Reddit user sees dad hit & pinch daughter in library while the girl did schoolwork, asks what she should have done

SINGAPORE: A woman was so distressed by the sight of a father repeatedly hitting and pinching his young daughter in public that she asked fellow Reddit users what she should do in such an instance.

u/wildflowersgrow posted on r/askSingapore on Wednesday (May 17) that she had seen a man — who, she presumed, was mainland Chinese — get “quite rough” with his daughter over schoolwork at a library.

“He would pinch her in a hard fashion, and even punched her in the arm (though it was controlled, but there was still hurt behind it). There were about 7 instances or so in the 10 minutes I was there. He was a huge guy with wild movements and it was clear that the girl was afraid,” wrote the post author.

She added that she was unsure what to do, and whether she should have spoken up. She felt that the daughter might have faced additional harshness from her father had she stepped in.

u/wildflowersgrow discreetly recorded two times when the father hurt the daughter again, but these were “very much milder as compared to the rest”.

She also wrote that no one else in the library appeared to see what was going on, much less intervene.

“What should I’ve done, Reddit? Perhaps I could’ve let the father know that such form of punishment is unproductive politely, or even make up a story on how I used to be hit by my parents myself, until one day I took a glass cup and smashed it in my father’s head while he was asleep, just to scare him in a friendly, well-meaning manner?”

She ended her post by writing that she plans to return to the library to see if the man and his daughter are there and if he behaves again like that.

One commenter wrote, “I know the type. If you try to speak up and stop him, he’s just going to take it out on her more at home. Unfortunately that’s just how it is.”

Another agreed, “Yup, all he’s going to learn is to keep his pinching and hitting out of sight of strangers.”

“You can alert a Family Service Center but that’s really as far as you should go. Don’t get personally involved in it,” a netizen advised.

One Redditor urged her to try another track. “You can’t angrily confront this kind of guy, or it will escalate. If I’m in a good mental state, I might go up to them with a smile and comment something nice like “wow, your daughter is so hardworking! What a good girl.”

/TISG

Netizen asks if today’s parents still cane their children to discipline them, or ‘just talk some sense into them till they learn?’