itself until an irate mother marches up to the telly, switches it off and demands that her offspring do “something more demanding, like drawing. Remember drawing?”. There must be a more effective strategy for curbing their viewing hours, but it is difficult to negotiate when your children have descended into that slack-jawed state that wall-to-wall Ben 10, Scooby-Doo and SpongeBob SquarePants will often induce.

Psychologists euphemistically refer to this state as “attentional inertia”, when they get hooked into television to the exclusion of all else, and are extremely hostile when you threaten to take it away.

The answer, as all parents know really, is to set clear rules beforehand. Don't let yourself fall into the trap of allowing the TV to stay on longer than usual to buy more time for yourself; as soon as they sense this, it's much tougher to persuade them that they can't watch anymore. Insist that their viewing time is allocated to certain hours of the day; never beyond lunchtime for example, or only after 5pm. Make it clear that they can never turn on the TV without asking you first and that it's not an automatic right as soon as they come home. If it's during the holidays, it's fine to allow extra viewing hours but structure in other activities, too.

“Parents have to get the balance right, between one extreme where a child does nothing except watch it, to the other where it's too restrictive, so telly becomes a forbidden fruit,” says Dr Barrie Gunter, the Professor of Mass Communications at Leicester University. “What you need to encourage is a mix of past times.”

Dr Rachel Calam, a psychology lecturer at Manchester University, says: “Discussing what they're viewing plays a valuable role in children's learning. In fact, it's key. Content is less important because even if they are watching rubbish, you're there to explain to them how the advertiser is trying to sell them things. It helps them to become critical consumers.” Gunter agrees, and adds: “Crucially, parents need to limit their viewing too.”

Only then will the kids be happy to forsake their square-shaped nanny and do something more interesting instead.

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