This is an excerpt from Susan Stiffelman's new book, Parenting Without Power Struggles.

Newsflash: Kids don't like to be bossed around!

In her infinite wisdom, Mother Nature has designed children to resist being told what to do outside of the context of connection. Kids are wired to Just say no! when an outsider attempts to get them to do something and to only do the bidding of those to whom they are appropriately attached. This makes a lot of sense. Consider what would happen if a child's instincts told her to follow and obey people who weren't part of her village? Imagine the worries you would be saddled with if your little ones didn't instinctively refuse the demands of strangers?

No, Mother Nature knew what she was doing when she wired our children's brains to resist being pushed and pulled outside of the context of attachment.

So, let's start off with the understanding that, as frustrating as it is when your kids refuse to come to the dinner table or clean up their toys after being asked five times, there are powerful-and invaluable-instincts at work that bias our children towards resistance.

Front-of-the-box nutrition logos are supposed to help you make healthier choices. But the Food and Drug Administration wonders if they're just misleading.

Amid those concerns, a national nutrition labeling program called Smart Choices, which had been embraced by big food companies, announced it was suspending operations. The program rolled out in August and awarded a green check mark to foods that met low fat, sugar or sodium content. But alarm bells sounded when sugary cereals got the green check, too.

Now the FDA is studying ways to regulate varying front food label nutritional facts from manufacturers and grocers.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created this video in which Tracy, a high school basketball player, shares how she was sidelined by a concussion.

Do you think babies' photos should be airbrushed in magazines? Credit: Getty Images

Critics are outraged that some parenting magazines admit to airbrushing images of babies that run on their covers, but industry insiders say that almost every photograph in a magazine is retouched.

The hubbub started when a BBC documentary, My Supermodel Baby, revealed that the publication Practical Parenting and Pregnancy retouched a photograph of 5-month-old baby model Hadley Corbett. According to The Daily Telegraph, the magazine's casting director, who was not named, told filmmakers that the child's image was airbrushed: "We lightened his eyes and his general skin tone, smoothed out any blotches and the creases on his arms. But we want it to look natural."

Hadley's mom, Esther Corbett, tells the Telegraph that she was neither surprised nor offended that her child's image was altered. "You kind of know that they do it because if you look at the front cover of magazines, most of the images don't look really real," she says. "But it didn't put me off."

Plenty of other people are put off, however, and some say that the practice is "shocking." Jo Swinson, a U.K. political leader, campaigns against airbrushing in magazines. "People will be appalled that a magazine would not think images of beautiful healthy babies are alright as they are and instead have to conform to some standard," she tells the Telegraph. "The idea that babies must look more perfect – that they can't have creases in their skin – shows the obsession with a particular ideal. Where does this end?"

"You will have parents thinking, my baby isn't attractive enough, how do I make my baby more attractive?" she says.

Industry insiders who have worked with children in media say that retouching photographs -- of everything and everyone -- is standard operating procedure at most publications and is in no way sinister. A friend who has a long resume working with children's publications tells me that the goal is to improve the likeness by adjusting the color, lighting and yes, getting rid of drool or flyaway hairs.

With photo-editing software and services readily available today, plenty of parents are doing the same thing with their private snapshots. I'm not above editing out the chocolate smears on my kids' faces to get the perfect holiday card, and I don't think I'm alone.

November is National Adoption Month and ParentDish is giving a shout-out to all parents who've opened their hearts and homes to adopted children. Check out the famous folks who share the love as well.

In her new book, Sarah Palin doesn't address the family drama with Levi Johnston, but said on 'Oprah' that she would welcome him to a turkey dinner. Credit: Amazon

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told Oprah that she is willing to bury the hatchet with Levi Johnston, baby-daddy to her first grandchild, and says that he is welcome at her Thanksgiving table.

Palin told Oprah that she's trying to move past the negative and concentrate on life without drama. Johnston, she says, is part of the family and she's willing to "bring him into the fold" and under her wing.

"And he needs that, too, Oprah, I think he needs to know that he is loved and he has the most beautiful child and this can all work out for good," she says in the interview, which is scheduled to run Nov. 16. "It really can."

But it doesn't look like he'll be taking a bite of her sweet potato pie anytime soon, according to Gawker. In an interview he did today with Playgirl, Johnston says of the former vice-presidential candidate's invitation, "You could tell by her laugh she was full of it." So much for that reunion.

The Palin family generates reams of tabloid coverage, and Johnston is among the principal players. From his mother's arrest for drug dealing to the infamous "Vanity Fair" interview wherein he did his best to further tarnish the already endangered reputation of the former vice presidential candidate, Johnston has done a lot to engender Palin's wrath.

"Liberty and justice for all?"

Will Phillips doesn't believe that describes America for its gay and lesbian citizens. He's a 10-year-old at West Fork Elementary School in Arkansas, about three hours east of Oklahoma City. Given his beliefs, he refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, specifically because that one phrase, "liberty and justice for all," he says, does not truly apply to all.

That did not go over well with the substitute teacher in his fifth-grade classroom.

The Arkansas Times reports that he started refusing to say the pledge Mon., Oct. 5. By Thursday, the substitute was steamed. She told Will she knew his mother and grandmother and they would want him to recite the pledge.

Will told the Times the substitute got more and more upset. She raised her voice. By this point, Will told the newspaper, he started losing his cool too, adding: "After a few minutes, I said, 'With all due respect ma'am, go jump off a bridge.'"

The holiday season is almost here, and with it all the standard trappings: Sparkling decorations, joyous gift-giving, luscious turkey dinners ... and big helpings of mother-in-law vs. daughter-in-law drama.

A season that's supposed to be about celebration, faith and kindness can quickly devolve into a fiesta of aggravation for the daughter-in-law attempting to put a decent holiday dinner on the table without strangling the very woman who gave birth to her husband.

But imagine for a moment, as you face the impending holiday season, what it would be like if daughters-in-law could speak bluntly, telling their in-laws exactly how they'd like things to be without any fear of reprisal. ParentDish asked women around the country, including the CafeMom community, to give us the holiday dirt:

What would you really say to your mother-in-law about the holidays, if you could speak totally freely?

You know the saying, "Pick on someone your own size?" Tell that to this reporter from Chicago's WGN-TV, who played a little b-ball with a child and proceeded to dunk on him, yell in his face and make him cry.

He almost redeemed himself. After the boy started crying, Pat Tomasulo said, "I feel like the lowest person on the planet right now." But then, the reporter took it back.

Hey, Tomasulo, we're curious...were you bullied as a kid?

Arvilla Marie Lilly Meinhardt of Golden Valley, Minnesota runs a day-care center out of her home. Problem: She pins kids to mattresses as discipline control.

Yes, you read that right. The 70-year-old Meinhardt told authorities she had been using this bizarre discipline method "for about eight years on 2- and 3-year-olds who attended her in-home day care," according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The charges against her are "gross misdemeanor malicious punishment of a child and false imprisonment."

According to published reports, local police came to Meinhardt's little house of alleged horrors in order to investigate claims by a girl who was cared for by Meinhardt from 2003 to 2006. The girl is now 7 years old and "recently told her mother that Meinhardt used safety pins to pin her to a mattress during nap time," according to the Star Tribune.