If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it. - Robert A. Heinlein

“Do you know what an anthropologist is?”
“Uh, I am sorry, ma’am—Margaret.”
“It’s simpler than it sounds. An anthropologist is a scientist who studies how people live together.”
Thorby looked doubtful. “This is a science?”
“Sometimes I wonder. Actually, Thorby, it is a complicated study, because the patterns that men work out to live together seem unlimited.”

“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.

I decided not to cross any bridges I had burned behind me.