Struggling to parent his 11-year-old daughter and infuriated when she refused to go to bed, a man grabbed her by the shoulders and repeatedly banged her head against a cupboard door.
Things reached "a fever pitch" that night; the man "just simply lost it", Judge Deidre Orchard said when sentencing him in Whangārei District Court this week.
But having heard the evidence in the case at an earlier judge-alone trial, she accepted the man was tired and overwrought. He had fortunately retained enough control not to pound the girl's head into the door full force.
Happily, the girl did not suffer any serious consequence though she had a headache the next day and was "obviously stressed by it all", the judge said.
The man also rubbed blood onto his daughter's face from a cut on his finger but that was much less serious than the rest of the offence, the judge said.