Obesity-proofing our children 176 This definition reminds us that while lovingly disciplining our children, feelings of love are often nowhere to be found. If we behaved in a loving way towards our children only when we felt loving feelings, children would be abandoned well before the age of three! Love is not a feeling; it is all about helping our children grow. It is all about equipping them with good habits that will give them the best headstart in life. But the hard pill for parents to swallow is that achieving this means causing our children distress. Often when we are nurturing our children to develop healthy lifestyle habits, the warm, fluffy feelings of love will be nowhere in sight. As I said at the opening of this chapter, we have to be prepared as parents to enter into the conflict, to do battle. The truth is that parents often back off from making their children do things that upset them because, as their children get upset, they feel for them, get upset too and back off. But they back off primarily because they, the parents, are feeling upset, not just because they are upsetting their child. Backing off makes the parents feel better – but only in the short term. Now their child has learned that getting distressed is an effective way to get mum or dad to back off and let them have their way. It is very emotionally demanding disciplining our children and, by definition, causing them distress. How much we love them is a function of the distress we are prepared to bear as they sit across the table with tears streaming down their face begging to be allowed their favorite dessert without eating their broccoli. While it would be easier to give in with loving smiles and warm fuzzy feelings all round, this would not be true love; this would be failing your child in the longer term for a very short term. Watch for the‘ two stomach phenomenon’ – a favorite amongst kids. This was best explained by our son’ s friend who described how he had two stomachs: one for food and one for dessert. This allows them to be completely full but still able to eat dessert. While they don’ t have to clear their plate, they certainly have to eat most of the healthier food on it before they have dessert.