That's men for you: Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's healthThe family group is sitting, eating ice cream on the terrace of the giant La Cañada shopping centre outside Marbella. Yours truly is in the bar above, drinking a beer and watching a family drama unfold.
The father is a giant of a guy, with a Tony Soprano build, minus the fat. The mother is no Carmella, though - she's a big girl too. And then there's the little girl, about three years of age and in one of those states that children of that age get into.
She wants the ice cream cone her father is eating. She doesn't want the one her mother is eating, or the tub of ice cream she's supposed to be eating. She wants the one he's eating. So, she screeches and stamps her feet. She hits her father with her little fists.
Her father turns her around and smacks her hard, twice, on the bottom. Needless to say, this makes her cry - believe me, if he smacked me, I'd be crying too.
But it doesn't stop her. She climbs up on her father's lap and does her crying there. She spurns all attempts by her parents to feed her her own ice cream. She is not for turning.
She continues to try to grab her father's ice cream. He lifts her and smacks her hard on the bottom again - one, two, three, four, five times.
Of course she is now crying even more. Her mother, who looks a little stressed out, doesn't react to any of this but concentrates on her ice cream and her cigarette.
The child continues to agitate. Finally, the father allows her a couple of mouthfuls of his ice cream. Now, she moves to her mother's lap. When the father has half-finished the cone, he hands it to the child who eats it until she gets fed up and hands it to her mother to get rid of.
She would now like to go home.
She stands in front of her father and gives him another couple of thumps. He raises the back of his hand to her but he doesn't hit her. It's a very big, very strong hand. She turns her back on him and stamps her feet defiantly. Instead of hitting her, he resumes smoking his cigarette.
When I glance down again, a few moments later, they have gone.
Well, what has the child learned?
It looks like she has learned, through a combination of earlier smackings and temperament, that if you're prepared to take your knocks, you can get what you want.
Does this valuable lesson justify her father hitting her? Of course not.
But isn't it interesting that this kid will, on the evidence of this little scene, power her way through obstacles as she grows up and in her adult life?
That suggests to me that in spite of the spanking - no, not because of it - this particular family is a healthy one, producing a child who can take on challenges in her world.
Of course, there are other families who use physical punishment and, indeed, psychological torment, to destroy their children. These are families that are dysfunctional and are ones that damage their children, with or without violence, though violence is usually part of the deal.
In my definition, I should explain, a dysfunctional family is one that denies some, or all, of its members their basic human needs, either deliberately or by neglect.
I have no reason to believe that the family I was observing is in any way dysfunctional, though I wish they would stop smacking the child - and I assume she gets harsher smackings at home than she does in public.
The thing is, you cannot ultimately make even small children give you 100 per cent obedience by punishing them.
There is something in human nature that stands up against coercion - an inherent need for control or power, or perhaps an instinctive contrariness.
And, whether he wants to admit it or not, the father of that resilient tot in Marbella knows it - after all, she got her way in the end.
Padraig O'Morain's blog is at www.justlikeaman.blogspot.com