What does ‘spare the rod spoil the child’ mean?

This phrase comes from the times in which society was a very harsh one, and we should teach our children with extreme cruelty so they would become perfect cruel adults. If the only trick hidden in your sleeve is a rod, we had come back in time 3,000 years. The children tend to imitate the manners of their parents. If the parents behave like sobs or mafia capos their children would imitate those manners.

Children can be easily domesticated without slapping, or spanking them. Less of all using a rod. I had two children, and never had to raise my voice to scold them for any misdeed. They were almost perfect. Of course I pretended of them to become fanatic science students. They were very clever kids with very good grades, but they do not become fanatic students. My daughter was closer to become an extraordinary student. Twenty years ago, he made a test for the SAT as I pretended to send her to a university of the US to study. She had achieved a combined result of math and language of 98 percentile. But it turned out I had not enough money for this project. So I sent her to Edinburgh where the tuition was free and I had to pay her only the living expenses.

That my kids were not real fanatic students was mostly my fault. I was ignorant about what were the means, the rules or methods, to make them real fanatic students. Nevertheless they made superior studies in foreign lands. The daughter made physics with Honors in Edinburgh, and the boy electronic engineering in Karlsruhe, Germany. We were Spanish, and my daughter learned English and Italian. They were the first of my family to make a university degree. In my family, the generation previous to mine have scarcely had any school. None of them even read a book, nor had any books in their homes. In my family I had a fame of being a crazy for I was often caught reading a book. Many times I was warned that to read books could cause dementia. All people that read books were crackpots. So, I am a crackpot.

My son learned English and German. My daughter can speak English, German, and Italian. Well, they were very good students. And I never had to raise my voice to scold any of them even once, and so far as I know they never misbehaved. They were very civilized and educated children and adolescents.

The origins of the saying “spare the rod spoils the kid” comes from ordinarily most parents are very sensible to a delaying of little children to obey an order. As the children delay the order, the parents repeat the order. As the child can still resist the order, parents give them a small homily about the children must be like automates obeying an order. This contingencies about an order being delayed is reinforced by the parents, sometimes the mom, sometimes the dad, with words, and even sometimes with veiled or not so veiled threats. The human voice works as a reinforcer, that means they are reinforcing the behavior we dislike, the delaying of an order.

As the disobedient behavior matures with the age of the child, parents have to increase the punitive means used after disobedience, or any misdeed of the children. It is totally absurd.

You are not thinking a child of 4 or 5 years of age had learned to play the piano using a rod. Any of you think this is the correct way to make the child of next video learn to play the piano?

or this one.

«Chopin Minute Waltz» by 5-Year-Old Evan Le

Have you ever seen the rod used to teach a child to play the piano?

The brain of a child is like a white page. Your are writing on this page what the child is going to do now and much later in life. The only trouble you can have is not knowing how to write on this page.