we're on holiday & were walking down the street when a little boy about 7 maybe ran out of a parked campervan across the road chased by what I assumed was his dad. Well the dad caught up with him and went pretty mental, shouting right in his face, making him put his arms flat by his side.
I thought he was going to shout at him about running across the road, but it was more along the lines of "YOUR MOTHER ASKED YOU TO HELP HER AND INSTEAD YOU DECIDED TO GET OFF! WHAT DID YOU DO!? SAY IT!" we were a bit taken aback. We don't have kids & aren't parenting experts so it's a bit hard to tell what is reasonable, also you don't know the context as the kid might have been being a right little shit for the last 7 hours.
Anyway they went back towards the van and we walked on, I thought it was dealt with, a bit unpleasant but done & dusted, anyway he started shouting again as we were a bit further down the road and then when we looked round he was smacking the kid, we couldn't see where as the kid was in the van and the dad was outside but it looked really hard. He did it about 4-5 times then stopped and we were a distance away by now.
We considered going back and trying to intervene but I really didn't know if that was right or would help, we are in a very remote rural area & last time we accidentally called the police (by accidentally setting off our accom's burglar alarm) they took 45 mins to come so police really wasn't a practical option.
What would people have done given the circumstances as set out as I now am questioning whether we did the right thing. Maybe someone that is that way inclined, even if we stopped it without getting assaulted ourselves, probably does it all the time if that's their approach to raising a child. I think he'll get his just deserts as as soon as the kid is old enough to think for himself he'll probably reject all the crap that was beaten into him but anyway what would people do?