Reply #68: Taking the plate number down and calling would be an appropriate action

[Left Is Write]

Confronting the mother would probably NOT have been a good idea. If this is the sort of thing this mother would do to her child in public, I shudder to imagine the kind of retributions the child himself might have suffered later at home if the original poster had confronted the mother.

Reporting it to the authorities is pretty much all that could be done at that point.