DEUT1067 After all is said and done, though, the use of corporal punishment, even within permissible parameters, is questionable. The same Book of Proverbs that advocated the use of physical force in raising children (23:13-14) also says, "Educate a child according to his own way." (Proverb 22:6). The Talmud understands this to mean that parents should make age-appropriate demands so as not to put their children into a situation in which corporal punishment would be called for. In other words, parents have a duty to set reasonable standards for their children so they avoid even being tempted to use physical forms of discipline. As the Talmud says, parents must not make it difficult for their children to fulfill the commandment of honoring them. (B. Kiddushin 30a and see Rashi there). Even in the worst of cases – the kind of described by Deuteronomy -- the Talmud could not accept anything like the death penalty. The Rabbis therefore legislated evidentiary procedures that made it impossible ever to attain a capital conviction in such a case. Once having created these barriers, they themselves said, "A wayward and defiant son [subject to execution according to Deuteronomy 21:18–21] never was and never will be." (B. Sanhedrin 71a). If the Rabbis insisted that even courts not go to the limit available to them under biblical law in physically punishing children, parents should certainly limit the physical punishment they inflict – – or, even better, refrain from it altogether. After all, if the parents' duty is to teach the child proper behavior, they should not, in the process of doing so, do to the child exactly what they do not want the child to do to others. Educationally and pragmatically, then, as well as Jewishly, the best policy is not to use physical punishment at all.