WTF: Unsupervised Children

What is up with young children that are seemingly unsupervised at a lake? Today, after naps, I took the kids to Cull Canyon. It was very empty by the time we arrived at 4 which was nice for us. There was a rowdy bunch of kids in the water jumping on each other, pushing each other on a raft and yelling things like "Oh My God!" and "Frickin' Raft!" They looked to range in age from 4 to 7. I told Parker to swim away from them if they came near since I didn't want him to end up trapped underneath the raft when he was practicing his much improved crawl stroke.

Elizabeth and Miranda started playing with the sand toys that I lugged with all the other crap from the car. Almost immediately, a little girl just a little bit older than the girls wearing a life vest of sorts started following Elizabeth who was carrying water from the lake to the small grass area in the watering can and then dumping it out. It seemed like the girl wanted to play too. Then she came over and asked for a watering can. I told her we only had two, but she could play with one until Miranda, who was doing something else at the time, wanted it back. Of course, Miranda, seeing this immediately wanted it back, but I told her she would have to wait. I hate it when people bring stuff to public areas and then don't share it so I was fine sharing the toys.

But then, an older boy came over and basically took it from her. Very quickly, the large group of rowdy boys had taken over and taken all of the sand toys. Literally. My kids were having a snack just watching them play with all their toys. They start running around, dumping water everywhere and running across our towels. So I moved our stuff over a bit to avoid the chaos. After a while, I told them all that we needed the toys back in 10 minutes. They asked me why, was I going to leave? I said no, but it would be time for the kids who brought the toys to play with them.

The entire time, there were no parents anywhere near by. No one came to see if the kids could play with the toys. No one came to see if I minded having water dumped on us. Oh, and let me add, there was no one else there, so we are sitting on this empty beach with these kids four feet away from us.

At one point, Elizabeth picked up a toy that one of them had thrown in the water. One of them immediately ran over and said, "Um, that's mine, we're playing with that." I said, "Actually, that is hers, she brought it and she can play with it."

Then, finally, a mother appeared and walked towards us with another kid. Did she check in with me? Did she remind them to be mindful of us? Nope. She introduced the new kid to everyone and then asked him if he wanted a bucket to play with. Jesus Christ.

Lucky for us, there was a swim break, where everyone has to leave the water and they were then closing the little area of beach we were at. I got up to start collecting the toys that were now strewn everywhere as the kids cleared away and the same mom showed up again. She said, "Thanks for letting them play with the toys. We were watching from over there laughing at how you must have been wondering why they were playing so close to you. Ha!"

Hilarious. Frickin' hilarious.