Father thumped teenage daughter 15

[confusedandmiserable]

Normally we are a pretty calm and happy family but my daughter (who is normally a great kid) managed to push all my husbands buttons on Sunday - they yelled at each other - then she stomped off to her room and he charged after her - he completely lost it. I jumped on him while he took a swipe at her with his fist (luckily missing). I separated them and she became hysterical. Afterwards - everything calmed down and apologies were given and I will stress that this has never happened before. Now she says the image of her father (who has never raised a hand to her before) is of him coming at her like and animal and she can never see him in the same way again. Also she says if she hadn't ducked she would have had a black eye. My other two children 14 and 10 also witnessed and condemed their father for this. I have to admit - I also saw a different completely irrational side of him - we've been happily married for 17 years.

I guess I don't know how to take this forward as there will always be this stain now - he knows it must never happen again and that he was very stupid but I do feel he has marred the childhood of all three children and diminished himself in their (and my eyes). He a man of deep feelings and not good at articulating them and I think this is what happened. Everybody knows this was really wrong.

I think I'm just looking for advice on how to move forward as a family after this.

" Are you seriously saying there is no other way of teaching a 15yo to avoid lippiness? "

Um, no

I can't see where you're getting that idea from at all.

I'm saying that given what has just happened, in her family, it is worth her examining her role in the incident if she and her father come to talk about it and he explains how wrong he was and apologises unreservedly for what happened.

He shouldn't have lost the head, and that needs saying. But once it has been, her part in the row should be acknowledged by her.

"But we both know that hitting anyone, anyone, with your fist is illegal, regardless of provocation."

1 that is not true, provocation is a defence in law

2 that did not happen

Well, according to the OP it only didn't happen because the dd ducked quickly enough.

And iirc the provocation has to be pretty severe to serve as a defence for assault- otherwise it would be hard to convict any husband who punched his wife during a domestic dispute; usually the wife has said or done something that he has found provoking.

I do think her behaviour should be discussed- just not in the context of his attempted punch.

I think I would find this pretty impossible to forgive, it must be devastating to your whole family.

I hope you can recover from this. Your husband should be devastated and ashamed.

He needs to promise your daughter that he will never lose control, ever again.

I honestly think this is a regrettable incident. But nobody even got hit. So I think you should all move on and find another way to deal with bad behaviour in teens. Nobody is perfect. People do lose their tempers when teenagers are being a total pain in the neck.

Provocation is only a defence to murder (gets it reduced to manslaughter), so can you please stop bandying it around, athinginyourlife?

The law expects you not to punch someone regardless of what they say to you.

(And 'shut up and leave me alone' is unlikely to meet any sensible definition of provocation anyway)

Just looked up the definition of provocation in law, inspired by Boulevard.

And apart from the fact that it can only be used, as she said, to reduce murder to manslaughter, not to get a person off scot free, it also requires the jury to rely on the "reasonable man test", that is, to ask themselves whether the reaction of the accused to the provocation is one that might be expected from a reasonable person of ordinary self control, such as is expected in our society.

But nobody got punched. That is the point. Nobody got hit kicked or punched. If this is going to be a regular occurence then of course it is an extremely serious matter. Now people are talking about murder!!!! . But this over reaction is just ridiculous. that is my opinion.

We are not talking about murder, MarySa- please read posts properly. Murder was only mentioned to explain why the talk of provocation introduced by another poster was irrelevant, because it only applies in the totally different context of murder. That is hardly the same as saying that this was murder.

Well I still think it is extremely inappropriate that the word murder was mentioned in this context.

No body got thumped because luckily op was there to stop him but what if she hadn't have been......???
The point is, he very nearly did all because 15yo was being lippy.

marySA she didn't get punched ONLY because she ducked just in time though!

"she yelled in typical teenage fashion that it was her decision she was an adult and he was to shut up and leave her alone!"

Is that all? I'm sure I said much worse to my dad when I was a teenager, and I was a fairly well behaved teen (as my dad actually confirmed a few weeks ago), I never got hit for it! Even if you do think that provocation is reason enough for someone to lash out, that was minimal provocation!

I think the decision of where to go next should really be down to your daughter and other children. As they are affected as much as her.