At 7? He comes up to your shoulder at 7? Seven year olds are second graders, more or less, and I think that most of them don’t stand any taller than my waist, but it’s been a while since I’ve been around kids that age. Look, I’m short, but when I was younger and didn’t have a bad back, I regularly lifted and carried two 50 pound sacks of salt and trotted several hundred feet with them. I didn’t LIKE doing this, but it was part of my job, and I did it several times a day. With a kid I couldn’t pick up, I probably would have used the time tested method of grabbing him by the ear and twisting. I’ve done it before. I hope that I don’t have to do it again, but I will if I think that the kid is posing a danger to me, himself, or others.
I would have asked the parents to leave, at that point. Hell, my parents would have taken me home, swatted me on the butt, and sent me to my room for the rest of the night. They wouldn’t have tolerated that from me when I was at LEAST four. At seven I would have been grounded for a week.
I had ADHD as a kid, and even I wouldn’t have done anything like that, with the exception of my grandparents’ houses*.
*My paternal Gramma’s house was basically like Home 2.0. My grandfather had tons of cool books and other gadgets that me and my cousins liked to look at, or we’d play with my grandmother’s aprons and scarves.
A nitpick I guess, but 7 year olds are fairly tall. Mine is about 4’ 3" and unwieldy for me to carry unless I can get him up over my shoulder, and he’s not extraordinarily tall for his age (I think 60-70 percentile?). My wife probably couldn’t move him much at all unless it was a real emergency. “Picking him up and giving him to his parent” sounds more like a 4 year old type of thing to me.
But to contribute more directly, from having my own son that age I can say that 7 years old is definitely old enough to be expected to behave without a parent around. By this time they will be spending plenty of time at activities with other people who are not mom and dad (or even with minimal adult supervision), so if they can’t control themselves or handle being scolded for misbehaving they should be able to quickly apologize and refrain from doing it again.
We solve this problem by not making them share their stuff 
The corollary of this is, though, that our notion of what is “theirs” is highly restrictive. Most things in the house are “everyone’s”, including the bulk of the toys, meaning that there’s always something around for visitors to play with.
Anyway, back to the OP. Here’s how I see the stages going:
6 months: Anything you don’t want them to have needs to be wrested out of their grip and placed way out of reach. They will probably scream at you.
2-3 years: You can expect that some/most times if you say “don’t touch”, in a firm enough voice, they will stop touching. They may also scream at you. They may also try to touch again within 60 seconds. If you have to say “don’t touch” of more than a dozen or so things in a row, they will probably have a meltdown and all bets are off
4-5 years: Should obey a “don’t touch” order. May pull a “Mummy can you please go into the other room? (so I can touch the thing you told me not to touch)”. Need to be able to identify something in the room they can touch, or there may be trouble.
6+ : Start to be able to pre-empt the whole situation by asking off their own bat if they’re allowed to touch item XYZ. Should respect a “no”
The worst parenting decision that mother made, btw, was to let him ignore her when she told him not to do stuff. She’d even have been better off totally ignoring his behaviour and letting him do what the hell he likes than that (not that that would have been an exceptionally good choice either). Once you start telling a kid not to do something you’re basically committed to keeping going with that until they actually stop.
Where was his mom? She definitely should have been roping him in. Yeah 7 years old is way too old to not have more respect and self-control.
Otherwise, Aspidsitra above lines it out perfectly (if memory serves, mine are 30 and 18 now). 
Actually my son is 8, but yeah, he’s a second-grader, and yes, he comes up to my shoulder. OK, almost to my shoulder. He’s really tall for his age but still, none of the kids in his class are shorter than waist-level on me. My 3-year-old comes up to my waist, actually. I’m 5’7", for the record.
Anyway, as a previous poster said, picking a kid up and delivering him to the parents is something you’d do with a toddler. If I tried to pick up my 8-year-old that way, I’d have to do some kind of awkward fireman’s carry or kind of haul him in front of me like a shop mannequin, and it would be strange and weird.
I realize this is all just a huge nitpick. Sometimes when you’re not around kids of a certain age for a while, you forget what size they are. I think the way the OP handled it sounds fine. I probably would have gone with the time-tested “snap my fingers, point to the door, and say GET OUT NOW” method myself, but I am more of a verbal person.
Heh! This was my first strategy, actually, complete with my best non-nonsense sharp voice, patterned on the one perfected by my maternal grandmother, who’d been a schoolteacher… it utterly failed. Kid didn’t move. That’s the precise moment when I started wondering “Is it just me?” Any adult using that kind of voice on me when I was that age would have seen instant action!
Or you have a meltdown. Which, with someone else’s kid who you don’t feel comfortable disciplining is not necessarily a horrible strategy.
We have friends who have a nephew who was not terribly well parented. We spend a weekend with our friends, and they take their nephew. He was probably eight when this happened, but after two days of being insolent, I needed him to come with me (he wasn’t supposed to be alone and had followed me into the house - I wanted to leave the house and join everyone else outside) - and he wouldn’t. I lost it.
Frankly, I have two stages as a parent (I’m not necessarily a great one) - reasonable and patient and my patience has run out. My patience has run out is like Mr. Hyde coming to play.
And then there are the kids who pepper you with personal questions, like the 10 yo girl who comes over and asks who was I talking to on the phone, where is my husband, how much does this that or the other cost, or the inquisitive little boy who wants to wander in the garage asking about TTO, it’s all too much. These are the feral kids, suffering from lax supervision, no boundaries, at loose ends, craving attention.
We try to redirect their questions, telling them it is not polite to question adults, butat the same take an interest in their lives. But tread carefully or you’ll have a little friend over everyday.
I set off the alarm at the Victoria and Albert in London–when I was 14! I leaned on a case that I shouldn’t have leaned on. :o My mom still busts my chops about it.
Could you clarify what you mean by “it’s not polite to question adults?”
WAG: Don’t cross-examine an adult on their lives. It’s just lovely when you’ve got a nosy kid asking why you don’t have kids/why your husband works a blue collar job/how much money you make/etc. with their parent just beaming about how bright their little one is rather than making them stop being nosy.
I need to clarify, mobile & boundaries, as in, stay out of that room. Otherwise, most definitely, keep your little hands off my glasses/earrings and no hair pulling. That starts as soon as they’re old enough to reach for and grab. Sorry for the confusion. I really ought to not post at work 
Had my 7 yr old helped herself to entering rooms she had no business in, she’d have heard about it and stopped or been taken home. It was quite inconsiderate of the parents to let the behavior continue. I would have freaked at the child entering the basement and the parents would have had a piece of my mind (and there isn’t much left to share ;p )
Some never learn. I had a small college class and one of our instructors invited us over to her house for a potluck. Classmate proceeded to wander the house, including going upstairs and opening closed doors and picking up art pieces on shelves.
I Did Not Approve and told him so.
Question – have you ever been around this boy before, or was this the first time?
see post #11
:smack:
Sorry, I should have paid more attention.