Man asks if he was wrong to snap at kid for honking car horn while alone in the car.

Kids can be annoying AF, and sometimes it takes a childless hero to teach them how to behave.A Reddit user asked the people of the "Am I the A**hole?" community to help him figure out if he was, in fact, the a-hole in a recent situation.The man in question was in a supermarket parking lot when he heard a car horn going off over and over again.He looked around and realized that the source of the noise was a kid who looked about 10 years old, holding his mom's keys and hitting the remote lock over and over so that the car would keep beeping.The kid kept going despite being very lightly scolded by his mom, and he even kept it up when he got inside the store: Deep breaths. Surely he’ll stop after 3-4 clicks. Nope. His mom lightly swats him on the arm and tells him to stop. They enter the little vestibule, where the carts live, just ahead of me. The kid’s still clicking the fob, the horn’s still honking. Mom swats his arm again. He grins at her sheepishly. They go straight inside, I stop to grab a cart. Horn keeps honking. I walk in, they’re in line at the Starbucks just inside the door. Kid is still clicking, horn is still honking. By now, it’s obvious the kid knows exactly what he’s doing, mom knows what he’s doing, they both know it’s not cool, but neither of them give a shit, apparently. Finally, the man had enough. He snapped at the kid. So as I’m walking by, I say, “Hey!” Loud enough to get the kid’s attention. He turns and looks at me wide-eyed. I tell him, calmly, “You know, that’s incredibly annoying to everyone around you. Next time you should try and have some manners.” He doesn’t say anything, just continues to stare at me. I move on, grab some tomatoes, and head to the deli. But the story's not over yet. The mom found him and threatened to press charges if he ever yelled at her kid again.Yes, seriously: A few minutes later, mom marches up as I’m ordering deli stuff, wags her finger at me, and says, “Don’t you ever speak to my kid like that again.” Me (matter-of-factly): Hopefully, I’ll never see your kid again. Mom: Don’t you ever speak to my child like that again. Me: Maybe next time you should just take the keys away from him. Mom starts going on about how she had to leave her kid alone by Starbucks to come tell me off. Or something. TBH, I wasn’t really listening. She wasn’t making much sense, and I didn’t really care enough to try and follow along, so I just stayed quiet and waited for her to finish. Being confronted for scolding her kid was a risk I accepted, so I let her say her piece. She ended her rant with, “Don’t you ever talk to my kid like that again. If you do, I’ll have you brought up for assault,” and promptly turned and walked off. I don’t think confronting me was quite as satisfying in reality in as it was in her head. So who's the a-hole in this situation: the guy? The kid? The mom? All three? Or none of the above?The people of Reddit have spoken: the man is definitely not the a-hole."If he was 5 it would be a different story," wrote GingerFire29. "Sometimes kids need a shake up from a stranger to realize that their actions impact people beyond themselves and their immediate family."EmoMoMimi pointed out that the man could've phrased it a little better: "should something like this come up again maybe phrasing it a little bit differently. 'Listen to your mother' might go over a little better."kai7yak agreed: I despise the modern mentality of "don't say a word if it isn't your kid". I'm not advocating for people to yell at strange children, discipline them, be nasty or sarcastic, or anything like that - but a quick "knock it off" is absolutely appropriate and I wish it were done more often. When I was a kid - having a random parent/adult tell me to stop doing something was extremely effective. As a parent - I appreciated it a ton when random parents (on the playground for example) would tell my son to wait his turn or not climb up the slide. It worked so much better than me saying the same thing 30 times to him. OP - That being said, I think just the first sentence was fine. "Hey. That's incredibly annoying." Your second sentence of " get some manners" puts you right on the line of going to far and AH territory. thinkevolution agreed that a softer touch might have been warranted: You were annoyed and took a risk, knowing it would likely lead to the wrath of mama bear. We all know in our minds that scolding another person's kid is typically not accepted widely in our society. So you did what you did, knowing that it'd likely lead to repercussions. Mom let her son first disobey her and then continue to do it, to the point you commented. She then chased you at the deli to yell at you - citing leaving a child alone to do so - ummm, society also thinks she sucks now for doing that... IMO - the only thing you could have done differently is said something like "excuse me, did you know your horn is going off?" I'd have said it to the mom and then pointed out "Oh, I think it's because your son keeps hitting the button. It's pretty loud, you may want to stop him!" So it turns out this is one of those rare instances when a kid deserves a little input from a stranger.