"I looked across the street just in time to see/hear this woman saying to her son, “How fucking stupid can you be?”
Did you see if the kid might have tried to run out into the street without looking for cars first? I have seen young kids do that alot.
Sometimes a loud verbal warning finally gets the message through & sometimes not.
Here’s a suggestion that doesn’t appeal to me personally, but I’ve seen it work before: Befriend the mother, and once you have her trust, start bringing conversations around to child rearing. This should be easy, since you have children too. Instead of probing about her child rearing problems, complain about your children to her; act like you are totally stressed out about them, say things like, “sometimes you just want to knock them around, know what I mean?”
In other words, set a trap for her. Make her feel that she has found a soul mate to whom she can confess her dirty deeds safely. If you know how to set the stage properly, it will naturally follow that she thinks it safe to confide her own child abuse practices (if there are any) to you. She will probably jump at the chance to unload to someone who has proven that they are “trustworthy”. And, BAM, you’ve got a confession. Just so that there is no confustion later on, you could perhaps wear a little microphone in your cleavage, so you can get the confession on tape to play back to the authorities. Nifty, no? I believe on the internet this type of practice would be called trolling. I’m not sure what you would call it when done in person.
<Disclaimer: The above is not entirely risk-free. By “confessing” to non-existent child abuse on your part, you risk that she might call the authorities on you, thus creating a nasty instance of backfiring. Only you can decide how important your neighbor’s child’d well-being is to you. Good luck.>
Indygrrl,
I think that you are absolutely right to follow your instinct with this. Obviously, this isn’t a run of the mill case of a loud and bossy mom. Something about it has triggered your intuition that something is seriously wrong there.
There have been a few times in my life when I realized someone was mistreating a child, and one time this happened when I was a teenager. I became aware that my next door neighbor, a foster parent, was consistently mean to this one very thin little black girl who had some level of mental retardation. This child was sweet and timid and did not provoke the treatment she received from that lowlife foster mom. I didn’t know what to do about the situation, but I did interfere and save that kid from a few episodes of abuse. It is one of the biggest regrets of my life that I didn’t have sense enough to report her for abusing that kid. I didn’t see her physically abuse the child, but I did see her scream verbal abuse at this tiny shaking child. God, I hate the memory of that woman.
Incidentally, that same woman had a child that died in the bath tub years before I met her. I now believe that she abused her own child to death. I wish I had called the cops, social services, child protection, or whoever would listen, in order to get the kids away from her. Once I fully realized that I blew it by not reporting her, I resolved to never let another thing like that go by. If I see anyone abusing a kid, they are answering for it.
I think your neighbor, Large Marge, is abusing her kid at least verbally (hurts just as deep as physical abuse) and I think she needs some anger management and parenting classes. I don’t think the authorities will take her child away from one report.
She probably loves her kid, but is one of those jackasses in life who cannot control their temper. My nephew is 7, and I pictured him when I read your posts about the little guy outside, crying and that loud bitch screaming at him and cursing him. There is no excuse for that. Imagine the damage she is doing to him emotionally with all that. Nothing in life makes me madder than people mistreating children. My advice to you is don’t go nuts reporting people left and right, because sometimes a kid is better off at home with their imperfect parents, but, when you find your intuition telling you that this is abuse you are witnessing, serious abuse, don’t let it go unreported. You might be the one to save a kid’s life.