Is AUTHOR wrong in the post ? POST : I had my 6 year old daughter at the park earlier today, as there was a community event going on nearby and there would be a lot of kids for her to play with. It didn't take long before I noticed a huge teenager, I'm guessing 16-17, playing extremely rough with his siblings. Like almost sadistically rough, shoving them off the play equipment, slapping them as they came down slides, that sort of thing. Several parents were discussing it and multiple asked him to cool it and were ignored. I told my daughter to play with the kids away from him, and he was getting progressively more rough and his parents were nowhere in sight.

Eventually her and a small handful of children around her age and a couple of parents broke away from that group to play at a smaller jungle gym nearby. All was well until this guy and one of his brothers came over, and he tried to get his younger brother to encourage the other kids to "play fight." Myself and other parents told him off. For the next few minutes he climbed the outside of the jungle gym, ran up slides, threw swings over the bar and people were actively looking for his parents and some suggested calling the cops. I was about to call my daughter back over to leave, and told him he was "acting like an idiot". Apparently this set him off, because as my daughter was walking down the jungle gym stairs he slammed into her from behind with his hip as hard as he could and launched her off onto the ground and immediately goes "sorry, I'm an idiot." 

I ran over, smacked him in the face and immediately pulled my daughter up to safety and put her behind me. Again, my daughter is 6 and this kid was huge. I'm 5'8, 200lbs and he was a head taller than me and at least my weight and he checked my kid like a hockey player. Here's the kicker, his fucking parents had been 20 feet away this whole time and had outright ignored this behavior and didn't speak up when other parents asked around for them. The kid is sitting on the ground crying, saying I hit him and to call the police. Other parents advocated for me, and I swear to God this guy starts yelling at his son despite not giving a fuck five minutes prior, doesn't say a word about me hitting him, and rounds up his other kids. Doesn't call the cops, doesn't say shit. Other parents are checking in, making sure my daughter is ok.

I don't feel like I'm the asshole, but maybe I have a biased view and handled it poorly so I could use some perspective. Violence isn't usually my go-to, but seeing my child slam the ground that hard and someone that big standing over her set something off and I viewed him as an immediate threat to her safety, I just reacted to keep her safe and get her out of there. I hit him hard enough to floor him and clearly he wasn't "normal" for his age, so I maybe went a bit too hard.