The child or the mother?

I'm still not sure who should be hogtied here. Yesterday I went to the laundramat. I do that every week, but this week there was a mother with a young son...between 5 and 6 maybe. He had two hard plastic balls that he bounced on the hard concrete floor....continuously!!! Clack, clack, clack, clack,.....for about 10 minutes. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and said, please! stop! The child did - the mother laughed and said something to the child I couldn't here. He then went over and proceeded to bang the plastic balls against a metal pipe. I looked at her at this point and said, please, that is irritating and is giving me a headache. She laughed. I looked at the child and he stopped and went and sat by his mother. She again said something to him after which he threw one of the hard plastic balls, across the room toward me. It missed and rolled under the table. I looked over at her laughing and said, ma'm, this is not a playground and you need to not encourage him to act badly. She laughed and told her son to come with her they would move. Her wash was way at the other end of the laundry, but she was watching a talk show on the tv at the end I was at. Anyway, eventually, they came back and she told him to go get the ball. He refused so she came over and crawled under the table and took it. I said nothing and she didn't encourage him to act out after that either. Now, it seems to me that this child, while being aggravating did at least listen to an adult who asked him to stop, but his very immature mother found it amusing and kept egging him on. She did settle down when she realized her child was listening to me in the end and not her, but still.... if she is an example of what is parenting our children of today it helps me understand why children are so disrepectful of adults and act out in school the way they do. Their parents teach them well!