"I'll report her to Child Protective Services and let the State take responsibility for her vermin."
See, this is part of the problem of why people won't discipline their kids in public. Some nosy busybody calling CPS on a woman who swats her out of control 5 year old. Some over-zealous caseworker could make an innocent mother's life miserable.
It's even worse than that - I was in a store and a five year old girl was throwing a fit because her mother wouldn't buy her a toy she wanted. I heard the little girl say, "If you don't buy me this I'm gonna call Detective Services"! - Even though she got the word wrong - it's a sad state of affairs when a five year old knows enough to threaten her mother with "detective services"!
I told the little girl to stop her screaming and told her how lucky she was that I wasn't her father. I then let the mother know what I thought about her doing nothing about her brat's ten minute screaming fit. The mother said - "I just can't control her". I told the mother - if you can't control her when she's five - what are you going to do when she's 13? I then turned to the little girl and told her that if she didn't stop screaming - I was going to pull her out of the shopping cart and paddle her little butt. She stopped. I told the mother - "See how easy it is?". The mother said "She doesn't stop when I threaten her". I replied - "That's because she knows you don't mean it - and she knows that I do!"
If some irresponsible parent allows their offspring to become a nuisance to me, I'll do whatever the law allows to remove that inconvenience from my presence.
If you have a problem with that, too bad.
My wife and I were talking with a security guard at the Medford shopping mall. Subject of children came up somehow and she said the if they saw a mother or dad spanking their children in the mall they were "under orders to hold them for the police for child abuse"