OMG Star! Have you been listening in? difficult child 2 still has to be darn-near forced into the shower at 17. I have gone so far with the hose threat as to actually drag the garden hose into the kitchen and tell difficult child 3 to help me hold his "big" brother down. (difficult child 3 is now bigger than difficult child 2.) difficult child 2's response? "Alright already, Mom. I said I'd go." (Yeah, but I want to make sure you go TODAY. lol.)
When difficult child 2 was younger, I spent a fortune on bath games, soap chalk, washable markers, anything and everything I could think of to make baths fun and interesting...even up until he was 11 or 12. (It's not easy to find "games" for a kid that age that make taking a bath less of a hassle.)
I even went so far as to get one of those snapset pools like you find at Wally World for $40 and set it up in my carport, of all places. More than once while difficult child 2 was swimming in the evening, I'd toss him a bottle of shampoo and tell him...while you're in there... (And then proceed to drain the pool and refill it once he was done.) I've even been known to get the other kids to help me carry him, kicking and screaming, full dressed to get tossed in the pool. Even if he didn't use soap, at least soaking in the water would help dissolve some of the ick off of him. lol.
Now, of course, you can't do that in the winter months...but...
For us, bathing was a basket B thing most nights. But like you said, sometimes it just has to be done. I always took the approach that once I said it was going to happen, it would happen. Even if that meant calling in back up to help hold him down while I sprayed him with the hose...and I was darn willing to follow through with it too. lol. Eventually, he learned that when Mom said it would happen, it was in his best interest to do it voluntarily. (It took two or three times getting thrown bodily into the pool by his siblings and I, or his brother and I literally holding him down while he sisters started yanking shirts, socks, etc. off of him. Granted, it was always done playfully, but the point was made. He knew he couldn't fight all of us and we WOULD strip him and bodily put him in the shower to save our own noses...better to save himself the embarrassment of being stripped to his skivies by his sisters...who would never let him live it down...EVER. lol)
I will say, it always worked best for us to come at it from the angle of being playful with the forced bathing thing. It kept it from becoming a nasty power struggle. It's hard to keep a straight face when Mom says "gear up kids, time to give M a bath!" and the girls come jumping out of the bathroom with old army gas masks, or bandanas tied around their mouths & noses, with bathroom scrub brushes in each hand, screaming "On guard Stink Monster! Unhand our brother before we're forced to scrub you out!" lol.
It was all fun and games...but in the end, difficult child 2 knew he was going to get a bath...like it or not...no matter how wet the rest of us got or how creative we had to get with it...we were getting that boy in the tub no matter how we had to accomplish it. Mom's minimum (until he hit the funk smell age) was once a week. Now, it's a minimum of every other day...or it's the hose, buddy. lol. We joke about it, but difficult child 2 also knows that I mean it. Fun and games aside, Mom's requirement for nontoxic children will always win...always.