When he stopped yelling, a knife clattered to the floor. Two chairs scraped the linoleum. His wife and younger daughter ran from the dinner table crying.

Anger coursed through his veins as he stared at the bits of his hamburger lying strewn across the plate and table, only a single bite taken out of the bun. He lifted his head and looked at his older daughter, surprised she remained at the table. Ridiculously gangly, she still looked very much like a little girl. But the thirteen-year-old's demeanor bewildered him. He studied her face. She wasn't upset. She was calm, eerily calm and angry. 'How strange,'  he thought. His older daughter didn't possess his temper–no her little sister inherited that.  

The kitchen clock ticked. A car door slammed next door. A dog barked in the distance. She glared at him. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 

Finally, she spoke, her voice low and steady. "Is this how you want your family to be?" She watched him incredulously, waiting for a reply. 

"No," he answered softly looking down at his ruined dinner, his temper extinguished.

His daughter continued to leer at him. The cat walked in looked around and left again. He shuddered in her icy silence. 

"Is this an acceptable way to behave?" she asked.

"No," he admitted, more softly still.

She raised her voice but was still controlled. "You lost your SHIT because you didn't like how Mom cut the onions! That's ridiculous! You made your hamburger too big, that's why it fell apart!" 

Shame flooded him.

"What is WRONG with you?"

He didn't reply.

"This is NOT ok," she said sternly.

"You're right," he said meekly. "You're right."

She gave him a final death stare and stalked out of the room, leaving him stewing in his own misery. He didn't understand that a monumental shift had just occurred in his life. He didn't realize he would never yell at the dinner table again. And while he would survive raising two head-strong daughters, he would come out half the man he was before. They wouldn't physically beat the fight out of him, they'd wrangled it out of his soul.