I took DD(3) and DS(4mnth) out for a walk today and decided to do a tour of the local parks. After stoppng in town to get DD a drink and some long promised jelly beans we went to a small park near the river.
As we approached we were watched by two late-teenage girls in jeans and flimsy nest tops and two younget teenages in just t'shirts who had obviously been paddling in the river, all of them were playing on the equipment (bearing in mind the slide has all of 4 steps). I immeidatley felt uncomfortable and would have left it had not been for the fact DD was in the little play area.
Luckily there was a respectable looking lady sitting on the bench watching her two girls play and she made room for me and we struck up a conversation with me. The older girls left for a while and the lady told me she thought they were travlellers. Behind the park there is a picnic area with a couple of benches and she gestured towards this as it was full of people drinking for beer cans and swearing.
Our 3 daughters were playing nicely on the 4 pcs of play equipment - it's silly little park with modern designed play stuff half of which seems quite pointless. Then the older girls came back and were staring at us again and spitting, so the lady asked if I would be alright if she left and I said we would go as well. We parted as soon as we were out of the girls site.
I was really cross as the park is meant for young children yet these girls were intimidating to both me and the other mum and were generally making it hard for our little ones to play by going on the equipment, which they were much to big for.
Then I went to another park on the way home which was full of boys hitting each other with sticks and calling each other foul names. DD played on the roundabout and swings for a while, but then wanted to go on the slide.
I was fuming when one of the boys - about 10, grabbed her shoulder and hold her back so he could go first, then another climbed up the side of the steps to get ahead of her, clipping her head with his shoe as he did so. He then sat at the bottom legs facing upwards so she would shunt in to them when she went down. I asked him to move which he did, and DD seemed unpahsed and carried on playing while one of the boys older sisters - only about 12, rode round the slide on her mountain bike telling them to leave DD alnoe and not push in.
Another lady at she swings said to me how brave DD was to try the slide with 4 or 5 older boys generally crawling all over it. At one point one even stood at the bottom and hit the rest with a stick as they come down. Not that he did it to DD, but I would not have been surpirsed if he had.
Unlike the first park I dont mind these boys playing there, they're nearly always at this park, and they're not teenagers they're just letting off steam I gues after first day back to school. But normaly there is an adult with them so they behave, but today I felt like DD was under real threat and if we had stayed any longer I am sure she would have been pushed down the slide or something.
Am I just a wimp when it comes to potentially confrontational situations.