Homeschool Dilemma: What Would You Do?

I'm sorry, but I just had to come back. There are things that probably bore my Kerrie Show readers to tears about homeschooling, so I need to write about them here. So today one of my friends wrote this on Facebook:

Today I'm struggling to communicate with my son. We're working on reading persuasive articles and understanding them. I'm having a hard time teaching him how to discern the authors position from other comparable statements. He just keeps saying "mmmhmmm" and answering incorrectly. He finally said "I have no idea what your talking about." At least he stopped saying "mmmmhmmm".

I answered like this:

Here's what I would try in this order (1) beat him (2) starve him (3) feed him something with lots of protein, run his ass around the block a few times (down to my house would be fine), then try again (4) come back to it in a week. love you!

What would you do?