I’m really upset by something I saw on the way home from the school run this morning. I was on foot and quite late and I’d dropped my DS off. About three minutes down the road I saw a man getting out of his car with a little boy in the school uniform, maybe year one but not older than that, and I was looking at them and thinking they’d be late and wondering why they’d parked so far from the gate. The man started walking towards school and called the boy, who wandered in the other direction. When the man realised he ran back shouting at him, grabbed him by the arm, hauled him almost off his feet, hit him two very heavy whacks across the bum that lifted him onto his tiptoes and then dragged him past me, telling him off. The boy was crying and hitting at him. Obviously I didn’t take in much about their appearance or car until it was too late so I don’t know anything else about them but should I have said something? My DM used to slap me and I can’t bear to see children being physically disciplined. I thought the boy drifting off was his dad’s fault, and that possibly he had SEN because he seemed lost in his own world, so maybe it’s something they struggle with. I just found it very shocking and I feel I let the boy down by not saying something.
AIBU to intervene next time if I see them in the same situation again?