@Jeffrey Davis: Tax on time just once, and total tax on time until your child turns 18 are sometimes two different things. Of course it's easiest to do what takes 30 seconds, but what it also teaches to the child is that it's OK to ignore other people's feelings if it saves your time. It might not backfire in the first few years but it will eventually. On the other hand, you might just be lucky to have a child who is content with tasty food. :)

About the language being the best invention ever. It is truly marvellous, but there one major gotcha. It's also the language, your language, that actually was the barrier between you and you child. There's so much body communication going on that goes amiss when language is expected. Just watch and listen without language. It's there, it has always been and you have kind of known it but your own language has almost hidden it. Try this watching and listening without language consistently for a while and suddenly you see and hear it. And it's not your child only that communicates that way, everyone does it. When you start seeing it in animals, you are becoming a master. They do it, too, you know, and that's how the animal parents know how to take care of their young. Most probably you have done it already to some extent but you did not know it. That's the nonverbal communication that we don't know we know about.

Telling the truth is not the same thing as telling (usually) biased opinions or sharing one's passing feelings of anger, hate and such with others. Those things are not the truth even though one happens perceive them as true and is utterly convinced of that. One's mind has been influenced by (actually: fed by) other people's opinions and culturally accepted prejudices even since childhood, starting from when one was only learning the language and completely unable to think independently. That is true for practically everyone on this planet Earth (and those in the orbit, too). So, who can say that they have given that up and changed to what is really true? Telling the truth seems to be more of an excuse to act out on one's conditioning and prejudices, without bothering to question them, or - gasp! - to change them. Of course useful feedback, like the guitar playing case, is completely different. Bad playing, or plainly average playing is not just a matter of taste, as opposed to playing music that you don't like.