To have challenged teenagers at the park?

[KiteSirfer]

I was with my two dc aged 6 and 9 at the playground in the park this evening.

Three young teenage boys were kicking a football. I asked them to stop, or to move into the park rather than nearly hitting young children in the playground. They became quite mouthy, refusing to move. So when their ball almost hit my kids for the second time, I picked it up and put it in the bin, to prevent them keep nearly hitting young kids with it.

All three of them then started arguing with me, calling me crazy, swearing, claiming it was child abuse I'd put their ball in the bin. Of course they easily retrieved the ball from the bin, then kept arguing with me. I was quite calm, kept explaining why their behaviour was dangerous and why Id asked them to stop. They also filmed me without my permission but I didn't say anything 'wrong'. Eventually they calmed down and we parted company.

Aibu to have challenged them? I'm a bit concerned they filmed me in discussion and claimed 'child abuse' for putting their ball in the bin. I should probably have walked away. The level of disrespect they had for adults and other children was quite sad and astonishing, I don't know how teachers deal with this level of disrespect, their language and behaviour was awful.

Complete little shits from your update. Good job OP, hopefully they've learned that they can't always do what they want with no regard to others.

Unless it was a very tiny park and they were quite literally bouncing a ball off the head of toddlers then I think YABU to be honest. Teenagers need somewhere to go too. Unless they were being aggressive, sweary, damaging things etc I think I would have just left them to it.

Our park is used by a variety of people. Granted its quite a big open space but I don't think me and my dc are more entitled to use it than anyone else.

This. I have teens and they'd never behave this way.

YANBU to ask them to stop kicking the football but unfortunately with that mentality you won’t win. Also be careful in future as some of them carry knives.

Honestly? I really couldn’t be too bothered about kids playing with a ball in the playground. I’m sure your kids encounter worse daily in their school playground and they’ve survived that.

As for putting the ball in the bin? Sorry that’s utterly ridiculous. I’m not surprised they filmed you. It was just so silly and ott.

I'm with you OP.

They had a park to kick the ball around in, no need to do it in the little kids dedicated play area.

Also agree on the generation terms - they are just descriptors on the whole, with some broad stereotypes associated with them. I'm at the tail end of Generation X, just ahead of Millenials. Attitudinally I am probably reasonably close to the stereotypical Gen Xer.

Boomer does refer to the Baby Boom post war generation ( which you would be far too young for if you have young kids!!) - and the derivative term 'boomer' has been adopted into an insult to describe people with a strong sense of unearned entitlement based on unrecognized privileges.

Young teens and preteens are learning, and their peer acceptance is the biggest driver of their behaviour at that age. The part of the brain that deals with risk is also very under developed at that stage so sensible decisions are harder.

I'm laughing at the idea of filming them back. Mobile phones at dawn. I can just imagine them challenging each other, phones held aloft. It would make a good comedy sketch😅

Does no one else think Paperlate is one of the teenagers?

I can’t believe the little brats are being defended. Clearly anti-social behaviour and they should not have been kicking a ball in a children’s play area when there is grass adjacent for that.

It's a shame you chucked the ball in the bin.

It would have been much more effective to hold on to the ball (which would have meant that you had their attention) and then actually had a conversation with them

'Boys, the reason I'm asking you to go and play further away is because the ball might hit the younger children in the park and hurt them. I can see you are having a great game but I think it would be even better if you could just move over to that field over there. Otherwise I'm going to have to take my kids home and they will be really upset. Do you think you can do that? Brilliant, well done'

And then handed the ball back. I bet you anything they would have shuffled off to the other field.

Young teenagers are still kids with the added complication of raging hormones which are telling them to assert their independence from grownups. Yes they make poor choices when in large groups but that's where guidance from adults can be really powerful.

Throwing their ball in the bin is stopping to their level and you aren't a teenager, you are an adult who has passed that tricky phase. You should have been the bigger person.

Ifs a shame because you could really have made a difference but you chose to retaliate in a petty way

You absolutely did the right thing.

I'm a teacher and deal with this on a daily basis. These are the kids whose parents never come to parents evening or even interact much with their own kids! Some kids therefore have no idea about rules and boundaries as they just done get raised properly or taught to understand rules ans boundaries. The parents just expect the school to do all this.

Phones are banned at school for this very reason.

You lost the moral superiority when you took something that wasn't yours and put it in the bin.

Yes I do remember that to be honest and I get your point. They made (grainy) videos of them physically and verbally attacking their victim.

Still, not like it is today.

Agree with every word Holly.

Dd2 who (I would say this wouldn’t I but is universally seen as a lovely by other adults and teachers I’ve never had anything but positive feedback anyway and she’s always polite to us) was shouted at by a righteous young mother at the park the other day for sitting on a swing chatting to a pal. She came home quite upset. She said she of course got off the swing if anyone else wanted to use it and the park was largely empty of young ones. She’s 13 but looks much older. So this is skewing my opinion of this event!

I’m going to go against the grain here and suggest you were a tad unreasonable. Your kids aren’t tiny toddlers and you say this happened in the evening, so not peak playground time for littles. It sounds like they were being annoying and inconsiderate, but you also overreacted. If they’d hit one of your kids and they’d been really hurt I’d have told them to do one and be more careful, but your kids are going to be around other kids kicking balls at school. They might now think it’s reasonable to put the ball in the bin if it goes near them. I don’t think the kids or the school would agree.

Pretty sure the sign says under 12s and no ball games. I think its dangerous to have a football repeatedly kicked at head height, I was trying to prevent an injury.

When I asked what the boy would do if he hit a child, he said he'd run. Says it all about his level of accountability.

YANBU at all. Can’t believe people are justifying this behaviour just because they have teens too. Wrong is wrong.

OP was calm, the teens were rude. And why should she wait for her kids to get hurt first? Ridiculous.

More and more information with each post drips in as it goes along
I remember committing the crime of being a child in a park once aged about 11 and some interfering ancient (looking back probably about 40 but I was a kid, so ancient at the time) woman was adamant my brother and I were responsible for the park graffiti. She tried to give us a right bollocking, I was so polite at first and then I got really cross because she was wrong and accusatory. Horrible cow.
Anyway, nothing really happened OP, no kids were hurt and you exacerbated a situation of kids playing in a park in a way you didn't like.

For clarification again as well - there is big field/park next to the small playground which these boys could play football in. They weren't kicking to each other, they were kicking across the playground, hence the ball hitting equipment (and potentially kids) at head height.

I had also politely asked them not to and explained the risk of injuring others by them kicking the ball in the playground, it was when the ball nearly hit at head height a second time that I collected it and put in the bin. My polite chat with them clearly hadn't worked/maybe they enjoyed refusing to play in the field.

Where else can teenagers go these days? There’s absolutely nothing

There must be more to do than previous decades.

Play football in a club
Another sport
Bikes
Go to town
Play x box
Go swimming
Get the bus or train to the next town for a change of scenery

I don't think lack of youth clubs can be blamed for every incidence of teenagers being rude

Wow. When you read some of the pps on here defending the teenagers you realise why they behave like they do.

And I agree with a pp - all this "just you wait until your kids are teenagers bollocks. Many of us have managed to raise kids who have become decent teenagers - you know, the kind considerate type. Do not tar all teenagers with the same brush. We all know the type of kids that the OP is describing and to quote an old proverb- the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Honestly I think OP was being a wee bit precious, absolutely unreasonably and slightly unhinged. “Almost” and “potentially” hit isn’t the same as did hit. They’re subjective terms that could describe any kind of situation from a genuine near miss
to a manipulation of ‘the ball was in the vicinity’ to win MN AIBU voters round.

I also don’t see her response as calm as a pp suggested, it would have looked irrational and bonkers. There are ways to approach these situations and the more OP replies the more I can imagine her first interactions with the teens came after a series of loud sighs, tutting and eye rolling. There isn’t a teen on this planet (except perhaps those perfect few who belong to Linda and Karen on mumsnet) who wouldn’t take that as a challenge.

i wish OP well when her own kids hit their teens, she may be in for a shock.

I'm wondering what percentage of the teen-defenders are the parents of the feral wee cunts that have been fire raising for the last week around my way.

Play football in a club - that's quite a lot of commitment for kids who just wanted a traditional kickabout in the park. It's also money.

Another sport - again, money

Bikes - costs money, and will only promote different forms of complaint if MN is anything to go by (teens on bikes used park as a racetrack and nearly knocked over my children)

Go to town - easy if you live in a city with good public transport, but often unachievable if they're rural. Once they're there, people will complain about teenagers hanging around on street corners.

Play x box - have you seen the price of them lately - and teens are always being chastised for staying indoors playing games not doing something wholesome like playing football.

Go swimming - my nearest public pool is £8.25 for 16+ and £6.50 for 15 and under, and it's a bus ride on top to get there (£4). It's not affordable for everyone.

Get the bus or train to the next town for a change of scenery - see your "go to town" suggestion.

I don't want to live in a world where teenagers are told they can't play football in a park. Teenagers are never flush with cash, the parents may be skint too. Before 2010 / the latest Tory government we used to have things like free youth centres. There's fuck all now.

What brats.