That’s a false assumption to make.

Lots of times kids will do things in public they would never do in private because the know the public scrutiny will stay parental reprimand, more often than not. It doesn’t take them long to figure this out, even though they obviously lack the language or maturity to “know it" beyond a subconscious level.

He’s also still to young to realize that they’ll be back in private eventually and he will have to face the music, whatever that is.

They usually stop pulling those stunts as soon as they make the that connection that just because they forget what they did 5 minutes later, doesn’t mean Mom/Dad will. Plus, if you publicly embarrass your parental units, you can usually count on the reprimand being worse.