A street performer’s quick-witted response after a child interfered with his routine is making waves online, with some questioning if he goes too far.

Street performer Daniel Zindler was balancing on a roller board on top of a large platform last week on Vancouver’s Robson Street plaza when a child ran out of the audience and tries to grab the precariously-placed cylinder.

Appearing not to see the darting child, the busker was seemingly caught off guard and fired back at the boy’s caregiver, yelling: “F**k man, be a parent, hey?”

He continued: "Dude, when you get down you better run. You’re young but you need to learn a lesson.”

The busker asked the child if he would apologize, and seemed satisfied that he did, but may have lost the audience’s sympathy by his final comment: "Some people should really use a condom. I'm sorry, that was deserved."

The Vancouver busker at the centre of the controversy says he doesn’t regret calling out the caregivers of the boy, saying he could have been seriously injured.

“A young child came up behind be that I didn't know, and attempted to pull the pipe out from underneath me,” Zindler told CTV Vancouver.

“If I was able to do it again would I swear? No. Would I make the same comments? Absolutely.”

Zindler says the parents' response to the whole incident angered him more than the child's.

"The parents sat with their kid and laughed. They thought it was funny. I understand how a kid might find that funny and not realize the harm that you can do to somebody by doing that, but I don’t understand how an adult, someone our age, could react that way," he said.

Alex Hillman, whose wife recorded the incident and posted it to YouTube, said he sympathizes with the performer, saying he could have been very injured.

“I certainly would have been upset myself,” he said, adding that the parent didn’t step in.

“What’s very strange is the parent didn't do anything about it, didn't stop the child during the incident and didn’t seem to discipline the child after the incident,” he said.

Family therapist Alyson Jones said she isn’t surprised by the parents’ lack of action, and says she sees more and more kids misbehaving without consequences.

“There's way too much protection, in some ways of kids or parents protecting their kids from the learning opportunities,” she said, adding that they’re missing out on a very teachable moment.

“It doesn’t have to be about punishing them, it has to be about them understanding that wasn't the right thing to do,” she said.

The YouTube video of the incident has been viewed more than 500,000 times.