Tanya Byron

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Tanya Byron

Nationality	British

Dr Tanya Byron BSc MSc PsychD is a British Clinical Psychologist who rose to fame between 2004 and 2005 as the resident expert on parenting shows Little Angels and the House of Tiny Tearaways. These programmes are amongst several that have kick-started the currently popular genre of parenting programmes in the UK. She has also co-authored a book on parenting based on the Little Angels show, and written regular articles for The Times. More recently she wrote a report for the government on the impact of computer games and the internet on children. In April 2008 she fronted a four part show called "Am I normal?" exploring the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. She is a graduate of the University of York.

1 Personal life
2 TV Programmes
3 Radio
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Personal life

Her father was the film and television director John Sichel.

She is married to The Bill actor Bruce Byron with whom she has two children called Lily and Jack.

She is the patron of Prospex, a charity which works with young people in North London.

In 2005, Dr Byron featured on French & Saunders` Christmas Special as herself, who came in to sort out Dawn and Jennifer's childish behaviour on the show. Currently, Dr. Byron is co-writing a second series of The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle with Jennifer Saunders.

In September 2007, it was announced that she would head an independent review in England - supported by the Department for Children, Schools, and Families; and the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport - into the potentially harmful effects of both the internet and video games on children^[1]. This was published in March 2008 as The Byron Review.

[edit] TV Programmes

[edit] Little Angels

Main article: Little Angels (TV series)

Tanya Byron, Stephen Briers, Rachel Morris and Laverne Antrobus became household names working on the British TV show Little Angels (which ran for three series), a docu-soap that follows the lives of families where the children have behavioural problems that are causing the parents difficulty. The show is seen as a 'life line' by the parents who are effectively calling professionals with years of experience of working with children and families to help them fix a problem that they believe beyond their ability to fix. Tanya Byron, Stephen Briers, Rachel Morris and Laverne Antrobus, monitor the behaviour of the family and the children before discussing with the parents the real underlying causes of the problem (which are nearly always in some way either caused by or contributed to by the parents themselves - usually by inadverently rewarding inappropriate behaviour with their attention). They then discusses a course of action with them and later they coach them in how to change their own and their children's behaviour to improve the situation (this is frequently done in scenes where the family is filmed doing something together with the parents receiving advice from the attending professional via an ear piece). The show is intended to be instructive to viewers in how to deal with common problems as well as of real help to the family being filmed (and of course entertaining).

[edit] The House of Tiny Tearaways

Main article: The House of Tiny Tearaways

In 2005 Tanya began to host her own show called The House of Tiny Tearaways, a reality tv style show that brings three families experiencing problems into a large, purpose-built house where they are monitored and aided for a week. The show is vaguely similar to programmes like Big Brother, in that all the rooms have cameras in them and the families are frequently monitored in their activities with the audience shown highlights of a particular day. Each family stays in the house for six days in which time Tanya monitors them all for one day before having very honest and direct discussions with the parents about the issues and how they can be dealt with, and then guiding the families through courses of action, exercises and deliberate changes of behaviour on the parents' side to deal with the problems. Tanya does not do this entirely singlehandedly, as one element of the programme is the support the parents receive from the other families who are in the house with them at the same time.

The show is characterised by: scenes of children misbehaving, therapy sessions between Tanya and the parents of the children (which are often very emotional and are sometimes the first time they've ever really discussed the problems they're facing), tasks in and outside the house which the families are set to help them practice the skills they've learnt (often having to do things they would normally find difficult, like take a child with eating problems to a restaurant) and by the ending, the families review any improvements or shortcomings they've made.

[edit] Am I normal?

In 2008 Tanya presented a four part series called "Am I normal?" exploring the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. The episodes explore the themes of addiction, faith, sex and body image. The program presents both behaviours and treatments which Dr Byron is able to explore objectively but with some common sense cynacism. Is having sex with 5000 men within the range of normal behaviour? Is being attracted to pre-pubescent girls okay if you don't act on that attaction in a way that harms or coerces them? Are sex addiction or addiction to computer games real physiological addictions? Is hearing God different to hearing voices? These are the questions that she explores, without yielding to the temptation to give easy answers.