I've always been a believer in benevolent neglect. Be there for your children, but don't interfere, don't be too vigilant and, most importantly, don't think for them. Quantity time is better than quality time.

Yet many parents hold the view that they must mould their children through endless guidance and that an hour of nurture can make up for 12 hours of absence.

Now we hear that "hyper-parenting" harms babies and young children's intellectual development by over-stimulating them and by insisting that they accomplish too much, too soon, according an American child psychiatrist, Dr Alvin Rosenfeld. Describing hyper-parenting "as the most competitive sport in New York", Rosenfeld says that parents who play babies Mozart in utero and sign them up for music lessons at the age of three months are "crushing" them. The babies become children whose every moment is so enriched by intensive activity that they lack the ability to think for themselves.

The same conclusion has been drawn by Matthew Melmed, chief executive of Zero to Three, a charity dedicated to the healthy development of infants. His research shows that children who are hovered over by over-stimulating parents lose their innate sense of curiosity and become less able to cope by themselves. Rather than spending short burst of intense "quality time" with children, parents should spend longer amounts of unhurried time, even if it's spent doing nothing more important than daily chores, he advises.