Are we a bunch of 'Karens" ? Too many foreigners in our midst ?

                                   With a school mate Faizal in Shenzhen recently.

This is the question I want to ask, in the wake of the incident whereby an enraged parent roughly pushed an old man to the ground when he merely patted the little girl's head. The old gent meant no harm, and he was the proprietor of the stall and had trouble walking as was shown by the CCTV video slowly making his way across the coffeeshop, and needed to hold on to the tables for balance.

When he walked by the little girl, all he did was pat her head, as is wont of many people of my era (above 50 years of age). First the mother got all protective and rushed to hug her 'baby', and then the father walked over, got all angry and shoved the old man to the ground.

True, the video only cut off at that juncture, but the father realized he overreacted, and helped the old man up and offered to buy him a drink.  

The fact of the issue that the father or the angry perpetrator was from Australia, had led me to question this basic behavior. Maybe in Australia, it is not 'on' to pat children on the head ? Or are the current crop of Singaporean parents too overprotective of their princes and princesses ?

Perhaps in many countries outside of Asia, it is rather rude or dangerous to touch children anywhere unless the adults happen to be kindergarten teachers, maids or trained child minders. 

So it begs the question, are there more and more foreign born people in our midst ? The sheer numbers of people of Asian origin who are here either as permanent residents, and natuzalised citizens are in the millions. The Singapore 'core' is fast shrinking as Singaporeans are reproducing themselves only 0.87 or less than 1 per Singaporean. Hence the need for immigrants, that we are fully aware of. 

A large percentage of them assimilate  into Singapore society and try to integrate. However, there is a significant minority who live and socialize in expatriate bubbles. Many different cultures coming and residing so close to each other, something will bound to happen and people with differences in child raising, social behavior and practices will always challenge the norm and incidents and misunderstandings like these will continue to happen.

What is the solution ?