They spare the rod, and spoyle the child.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” is not sadistic; it is hard common sense. You fail your children worst if you do not punish them when they need it. The lessons you fail to teach them will be taught later and much more harshly by a cruel world, the real world where no excuses are accepted.

There is nothynge that more dyspleaseth God,
Than from theyr children to spare the rod.

Love is a boy by poets styl'd;
Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

We often hear all this rhetoric of “spare the rod and spoil the child,” discipline and punishment, and I just don’t believe in that. In all my years I haven’t come across an adult who, because they got an excess of love as a child, grew up to be a not-so-nice person. In fact, I believe exactly the opposite is true. And this isn’t rocket science, but I think that parents for understandable reasons sometimes forget that…

To withhold the rod is to put your child in the hand of Satan and co-operate with him in sending your child to hell!

He spared the child and spoiled the rod
I have not sold myself to God!

Childhood is for spoiling adulthood.

Eh! poor lad! He’s been spoiled till salt won’t save him. Mother says as th’ two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way—or always to have it. She doesn’t know which is th’ worst.

Oh, tis a way that spoiles things haply good When itching youngsters crop themselves i'th bud, And so prove rotten before ripe, to win't, That they may have their names but seene in print.

Save the world by torturing one innocent child? Which innocent child?

Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison.

Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own.

The poor child, as Charles Lamb so touchingly expresses it, is not brought, but "dragged out," and if the wits are sharpened, so, too, is the soft, round cheek. The crippled limb and broken constitution attest the effects of the over-early struggle with penury; but the child of rich parents suffers, though in another way; there is the heart that is crippled, by the selfishness of indulgence and the habit of relying upon others. It takes years of harsh contact with the realities of life to undo the enervating work of a spoilt and over aided childhood. We cannot too soon learn the strong and useful lessons of exertion and self-dependance.