Obesity-proofing our children 175 At times it is quite appropriate for a celebration to occur around food. If we make that food of the celebration an entire healthy meal, rather than‘ party food’, there is no problem. And if the meal involves getting other family members together with informal speeches to toast the child’ s success the celebration becomes that much more powerful. Celebrations like this can include a favorite‘ unhealthy’ food of the person being celebrated – but the focus is not on this food as the treat but on the coming together to break bread( low glycemic load of course) as a family or group. The key is for the bulk of the food at the celebration to be healthy as with any good meal. Love is not a feeling Some years ago after extensive research, my wife, a Psychologist, and I gave a series of talks and I ran some groups on child discipline. This work came out of the need to deal with a five – year-old and a two-yearold, both of whom had just decided that they each ruled the world and may the last child standing win. As there were no books based on scientific research into child discipline written at the time, we spent almost two years trawling through the raw research to find what was known about child discipline. It was a fascinating exercise but one point that stood out for us was the all too common issue of parents backing off from disciplining their children because they did not want to cause their children distress. In a backlash from the physical punishments used by the previous generation, parents were reluctant to discipline their children so as to not‘ abuse’ them. Remember the definition of love, True Love is a commitment to nurturing personal growth in both ourselves and others? When it comes to parenting and discipline nothing is truer. While we can nurture our children by supporting them to take on new challenges and giving praise, equally there are times when we need to discipline them to nurture their growth.