Honoring parents when a parent acts like a child

 A young seminary student once came to me for advice dealing with her father. He was a very successful man in his field of work but was constantly under high pressure. When he came home after work he would angrily yell and scream. Her problem was she could not respect him because of this behavior and she felt this was wrong because she had a Torah obligation to respect him. I asked her what would happen if she would hug and kiss him when he lost it? She said he would stop yelling and be nice. I asked her so why don’t you do that? She said the issue was that she was the child and he was the adult. I told her that at some point most children need to act as the adult when dealing with parents and that if this solved the problem that was the way she needed to show respect and honor.