I froze when my daughter was threatened - my family look at me differently now
5 January 2025
Not long ago, me, my wife and our kids, aged seven and four, went to see a show and had dinner at a restaurant afterwards. When we sat down to eat, there was this hyper kid running around knocking things off the table while his parents seemed not to care.
At one point the boy, who was maybe four or five, noticed my youngest daughter, and kept running right up to her laughing with his hand stopping just short of her face.
At this point both me and my wife tensed up. Suddenly, he kind of slapped her on the cheek â enough to scare her and make her cry, and enough to make my wife shout âNO!â at the kid, while he and his parents laughed.
My wife looked at me for help and I know I should have said something to his parents, but I hate conflict. I froze and stared at my food, while a visible silence fell over the table. No one would talk to me on the train on the way home, including my wife, and I heard my seven-year-old son quietly ask her: âWhy didnât daddy do anything?â.
Iâm worried this will change how my kids and wife view me forever. What can I do to fix it?

âIâm worried this will change how my kids and wife view me forever. What can I do to fix it?â (Photo: Getty Images/Westend61)
It sounds as if the moment when your wife looked at you asking for help â and you looked down at your food â has played around your mind hundreds of times. I imagine youâve asked yourself why you didnât react differently. Perhaps, deep down, you know the answer already.
When weâre confronted by a threat in the present, which thereâs no doubt this was, our body is flooded with the hormone adrenaline as we go into fight, flight or freeze. It sounds very much as if you froze: the perfect reaction if youâre being confronted by a bear, less practically useful when it comes to a small child on the rampage. But you didnât have a conscious choice in your reaction â your amygdala reacted as soon as it perceived the threat, your body following. The question is: why did you freeze?
You might already know where in your past this stemmed from. If youâre not sure, then look at feelings you experienced with this unruly child â and your own feelings of helplessness. Have you ever felt this way in your past? Do you know where and when you felt like this? Did you learn as a child that keeping the peace was the most important thing to do, perhaps to keep you safe? Were you bullied at school or at home? Were you in a situation where you knew other people might be more powerful and protests might be met by violence? Did your family feel helpless and vulnerable in your community?
If youâre aware that something was triggered in you, you have the opportunity as an adult to feel those feelings, which may stem from your childhood or teenage years, knowing that you are no longer powerless, or in danger, but an adult who can choose how to navigate the world. By facing your past, youâll experience more freedom in the present.
Armed with this awareness, I would chat with your family, not with the intention of fixing anything, but explaining and exploring what happened. Be open with your partner about where this stems from so she gains an understanding of why you were unable to support her in that moment. We have strong instincts to protect our children and loved ones and your explanation may help her to understand why, in the restaurant, freezing was your response.
Iâd also let her know how much you appreciate her actions. Tell her how much it upset you that you didnât act differently, how much thought youâve given it and how youâd like to act in future. You might explain that this is something you are having to learn because your protective instinct to freeze may be deeply entrenched.
Be open and honest with your children, too. Given that your children are primary school aged, I would offer them reassurance that they were completely safe and praise their mother for having it all in hand â which she did, stepping in and keeping them safe. This might help overthrow some of the old-fashioned stereotypes that this moment might have been brought up in you â and that children absorb about the world â that the dad is the default âprotectorâ.
Iâd also talk to them, age appropriately, about how you wish youâd responded and explain that fear left you frozen stiff, unable to step in. This might be a time to talk about standing up for oneself, especially against bullies â and to explain that there are different ways to stand your ground. You might want to talk through ways in which you could have kept firmer boundaries. Perhaps you wish youâd anticipated the situation earlier and reacted before it escalated: you could explain how next time youâll move your children so that theyâre behind you.
Perhaps you could explain how you could have kept a peacemaker role but asserted your boundaries by politely asking the family if the boy could keep his running closer to his table. You could explore what might have happened if youâd stood up in front of the boy so he knew not to approach the table â and how that might have been effective, or inflamed the situation if the boyâs parents, who seemed to find the whole thing amusing, had gotten riled.
You could ask your children for their ideas as to what the best solution was. Sometimes moving away is not cowardice but pragmatic. Iâve found with bullies that if theyâre ignored they can get angrier, as if they feel judged by someone who sees them as being inferior. Instead, sometimes an early acknowledgment: âWeâre moving tables so each of our families can have spaceâ is the wisest solution and avoids stress for everyone.
One of the privileges â and challenges â of raising children is that it frequently takes us back to our own childhoods and offers us a chance to work through issues weâve shut away rather than resolving in our own lives. By letting your family see you work through your own fears, learn to anticipate situations before they escalate and hold firm boundaries for both yourself and your family, youâre doing something much more important than fixing a problem: youâre working on your past so that it doesnât have undue influence on your childrenâs future.
Youâll be able to model behaviour that gives them the tools to navigate tricky situations. And youâll be showing them â importantly â that youâre learning, just as they are.
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