Violation of Playground Etiquette!

I took Lillianna and Mollie to the playground for a little while yesterday. My friend Cheryl and I were having a short visit while she was here from California. So Cheryl and I sat in the gazebo while the girls played. Lillianna and Mollie wanted to be pushed on the tire swing so after 5 requests from the girls I finally agreed to get up from my shaded, breezy seat and go push them.

There were very few people in the playground and we were the only ones in the gazebo so I left our 2 lunch packs and headed off to the tire swing. After about 5 or 10 minutes we were ready to leave since Cheryl had to get back to her sister's house. As we were walking toward the gazebo I saw a boy around 7 or 8 years old drinking from Lillianna's juice box! We had opened them but put them back in the lunch pack to keep them cold.

I yelled, "Hey!" The boy just looked at me. I asked, "What are you doing?" He said nothing. I continued, "Those are not your juice boxes. That is not the right thing to do!" The boy walked away.

I looked all over for some adult that might possibly be keeping an eye on him. No one was looking my way. I walked back to where we had been at the tire swing and there was a man and a woman talking by the regular swings. I said, "Excuse me. Do either of you belong to the boy in the red shirt?" The man in the swing said, "Ya, he's mine." I said, "Well he went into our lunch boxes and drank my daughter's juice box and her friend's juice box." The man said, "Oh....sorry." I said, "Ya, well when I told him it wasn't the right thing to do he didn't seem to care." The man said, "Well, he's..." and then he stopped abruptly. Maybe he was going to say he's a special needs child, maybe not.

Either way, for the boy's safety, this man should've been watching him closely. What if one of the girls had HIV or Hepatitis? They had already been drinking the juice prior to when the boy finished it! I think it's disgusting to have someone pick through our stuff but no harm was really done. I just find it rude that a child of that age would do such a think and a parent/guardian wouldn't be keeping a closer watch, especially if that child were a special needs child!

What do you think?