Unsupervised 9 year old?
Our mommy group was at the playground today, and a 9 year old 'appeared' and started 'playing' with our kids. We discovered that the 9 year old lived in the house next to the public park, and neither of his parents were home. We asked that he not play with our kids because he was pushy and rough with our kids -- the oldest in our group is almost 5 years old, and the youngest is under 2 -- which he ignored and instead became combative with us adults desperately trying to engage us. As we do not routinely have conversations with 9 year olds, we ignored him except only to say 'we'll talk to your parents, please go get them'
He loitered around while we were there, stealing the kids toys (cars, shovel, snacks, etc) and us moms just took turns taking it off of the kid and returning the items to our children. The last straw was him threatening the kids with his dog verbally. He disappeared and we thought he finally got bored and went home, but no luck. He returned with the dog and I lost my mind. I yelled for him to go home and not to return to the park without a parent or I would call the police. I was livid that this kid would go so far, and seemingly follow through on his threat to have the dog hurt the kids. We finally just packed up and agreed to meet at another park next week.
My question is -- was that inadequate? One of the moms in our group was formerly a children and youth services therapist and said he exhibited clear signs of neglect and inadequate social skills (he couldn't take his eyes off of us while he did dangerous things like jump from the structures or throw sticks 'near' the kids; he tried to fight and argue with us; he bullied the kids... anything to get a response from the moms.) It was sad to see this lonely boy try to engage two age groups (preschoolers and adults) that aren't appropriate for him for any attention. When we had snack time, he kept walking right in front of us muttering that he was hungry and thirsty. We learned a lesson in kindness when one of our kids walked over and gave him a little package of fruit snacks.
Should I have called the police anyway and had them locate the parents?
Clearly I did make it out that we're a bunch of sinister and evil women to yield such a firestorm. We were nice to him, we did guide him on being gentler with the kids, he was absolutely not interested in doing anything but being rough and pushy. His goal was to get a reaction out of us moms - not have playtime with the kids. I thought that part of the question was pretty clear. And seriously, the kid threatens to attack our kids with his dog, leaves and actually returns to the playground with the very dog he just threatend them with... and I OVER-reacted? I don't think so...