When is it appropriate to intervene?

[ForeverAutumn]

About a year ago, a young family moved into the house next door. The parents are, in my estimation, in their late 20's. They have a 7-yr-old son and a 2.5-yr-old daughter. They seemed like a nice enough family. They were friendly, kind, pretty quiet, and the kids were polite. They even invited us over to share in their daughter's birthday cake last summer (an invitation which we declined).

If we had one complaint about them, it was that the father would go sit in their garage and smoke weed...a lot. But as long as they were quiet and respectful neighbours, it was their business and we didn't care.

About six months ago something changed. We're not sure exactly, but we think that Dad lost his job. Anyway, we started to hear him yelling at his son almost every night. This wasn't just yelling at a kid for doing something wrong, this was 20 minute rages of profanity. The kind of yelling that would have had me cowering in a corner.

I should mention that we live in a townhouse with thin walls, so it's not hard to hear what goes on in your neighbours homes.

Mom would occasionally apologize to us for the yelling. She explained that they were having "some behavoural issues" with their son. No freakin' kidding! If someone were treating me the way their son was being treated, I'd act out too!

Yesterday, the two parents really got into it with each other. Without going into too much detail, it sounded like it was getting physical. But not one sided...she was holding her own. She was trying to throw him out. He wouldn't leave. So then she threatened to leave with the kids and he was holding her back. I don't believe that he ever hit her. I only heard her ask him to let go of her. He said something about her punching him in the stomach. The 2.5-yr-old girl was crying and screaming so hard that my heart was breaking for her. The son escaped outside where he played ball-hockey by himself.

I've never heard the parents fight like that before. I've only heard Dad yell at the kids and Mom stand up to him to protect her kids. They argue about the usual household/family stuff, but nothing really major.

Anyway, twice during their fight, I picked up the phone to call the police. It was that bad. And twice I put the phone down not knowing whether it was the right thing to do.

I called my husband at work and his advice was to leave things alone and let them fight it out unless I thought that the kids were being hurt. A few minutes later, things quieted down and we haven't heard a peep from their house since.

I didn't sleep at all last night. All I could think about was these kids.

I know that this guy is verballing abusing his kids. And I know that verbal abuse can be as bad, or worse, than physical abuse. If I thought that he was hitting the kids, I wouldn't hesitate to call the cops. But should I call them about this verbal abuse? There's a part of me that just wants to give them the benefit of the doubt. That perhaps this young father is just overwhelmed and taking out his fear/anger/frustration on his family but that things will get better. That doesn't excuse his behavour, but could I make things worse if I intervened?

Because of the proximity of our homes, there's no way that I could involve the police without them knowing that it was me.

Does anyone have any sort of experience with this type of situation? It's really eating me up. I want to help these kids, but I'm just not sure how. Or, do I just let it go this time and only get involved if it happens again?