Would you ever intervene with mother scolding child?

[Gigwidow]

Busy seaside town late this afternoon, walking along seafront with young DD. Woman in front of us starts absolutely TEARING STRIPS off her son (probably about 11/12) she stopped in the middle of the pavement absolutely screaming at him “I’m going to seriously punish you when we get home”, “you have f*ck all Respect for me” “I’m going to punish you big time” ….going on and on, the poor lad looked really embarrassed and was trying to quietly pacify her, but this made her worse.

As we were slowly walking along, she kept overtaking us ranting, and stopping in the middle of the pavement to rant some more at the boy. The threats got more and more menacing- “I’m gonna punish you so bad, you’re seriously gonna regret this” on and on effing this and that, poor kid.

His misdemeanour? As far as I could tell he reached into her bag to get his water bottle without asking.

Not sure what happened in the end as they disappeared into a big group but my question is, would you ever intervene with a mother scolding her child? She wasn’t physically assaulting him but it was verging on verbal abuse and on face value, seemed completely out of line, but there could be more to the story? Would you have said/done something? If so, what?

I think if you're confident that the mother was being unreasonable you should say something. The issue is you have no idea of context. Maybe the kid is a brat and that incident was the last straw. I like @Pinkdhalia response

I have only intervened once. A lady had a child sitting in the shopping trolley. Not in the seat but in the actual trolley. The kid picked up tins from the trolley and was throwing them at people and the Mum just said oh don't do that X. After he'd thrown 3 or 4 times and one hit an older lady. I said you need to get that child out of the trolley and make him walk next to you. She said he'd run off. I said you should keep him in reigns if he can't walk nicely. You have to stop him throwing tins at people. She just pushed him off and he was laughing.

Honestly, not if it wasnt physical. You dont know whats been going on.

I was out with DD (7 at the time) and she started throwing the biggest fit ever for no reason at all. Well she had a reason, but she was wrong and when proved wrong she still insisted shes right..
Anyways, we were out in an unknown area and she has a habit of running off and hiding when upset. So i made her walk with me and held her hand and she proceeded to scratch my entire arm open in one swift motion just as we walked into the garden of a restaurant.
I was in pain and honestly so upset in that moment that i yelled at her that shes lucky theres so many people around cuz otherwise id smack her left and right, but now she has to wait til we get home 🙈
Ive never smacked her and obviously didnt back home.
But i think if someone at the restaurant intervened he would have got an earful of my rage too.

I was going to say exactly this, that if this is how the woman is in public then behind closed doors will only be the same at best, or alot worse. Sadly the son will probably grow up the same if this is all he’s known.

I don’t think this was verging on verbal
abuse, it WAS verbal abuse. It sickens me to
my stomach when I witness stuff like this.

If I was in the right, reactive mood I may have said something. But I don’t necessarily think it would improve the situation for anyone apart from making me feel better that I had called her out. Someone like that would probably tell an intervener to F off, or square up to them!

I've been in one similar situation. I was shocked so I only managed to look at the mother with my utter disgust death stare. It felt like I was giving her hate rays through my eyes 😂It worked, because the father's face turned red and ushered the nasty crazy woman to shut up.
As for the boy, I would have wanted to look at him in the eyes and smile warmingly, but he never rose his eyes from the ground. I still remember it and it was years ago 😔