Indignant in A Childhood Lost

My dad once took a whole day, with my little brother, to not treat me like shit.
They didn’t tell me what they were doing. It was a “secret” between them to see what would happen.
One whole day. Well, it was maybe 12 hours. A little less, I guess.
I remember distinctly the bewilderment I felt when I asked for something, and received it.
Now that sounds pretty mundane. There was no yelling, no screaming, no name calling, no disgusted looks, no physical threats or force or violence. And the lack of those things was surprising. I felt confused.
The feeling was one of disappointed expectation. Not that I liked the squabbling. It was just all I knew. And I didn’t know how to behave in it’s absence.
And, at the end of that day, my father- the grown man that he was- said to me, “we’ve been nice to you all day. And you weren’t nice to us. You’re mean and we’ve proven that you’ll always be mean no matter what.” And then he took my brother to get ice cream. He left me home.