What will you do if you saw someone smacking their child on the street?

Nothing, unless it actually looked like the parent was going to cause the child serious harm.

Think "thank God, there are actually still some parents around who bother to discipline their kids".

Seriously? Smacking is the lazy way out of true discipline. I'd rather take a 'Supernanny' approach and actually have them question their own behaviour and why it was wrong (which children can do at 2!), have consequences but not ones that could end in physical injury. Most children are at their best behaved in a nursery, pre-school or school setting and obviously teachers and school staff never smack.

Smacking just isn't necessary and if someone was willing to smack their child in public what the hell are they doing in private? I think if I saw it I would just give them a shocked/disapproving glance, but then that depends on the circumstances and seriousness of the smack...if it was in my school I'd have to report it for safeguarding reasons.

This whole debate infuriates me, those who think that people who don't smack aren't enforcing discipline is not the case, it's those who have no discipline whatsoever or just smack without explanation who are letting their kids run riot. Some parents need showing how to parent and could do with watching Supernanny and Tanya's House of Tiny Tearaways or taking a few parenting classes.

aaaand on the other hand, a swift smack on the bottom that doesn't actually hurt the child isn't exactly child abuse.

different people have different parenting techniques.

supernanny's approach doesn't work for everybody. take it from somebody who has tried both the naughty step, and the reward chart, and neither have been terribly successful. every family is different.

Not a great deal - assuming reasonable force. Most people - irrespective of what they say here - would do nothing anyway, that's just the way it is. If I thought they were abusing the child I like to think I would act but it is all so situational.

And to all the other posters, wait until you have your own kids, or at least have the experienced of dealing with and taking care of difficult kids, then you could judge whether or not smacking the kids is abuse or teaching a sense of discipline

I always wonder if the people that feel the need to point this out are trying to subtly apologise for the fact that they themselves would be one of those willing to stand by as something bad happened.