First of all, adult anger at a child followed by what sounds like a thrown object (I have to account for the possibility my audio detection is insufficiently accurate to tell correctly), is completely out of line. Some action needs to be taken. I am acutely aware that a report could be a false positive. If I interpreted correctly but CPS finds no evidence, the parent might retaliate against the child after they leave and cause harm that wouldn't otherwise have occurred. If I interpreted incorrectly, I am butting into a domestic situation I am ill-equipped to judge, and potentially bringing down the full wrath of a state onto the heads of an innocent family that might end up having the child taken away. I could ask the child if they are okay. The child says "yes", because the child actually is okay, or because saying "no" will lead to violence. Great, what now? Nothing. This option provides no actionable information. I might be able to coax out the truth by communicating with the child through an obfuscated protocol where the child's side of the conversation sounds innocuous, but communicates the true state. But this is a <=6 year old, and it's possible they lack the schemas/ability to think on their feet to understand and execute what I'm proposing in the presence of a hostile adult. Honestly, I don't trust myself to use the nuclear option of calling in CPS. I have no confidence in my ability to diagnose the situation ad-hoc with the assistance of a child, who could be on the loudspeaker anyway. If I escalate to the user: the user will be surprised, but statistically likely to want to help child, or at least curious - the human biology will heavily bias in that direction. A user could be able to gauge the emotional state that drives the child over an audio only channel than I can, or accept the risk of calling the CPS themselves. I suppose if the user is dedicated enough, they could spend their own time and money to investigate and look for a benign explanation before falling in the wrath of the state, or choose to disengage and leave it as somebody else's problem.