RadioScope: Family Flavours: Picky Eaters, RTÉ Radio One, Saturday, 7.30pm When I was a baby learning to be spoon-fed, I refused to eat if I could actually see my mother, a reliable source has informed me. So she had to stand behind me, out of sight, and reach around holding the spoon in front of my face. Then I would consent to eat.
For these reasons, I have plenty of empathy with children who do not like to eat and I feel entirely relaxed about this phenomenon. I have observed that children who drive their parents daft by not eating, nevertheless go on getting bigger and stronger. It is the parents who lose weight with worry.
This new radio series is all about cooking for children and promises simple ideas and recipes. It is presented by Richie Beirne, a keen cook who earned his spurs, so to speak, as a chef in a Montessori creche.
The series kicked off with a programme about that bane of parental life - picky eaters. The picky eater is the child who will eat soup so long as there is nothing in it. Or the child who refuses to eat meat and for good measure also refuses to eat vegetables. And, by the way, the programme informs us that even children growing up in vegetarian households are liable to turn up their noses at vegetables.
Parents drive themselves demented trying to persuade such children to eat. They stand over children threatening or cajoling them, they cook special meals for them, they mould their food into special shapes, they even follow them around with bowls of food. Very often, none of it makes any difference. Food is an area over which the child and not the parent exercises control when it comes to agreeing to eat or not.
The major part of the message of this programme is to stay calm. Do not panic: all will be well. Psychologist Dr Rosario Power told the programme that: "I don't know of any child in this country who's died of starvation."
Some parental strategies work on some children some of the time. There are children who will eat their dinner so long as it is shaped like a teddy bear. There are children who will eat on condition that they can watch the Simpsons afterwards. It would not be a good thing, though, if they were still carrying on like this 20 years later - and I do not have the faintest shadow of a doubt but that there are some who do.
Richie Beirne points out that some otherwise reluctant children will eat if you get them involved in cooking the meal. Part of the programme is taken up with the happy sounds of children learning to make pizzas.
Now, I have done this sort of thing, and I have to tell you that once in a lifetime is probably enough. If this seems cruel and callous, so be it. The mayhem that can be generated by a bunch of unfettered free spirits "cooking" is in a class of its own.
There are still five parts left in this series so if you are a parent, tune in and get some tips on becoming a maestro of the kitchen. But if you want to remain sane, do the cooking yourself. Sure if the kids turn up their noses at your produce, you can eat it yourself.
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.