In his new book Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting, Canadian philosopher and writer Carl Honoré wrestles with his own well-intended overparenting and taps into a number of schools and families inspired by the free-range child. …

Elsewhere, Mr. Honoré documents outposts of free-range kids around the world and finds them flourishing. He cites an outdoor nursery called The Secret Garden in Scotland where kids can run free.

"It brings together so many of the anxieties and problems we're talking about and it seems to solve them in one fell swoop."

Most of the time when a baby cries, they are tired or attention- seeking. In both cases, ignore them, she insisted. That sounds very harsh, but Verity is only updating a method of child-rearing from the 1950s, as espoused by a New Zealand doctor, Frederic Truby King, which was based on the belief that children who are subject to a strict routine are more likely to thrive than those who are not those my mother refers to dismissively as free-range kids.

The series, which pits a space cadet witch (Corinne Bohrer) against a luckless divorced lawyer (Frank Luz) and his three free-range kids, settles into a regular slot on both stations next Saturday at 7.30 p.m.