this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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Well little Timmy, since you were SO thoughtful taking the labels out of the cans, you are going to play canned flood roulette for the next week. This means, for an entire week you pick one can at random for your dinner, and you are not allowed to have another food outside of what the can offers. In the meanwhile, the rest of us will eat your favorite things in front of you, while you are in your sad corner eating your can of food. Me and your mother are going to place bets to see how long your spirit lasts. Let the games begin
My friend's parents tried this sort of punishment mindset with him when it was a kid. He ended up grounded with increasingly draconian punishments for roughly five years because of the shockingly impressive stubbornness of all people involved until they "gave up on him" after 7th grade (yes, this literally started when he was a 2nd grader). He ended up moving out on his own at 16 and dropping out of school and didn't really have a relationship with them for a good decade and a half.
I don't really have any words of wisdom from this other than never underestimate a person's ability to defy logic. It just ended up ruining the whole family's experience for a long, long time.
Edit: I did just remember something "funny" about the whole thing. My friend didn't really know how to, or enjoy, doing a lot of things that pretty much all kids did because of his seemingly eternal grounding. And he was quite literally the palest person I have ever known because he only went outside to get on the bus for school. His parents turned him into some sort of cave person lol
Punishments are like the least effective way to convince/teach someone
it did not start when you said it started probably
Is your friend Butters Stotch?
And then they'll wonder why he wants nothing to do with them as an adult and why they never get to see their grandchildren and then eventually why no one visits them in their nursing home and why they die alone.
Pretty sure that this is not the catalyst for why that happens. This is a good learning experience for a child as to why this type of behavior does not benefit them or those around them. More likely, the type of family situation you described develops as a result of abuse, physical or emotional.
My parents attempted that with me, not the can-roulette part, but I was a picky eater, so in order to get me to eat new foods and expand my palate, they would give me food and say, you're not having anything but that. You're sitting at the table till it's done. While they ate food that I definitely did like.
They ended up giving up on it because I would sit at the table for hours on end and even sleep at the table. And due to the fact that I don't feel hunger until im basically almost fainting, I would basically put myself on the brink of feeling faint, which concerned them.
I'm no longer extremely picky. I'm still picky, but no longer to the extreme extent that I used to be.
That's an entirely different situation though. Picky eater is more of a clinical issue. And brute forcing such things never works. Kid being an asshole however, well that, that we can fix reverse assholianism.