That would be my mom's too! Mind you what she would do when we were little was go over to the neighbors house which was sometimes a row away(we lived in townhomes)call our phone number, my dad would pick up the phone, leave it near our rooms so they could periodically listen to us if we got up in the middle of the night! Can you imagine. It was I guess in place of what we use baby monitors now for. We must have been like 5years old and my sister was 3!
If my MIL watched our kids I think my mom might have been jealous and maybe that's why your mom's reaction was that way. Is she jealous that she's not watching her?
I don't know if you remember or not that parent in some state that was video taped by some kind of survailence device beating and punching the crap out of her child while he/she was in a car seat in a parking lot of some store? Now that's abuse in my book and THAT needs to be reported.
I'll never forget the time I smacked my youngest on the behind cause he was acting up so bad in a Home Depot and after I did it I thought OMG if this is on tape, someone is gonna report me. I was a wreck thinking about it. People are so unreal sometimes. I believe in a spanking and if I want to spank my child in public for misbehaving then I should be able to without reprocussions!
I can say though that I honestly did not start leaving my kids in the car alone while I paid for gas or whatever until recently. They are 11 and 8 now. My husband was real funny about it so we NEVER left them in the car alone. I then never attempted it for fear that God forbid they were ever taken, I'd never hear the end of it from him