I (34f) recently moved from Austria to England. My husband is English and we have two children, age 1 and 3. I am currently a stay at home mum with my youngest, my oldest one is in nursery. I'm still finding my way around the area, trying to get a feel for how things work around here.

I took my one year old who just started walking to the playground recently and shortly after, two young boys, maybe 8-10 years old, came into the playground with their bikes. First they started emptying the bins and kicked the trash around/spread it all over the playground. Then they started riding their bikes really fast, sometimes very close to my son. I kindly asked them to stop as the sign on the playground said no bikes and also it's dangerous as they could easily hurt my son. They laughed at me and kept riding their bikes even closer to him on purpose. I tried ignoring them but soon after, one of them spat into our direction. I picked up my son and headed towards the exit. On my way out I said to the kid who spat at us that this is not a very nice thing to do and I'm sure his parents would not approve of this kind of behaviour. He parroted what I just said and his friend yelled at me that I have no right to lecture his friend since he's autistic. They both called me names and I left without saying anything else. They followed me and my son home and stood outside the house for a few minutes before they eventually left. My husband said I should not have confronted them and just left immediately as soon as I saw them misbehaving.

A few weeks later, I was walking home from the shops with both my kids in the pushchair, my son napping. A car drove past us speeding so insanely fast my youngest woke up from the noise and started crying. I shouted "too fast!" (more so to myself) and shook my head in the direction of the car. A kid who rode past us on the sidewalk on his scooter yelled "oh is he going too fast for you, you cunt?" and traveled on laughing to himself. He couldn't have been older than twelve years as well.

Other than that, I have witnessed young kids, the majority of them boys aged 8-14 I'd say, throw rocks at windows, kick down newly planted trees, and scream curse words from the top of their lungs, joking (I hope) with their friends about carrying knives. My daughter got accidentally knocked over at the playground once by an older kid and he immediately said sorry and looked like he meant it, but his friends starting laughing and told her to get out of their way or they would do it again.

These incidents had me shaken quite badly, especially the first one. All of these kids were without parents, so I'm assuming they just get very bold when they're on their own or amongst friends, and they probably would not have acted like that if their parents had been with them. Also, most young kids in our playgroups, nursery, gym class etc. have been very polite and well behaved overall speaking, so I am aware that this is not an "all kids are like this nowadays"-situation.

Do you agree with my husband that I should just ignore situations like this in the future? I hate the idea of just accepting insults being hurled at me, especially infront of my young children. There seems to be a problem with young boys and men being disrespectful towards girls and women already, and ignoring the problem will not make it go away. At the same time I am genuinely scared things could escalate if I'm trying to talk sense into them.

I would like to add that we live in a nice neighbourhood and feel safe day to day, but statistically speaking the overall crime in the surrounding area is on the higher side compared to other parts of England.

Any ideas and thoughts on this would be appreciated, thank you.

(Posted from a throwaway account).