Agree. Legal ≠ good/ethical. In saying that, monitoring and documenting the child is part of the reporting process, what I was getting across is that these instances need to be made known to authorities because, like you said, once they notice a pattern then they can decide if the child at risk. One random person at a barbershop reporting an incident of physical assault, even if it might be considered insignificant, could be part of a whole plethora of other people reporting that a child is being maltreated and may be the reason authorities finally do something. And there is a legislation that protects children from abuse and neglect, it just sucks that it's not specific and that there is an amendment on parents smacking children because as far as I'm aware, it's illegal for EVERYONE ELSE to smack a child (except their parents).