A single saying, and the chapter's return to the contempt named at 30:11.
Quick answer
The most violent image in Proverbs, and it is a picture rather than a threat. The eye that looked down on a father and mother ends up in a field, unburied, being eaten by birds.
Read both lines
The saying is built on a single body part. The eye did the mocking, and the eye is what the birds take, which is the sort of exact match ancient sayings liked. But the picture underneath it is the part a modern reader misses. A corpse in the open with ravens on it is a body nobody came for. In this world, burial was what a family did, and to be left in a valley for the birds was the mark of someone who died with no one to claim them.
That is the logic, and it is not a punishment being announced. A person who treated his father and mother as beneath contempt is being shown the end of that road: no one left to bury him. Job's picture of the eagle ends the same way, on a rock, where the slain are. The saying answers the contempt with its own consequence rather than with a sentence.
Why translations differ
The phrase behind obedience is לִיקֲּהַת־אֵם, and the noun is rare enough that the versions vary between obedience, instruction, and the act of being obeyed. The direction is not in doubt, since something owed to the mother is plainly being treated with scorn, but the precise word is uncertain and the entry does not build on it.
What it does not mean
This is not a threat to hold over a child, and it is not addressed to anyone who has been hurt by a parent. Two guards, and both are needed.
It is not about children. The scene is a grown man's corpse, and the contempt described is settled and adult. Handing this verse to a child is using an image of a dead body to frighten someone the saying is not about.
And it is not about a person who has stepped back from a parent who harmed them. Mockery and scorn are what the verse names, and someone protecting themselves from abuse is doing neither. Where this verse is used to force a wounded adult back within reach of the person who wounded them, it is being used against everything it says, because the thing being condemned is a strong person's contempt for someone weaker, and that is exactly what the pressure would be.
Related: Proverbs 30:11 · Proverbs 20:20 · Job 39:27–30
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.