That seems to be the worst thing about parenting. When you punish the kid, you get punished too.

My mother always tells this story. When she was a kid, she was a very picky eater. And my grandmother was a disciplinarian type who would say, "you'll eat it or you'll wear it." So my mom ended up wearing a lot of food as a kid.

Fast forward to my childhood. I didn't want to eat something once and my mom pulled out the old, "you'll eat it or you'll wear it." I didn't eat it and she dumped the plate over my head. Then she realized, OMIGOD, now I have to CLEAN all this up. Who am I punishing here anyway?

She never did it again. She also never understood how my grandmother had the patience to do that all those years.

oh yeah, my stubborn runs deep. I used to take spankings rather than admit wrong doing.

Uh, I admit I am not a parent, but does dumping food on a child convince them to eat it?

At home, "____ before I count to three or I'm taking it away" usually works pretty well, since hiding toys in the closet isn't a huge burden on me.

Out and about, there's less stuff to take away and "Stop ___ or we're going home" isn't always a threat I can follow through on. We usually wind up having a time-out on a bench or something.

I think the idea was that, next time, you would eat the food so you didn't have to wear it. It never worked with my mom. Though she ended up with very healthy, shiny hair.

My memory of my childhood is that my parents always won. They were scary-assed mofos. My goal was just to hide my misdeeds, or somehow misrepresent my mother to my father (he did fall for recent bruises and puppydog eyes).

But the only way to not finish dinner was to feed it to the dogs. To not finish lunch involved hiding it under my bed.

Though I'm sure if you asked them it didn't work out quite that often in their favour.

msbelle wins the day at both stubborn and parenting.

Come to think of it, there've been plenty of days that the only thing that got me to go to work was the thought of our excellent cafeteria. Where people would cook me things.

My memory of my childhood is that my parents always won. They were scary-assed mofos.

My childhood too. My dad was especially scary. Perhaps it was his German heritage, but we learned at a very young age never to challenge our dad.

one of the best things I was told on my adoptive parents' listserve was not to make food one of the control issues. mac never has to eat and he always has some things available to him. Now sometimes he will get the same thing for multiple meals if he refuses to eat it, but I don;t yell about it.

Office Max made me laugh. At least Staples just gives you a tiny, cardboard card--which is very worth it, by the way. I always get a nice, small check from our recycled toner cartridges and the discount coupons I get are not puny--usually 20% or more.

msbelle, 1. Stubborn!mac, nil.