Mum shouting at her child in the street

[cerys74]

I was just walking down the road with my DS (7m) asleep in his pram, when a young mum on the other side of the road suddenly screamed 'For fck's sake stop CRYING!!' at her (previously inaudible) child in a pram. The child started screaming and the mum shouted even more, using phrases like 'You're fing crying about nothing', 'You shit child' etc. They got a bit further up and the mum just went 'ARRGH' and shoved the pram towards a wall (not too hard, more in a 'get away from me' motion) and just stood there for a while.

I didn't know what to do. If I'd been on my own I might have gone over and offered to help calm the little kid down, except that I was a bit scared by all the shouting myself and didn't want to scare my son as well. In the end I just kept walking, but that felt like a terrible thing to do as well and just reminded me what an uncaring world we seem to live in, since she was clearly struggling and the child sounded unhappy too. It wasn't a busy street, so it wasn't like I could expect anyone else to butt in offer to help.

What would you do?

:( The answer is I don't know. But you might get a better response in Chat cerys. WWYD is like a deserted saloon.

I think I'd have done the same as yourself. With your own baby asleep, the offer of help may not have been taken in the spirit it was meant but may have been viewed as condescending.

Hopefully she got her head together by just standing still and probably taking a deep breath.

Thanks MardyBra, will try shifting it across.

SlightlyScrambled, I did think that myself! Going up to someone and saying 'Oh yes, my baby's asleep now but honestly, he cries loads' doesn't really sound that believeable, even though it's true... I hope she did manage to calm down, I just felt bad seeing another mum struggle and not feeling able to offer any help.

TBH - it would have depended whether she looked like she might smack me one or not. Let's hope she was just having a really really bad day and it's not the norm.