Kevin and Hazel Wilson love their daughter very much. But if they are not careful, they will eventually love her to death.

Their pride and joy, named quite appropriately - if a little unimaginatively - Joy is 12 years old, has long blonde hair and blue eyes. She also weighs 25 stone - three-and-a-half times more than most other girls her age.

There are no medical reasons for her obesity, she simply eats too much junk. Doctors have warned her that if she does not lose weight she could die before she reaches adulthood.

The strain on her heart, they say, is already immense, matched only by the emotional strain on her parents' hearts.

But the sad fact is that her parents are at the heart of the problem. Kevin and Hazel both weigh in at a not insubstantial 20 stone themselves, three out of their four daughters are overweight and they flat out refuse to work with doctors to get their family back into shape.

Hazel told a recent ITV1 documentary crew that she believes Joy will slim down in her own time, adding: "We love her to bits. It would be cruel to deprive her of things which everyone else can eat."

It's a time-honoured clich, but in this case it just happens to be true: sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Their daughter is not just pleasantly plump or carrying a pound or two of excess puppy fat, she is morbidly obese. She is being bullied at school, the victim of both verbal and physical abuse, and, while she claims to accept the way she is, she is patently very unhappy indeed.

To stand back and allow this to happen, even if you are standing knock-kneed and quivering behind an exclamation of heartfelt love, is not an act of kindness. Kevin and Hazel are colluding in their daughter's self-abuse.

By providing a kitchen full of junk food and sufficient pocket money for her to stock up on calories while out of the sugary-sweet home cocoon, they are providing her with the means to continue her downward spiral towards ill health, unhappiness and, if the doctors worst predictions are proved true, death.

What sort of love is that? It is weak, irresponsible and ultimately damaging. Not, in other words, the sort of love that children like Joy need.

I don't claim to have all the answers, nor do I claim to know everything there is to know about being a parent - if I did, perhaps I wouldn't have a son who insists on eating yoghurt with his fingers and who actively enjoys chewing his socks while watching telly.

But I do know that this kind of parenting, the kind that condones irresponsible indulgence in the name of love, is a road that can only lead to trouble and heartache.

What this girl needs is for her parents to lead by example. They should sort out their own diet, not buy junk, start exercising and encourage their girls to join them.

If they don't buy the chocolate and the chips, their kids won't have a chance to eat them. If they don't splash out on a weekly family feed at Pizza Hut or McDonald's or wherever their favourite food pit stop happens to be, their kids won't waste away. And if they don't give them the money to stock up on their daily dose of sugar and fat on the way to school (in the tuck shop, at lunchtime and on the way home again), their kids will not stop loving them. They may even thank them in the long run.

Allowing Joy to gorge herself to death on sweets, crisps and junk food is not an act of love. It is an act of gross stupidity.

It's time for Kevin and Hazel Wilson, and other parents like them who refuse to discipline their kids for fear of short term unpopularity, to get their heads out of the sand - and out of the fridge.

It's time for them to toughen up. It's time for them to be responsible parents. And it's time that they realised that people shouldn't have kids until they have grown up themselves.

Updated: 08:43 Tuesday, February 18, 2003