WWYD - witnessing potential child abuse in public?

[Lilwelshyrs]

Saturday - busy London cafe in the pouring rain. DH and I are sat outside under the canopy as there is nowhere to sit down inside. Next to us is a family - mum, dad ds and dd.
DH and I are chatting away when our attention is pulled to a small commotion to our right. I look round and the dad has grabbed his DS by what looks like his collar and is very aggressively telling him off for being silly in the rain. The boy has been lifted off the floor and looks very uncomfortable. He's approx 7/8 years old. Dad is saying things along the lines of "how many times do we have to tell you to stop it?". Mum just stands not looking.
Then DD sticks her leg out into a stream of water dropping down from the canopy. Dad flips and doesn't exactly shout, but instead goes right into her face and tells her off - not a simple "you don't do that - you will get wet and cold"... It was nasty. DS is crying.
My DH and I make a loud comment on how there is no need to be like that with children - we didn't intervene.
Then Mum walks away with DS and dad and DD are left in silence. DD is about 4 years old. When mum and DS come back, it's clear he's been crying. I hear him saying "dad really hurt me".
Dad sort of apologises but follows it with a "you deserved it" type of comment.

DH and I were in total shock as the family walked away.
That was Saturday afternoon and I have been wracking my brains with what I should have done.

Should I have done anything?
Things ive read say that I should alert authorities and keep the children in my sight whilst waiting for them to appear... Others say that you are supposed to say something. Frankly, I was scared of jumping in... Should I have done? I was in such shock at the time and I've never come across it in public before.

I have been on the recieving end of aggressive verbal abuse as a child - at the hands of my step father. Neither my dad or my mum stepped in out of fear. So I know what it's like.

What would you do?

sickntiredtoo I agree with you about shouting not being a hanging offence. What I saw years ago, and what I think OP was talking about was shouting combined with physical threat and a parent being very aggressive and in their child's face. And not in response to a life threatening situation like grabbing a child back from the road etc.

Tbh if the dad was really horribly abusive and regularly hurting the kid, the kids would be terrified of pushing his buttons, and probably would be behaving perfectly. I've not got children of my own but have worked with them and the only children I have know who have been abused are very withdrawn and terrified of doing the slightest thing wrong.

My dd used run off a lot in public. One time as she tried to make a dash for it I grabbed her pretty forcefully and accidentally banged her head against a wall. As I was also shouting at her at the time, I'm sure it looked pretty horrendous to the numerous bystanders who were staring at us! Not my finest moment, but not abuse.

Hats to say with out being there how bad it was op, but sounds more like crappy, end-of-the-tether parenting rather than systematic abuse. That doesn't make it pleasant, or even ok, but as pp have said, abuse is bandied about a lot on mn.

thats probably, and sadly true cats

Fairenuff so by your reasoning we woukd not shout at an adult or tell them off, so we should not do that to a child. Well most parents by this reasoning would be known to SS and their chikd placed on the at risk register. Yes dad was very rough, I don't agree with it. I can't see he you can lift a 7/8 year old up by tge collar, they are very heavy.

If the children were actually afraid of their father I'm sure they'd be on their best behaviour while out in public with him.

I think you witnessed some shitty stressed out parenting, not child abuse. I also think you should probably have kept quiet.

I had to check the ages of the DCs to make sure this wasn't about me

We had a BAD day on Saturday. Children may have been restrained and shouted at. Children were not hit and no one was abused though.

I hope kids dried out and their day improved from that point onwards. Parenting can be bloody hard work.

Which type of abuse would you say it was then OP? Whilst I agree it would be unpleasant to witness, I don't think it's right to use the term abuse. I'm ashamed to say I've lost my rag in a similar way with DD (probably twice in 9 years), but I wouldn't class myself as a child abuser.

London, in the rain with 2 misbehaving kids? I'm not surprised his temper was a bit frayed.

Each to their own i guess and there is perhaps not enough evidence to say this is abuse. I know something though: you'd have to shoot me before i started treating my own child like that. If your parenting techniques involve reducing your child to tears by aggressively man handling them, then i suggest something has gone seriously wrong somewhere along the line. And please dont give me that nonsense about them "having a bad day." Not even remotely an excuse.

When i see things like this i often wonder whether these parents actually like kids and also why they had them in the first place.

Agree that children who are terrified by an abusive father generally do not push buttons, and the fact that Mum appeared to take the boy away, possibly to calm the situation, and that Dad "sort of apologised" doesn't suggest an ongoing abusive situation to me.

Impossible to say for certain from a snapshot.... who knows the backstory, maybe Dad is about to lose his job, and has a parent in hospital and this was just the straw that broke the proverbial.

Of course in an ideal world no one would ever behave like that towards their children regardless but real life is often a different story.

lilwelshyrs my childhood was a lot like what you've just described (mum not dad) and according tomy counsellor it was NOT a normal childhood. Routine overreaction to poor behaviour from child, rest of family not getting involved, justification along the lines of 'you asked for it' from parent, sad-looking kids and other parent. It may not be considered physical abuse but if that is the normal life for those poor kids then I feel sorry for them and they will be emotionally affected. And I say that as someone with kids.

Having said that, I don't think you could have done anything. Poor kids.

YABU

If you'd seen me with my 6YO DD in Aldi on Saturday you'd have been shocked - after telling her at least 6 times not to swing herself under the trolley and lie down on the metal bit under the trolley itself (risking hair and or digits/limbs being caught in the wheels) I put my hands under her armpits and pulled her out, knelt down in front of her and told her off with what was probably quite a raised voice. My temper was most definitely frayed but my motivation was to keep her safe. By the time I got home with her I felt like crying.

What you most probably witnessed is 2 parents at the end of their tether trying their hardest to control their children, and your passive aggressive comment probably just made the situation all the more worse.

I think your past experiences with your Stepfather is making you hypercritical.

Oh, and the getting in the girls face for a good thorough telling off. At age 4. Lovely.

There was a thread a while ago where the Dad grabbed his son round the neck and all the posters were urging the OP to leave him and call the authorities - it got really heated. This sounds almost as bad to me, grabbing round the collar is a really aggressive gesture isn't it? Especially for a big man to do to a small child.and in public.

I don't think there is much you can do other than say to the parents "are you OK? You seem very angry?"

I intervened at a swimming pool once where a Dad was screaming, literally screaming in his sons face, they were in the changing room cubicles and you could hear it from the pool. Everyone was sort of fgrozen. I shouted "please stop screaming at your child like that or I will call the police"
They were really aggressive back and not one of the 50 or so people around helped me, including the leisure centre staff who looked really scared. The boy was about 6. I don't know if I helped him or the opposite to be honest. I didn't know what to do. They left quickly though.

Good on you nancy.

YABVU. I take it your parenting is always perfect OP?

A stressed father shouted at his misbehaving kids (later apologised) and you think that's abuse? Granted it's not great parenting but it certainly not abuse. I bet your shitty, PA comment didn't help the situation either and if you'd have said that to me I'd have given you a right earful.

I physically can't see how the man would have picked a 7 year old up by the collar unless he was actually throttling him?

Is it bad parenting? Yes, absolutely. I don't think anyone is defending it.

Is it child abuse? No, there's not enough evidence to suggest that. You might just have caught the family on a really stressful day. You have no idea what their situation is, or what they were going through at the time. Maybe they just suffered a bereavement or some other piece of bad news. Maybe this was the seventeenth time that the boy had misbehaved that day.... maybe, maybe.

I think the suggestion of asking the parents if they were OK - in a genuinely sympathetic kind of a way ('God, kids can be nightmares sometimes can't they?! Are you guys OK?') - might have worked better, but obviously not having been there, it's hard to tell!

I work with kids who have been victims of abuse and have a lot of contact with police and social care services through my work. To be honest, there is very little you can do in that situation. If you were to ring social services they wouldn't be able rush straight round to the café there and then to intervene based on the word of a passer-by. You don't know the family's name or address, how are the authorities supposed to identify them? Things have to be properly investigated and processes followed and in my experience it is rare for SS to take action unless they actually have a disclosure of abuse from the child themselves or several reports from different sources (school, neighbours,family members) indicating a pattern of behaviour, everything else is classed as hearsay.

I understand that what you saw was unpleasant and it must have been horrible seeing the child distressed and feeling powerless to stop it. However, I would caution against "commenting loudly" or otherwise antagonising the parent in such circumstances when you don't know their circumstances. If they are indeed abusive then winding them up may just anger them further and they may take it out on the child when they get home.

Dont get how people are minimising this. He man handled the kid and pulled him up by the collar until he cried ffs. Horrible bullying bastard. I can only assume mumsnetter's making "having a bad day" excuses have husbands who treat their own children similar.

Not ideal parenting, by any stretch of the imagination, no. But for Heavens sake, which "authorities" did you think were going to appear on a Saturday afternoon on the back of a phone call?

As for the "if this is what they're like in public, what are they like at home" type comments - I'm far more stressed out by my Dc's poor behaviour in public than I ever am at home. At home, I have various effective strategies to calmly discipline - sent to rooms to reflect, tv off for a while, even ignoring if appropriate. But, in public, under the critical stare of judgemental strangers?

I sometimes see shitty stressed out parenting (in non life threatening situations)- with parents shouting / screaming swearwords in child's face / pulling at kids / yanking them etc
It is not 'abuse' in the classic sense but it is certainly wrong if that child is left scared / humiliated.

I DONT ignore it, but I DONT confront the parent either (as I fear they will either go even more nuclear / take it out on child later / thump me).

I usually try to say something sympathetic to angry parent about the stresses of parenting (which if you do it softly with a smile can sometimes take the heat out of the situation). If the parent is at an 'end of the tether moment' and you sympathise, then them feeling 'heard' in that situation can help.
I then smile at the child and interact with THEM. I want to let them know another adult is there and feeling kindly towards them (even if they have been behaving like little devils!). I talk to them for a minute or two about their reality.

It doesn't always work. I remember a woman literally dragging her sobbing 2 year old along the edge of an A busy road whilst calling him a little shit / bastard / cunt etc. I spoke kindly to her (offered to help etc) and she was incandescent. I was worried I had made it worse so I called the Police to ask for advice. They were not interested.
It IS hard. I have thought about that child many times since.

DH has lifted DC 'by their collar' - both in anger and in jest. There's a knack to doing it safely - you kind of scrunch the back of the shirt in your hands so it goes taut around the child's torso. When you lift - the child is effectively harnessed. You need big Dad hands to do it but it is really no more dangerous or painful than lifting by holding under the armpits.

Lilwelshyrs - how many children have you got?