Physical punishments for a child this small is absolutely horrible! Although I heard and read about it, it didn’t really happen in any other story before the child could learn to speak properly, she’s that small...but what’s different is, she didn’t cry, decided to fight back in her own style. She wanted to hide it from her family, so she could fight and win on her own, but alas got busted. It’s not like her family doesn’t care, they must be deeply hurt and want to protect her, but they also respect her decision to lead her fight on her own, it could lead to her independence , also if she by some chance isn’t able to succeed, they do monitor the situation, as she doesn’t hide things from brother and mother anymore. There might be more measures taken by her family behind the scenes, that are shrouded from the protagonist, and hence not clearly/at all mentioned.