At our local Park on Sunday - I was with ds (4) and friends dd (8) we were the only ones there to begin with, then a boy (who had a strange stare like look about him) came towards me saying 'Hello, do you know me, I've got a knife' He was brandishing a knife (not a kitchen knife, a knife you'd eat your dinner with but still a knife)
I spoke to him and he told me he was 12 and goes to the local high school and that his Mum gave him the knife to cut weeds with.
He then charged off toward the other kids on the climbing frame waving this knife around. He looked very clumsy to me and I was frightened someone would get hurt. He would not give me this knife and became very angry when I told him it was dangerous. I wondered at this point if I should have wrestled it off him!
Then some other kids arrived who know this boy and they said he was actually only 8 and has special needs and his mum lets him do what ever he wants. Luckliy the other kids got the knife off him, bent it and put in in the bin. The boy went home crying.
My 4 year old found all of this rather intriguing, but I just think, jeez, wtf is a mother doing letting her son who has special needs play with a knife, and his house was a good 20 minute walk away from the park and he was alone.