>If you hadn't screwed up, maybe on the 30th reprimand, the dog will have learned for life.

How do you know maybe the dog just isn't going to learn because of anything you do?

I agree with nearly everything you've said so far -- but I have to argue this point. I think one of the mistakes parents make is thinking that there's a certain way to treat their child that will make their child behave in desired fashion.

I think really, there are some things you just cannot teach a child. They will learn themselves, or they won't learn at all. How do you know that dog won't just keep begging you, every meal, every day, for the rest of its life? If you give the dog a scrap of meat, it's obvious you've just actively taught it to beg for meat. If you don't -- you haven't taught it anything at all, and it's up to the dog to give up or keep trying. Which will it do? You don't know. And you can't control it.

I agree with you as a whole though. You aren't suddenly bestowed with all the knowledge necessary to raise children at the moment of conception. At the same time, experience is a better teacher than books. That doesn't mean that those who are knowledgeable, just not experienced yet, can't raise kids. It doesn't mean that those who are experienced, knowledgeable or not, *CAN* raise kids. That all differs person-to-person.

But (in my uninformed opinion) the key to all this is realizing what you don't know and what you can't do. At some point, even when the kid is a year and a half old, you have to realize you just can't control the kid. All you can do is set your best example and hope the kid will pick it up.

Keep refusing to throw the dog a scrap. But there's nothing you can do to *make* the dog stop begging. Sometimes, you really can't do anything. Dogs, kids, and adults alike all have this thing called "free will" -- it messes things up a little ;)

Ri "I hope I make some sense" a