Traumatizing his daughter right before my eyes

Hi everyone. I was recently at an airport lounge with my partner coming back from a vacation. Sitting next to us were a father and his elementary-age daughter. What I witnessed was so triggering and very sad.

They sat down. The daughter placed a couple puzzles on the table and asked if they could do them. The dad said no, he was hungry and they should eat. He forces her to the buffet with him.

They come back with food. The daughter asks about the puzzle again. The father dismisses her and tells her to eat. She asks him what kind of drink she can have (she didn’t bring one from the buffet). He says he will do ___ for every question she asks (I couldn’t hear exactly, but it was some sort of punishment). He says for her to just be quiet and eat. She goes completely silent and starts eating. At some point she goes up to the buffet alone and gets a glass of water.

After they eat he takes his phone and takes a picture of her. She’s not smiling (obviously, after being treated so terribly), and so he asks her to smile. She doesn’t. He says he wants to see her happy. She makes a super wry forced smile. At this point I cannot handle it anymore so my partner and I move to another area of the lounge.

I have some vague memories of my father telling me to be quiet a lot as a kid too. I never thought it was a big deal until now, when I’m far enough on my healing journey to see what it does to a child. In the book Tao of Fully Feeling, Pete Walker talks about how being shut down from talking as a child leads to you struggling with self worth later in life. I hate witnessing this abuse in real life like this, but it also makes me feel more compassionate towards my childhood self. My childhood self didn’t know any better. Children just do what they can to be accepted and loved by their parents, even when that love never comes.