Children’s role play village expected you to spend last 15 mins of session tidying up

[L3tti316]

Now I’ve only ever been to one other role play village and this didn’t happen so unsure if it’s the norm or not? But we paid for an hour and a half session and after an hour and 15 minutes they, and this is no exaggeration, blasted a tidy up song and parents and children I’m assuming felt obliged to stop playing and to tidy up. The man who owned it (I think) started tidying up and putting things back too.

I don’t know if it’s just me but I really feel like those extra 15 minutes should be spent playing and not tidying, especially as we’ve already paid for an allocated ‘play’ session. I understand teaching kids to tidy up but we do this at home, we go to these places to have fun. My youngest didn’t understand why the trike he was going up and down on kept getting removed and my eldest has autism and was getting upset at children/parents removing everything he was trying to play with.

He’s very good at being told ‘let’s get our shoes on and go to the car’ he will immediately stop and do so but he does not understand why things are being removed and why everybody is suddenly running around like headless chickens.

I kind of walked out thinking well that was all a bit weird. There’s no right or wrong answer really but I’m just wondering if anybody else has encountered this before as I hadn’t?

I donr get why he couldnt handle it unless younever go to a toddler group?
Just say the music means its nearly time to leave so everyone is tidyimg up.
Im not sure about tidying with such a cost but its actually more common - school, nursery etc etc to tidy up afterwards.

Yeah definitely will be from now on, the one the other day we went to was relatively new and we just wanted to check it out.

15 minutes is excessive. It shouldn't take more than 5-7 minutes usually. There's no obligation to go if you don't consider the fee to be good value for money for 75 mins play plus 15 mins tidying though. Vote with your feet and they may shift the play-to-tidying ratio to be more competitive. However it's totally reasonable for kids to learn that the tidying up afterwards is an intrinsic part of the fun.

Do you understand ASD? He has a delay in his receptive language which means he does not understand half of what is being said to him. If only I could ‘just say the music means it’s time to tidy up’ oh if only it were that simple.

Where we went wasn’t school though, we went and paid for a fun day out.

My son is similar daughter also mon verbal but likes helping. Because he used to see his big sister doing it he wanted to add well. He absolutely idolises his sister. She can be a bossy boots. But sometimes he won't do something for me like sitting down while we have a brew. All she does is grab his hand and leads him to the sofa and he sits.

This is really sweet. They both sound like lovely children!

Whilst I’m sympathetic - I don’t think anyone’s told your child off for not tidying or limited his 1.5 hours of play because he didn’t tidy up the last 15 mins?

The owner put music on singing about tidying up, the owner started tidying up and other families did. You weren’t obliged, other than by societal pressure, to force your kid to reduce play for those 15 minutes. My son would often play with something none messy and I would leave him whilst I helped tidy up.

It’s hard but part of parenting children with SEN is understanding life is more challenging for them and for us. For neurotypical children, 15 minutes and play and packing away is still fun - and important life skills.

how or what should they have done more to accommodate the disability than do what they did? If they had told him off for playing in that time - or told you off for not helping pack I would complain.

At worst you paid 20% more than you expected for an unknown activity as you feel you lost that time. At least you’ve not committed to a block booking of sessions.

As I said above my kids both have ASD and from one of their regular playgroups we learnt a tidy up song and it helped to play it at home as a reminder to tidy up before dinner

Really pleased that you’ve been able to achieve this with your children, as you know what ASD is like you will know it doesn’t look and present in the same way for all! 😊

I'd leave as the tidying song started playing! The owner should be having a break in between sessions to give him time to tidy up, you're paying to play not tidy otherwise you might as well stay home!

Erm i should think i do as i also have asd child. (Though actually speech was very advanced).
You cant assume just because someone disagrees they dont understand.

I would still say it to the child even if they dont understand/have speech delay. Probably as simply as possible.
So yes i get that the kid wont copy other kid's automatically or follow cues or may actively avoid.
But it doesnt change that the child wont be surprised at suddenly having to tidy up.
So imo its just an ordinary day occurrance, end of session, tidy.
Its not even about asd as majority of kids dont loke tidying and may continue playing at toddler groups with toys disappearing around them, certainly younger kids.
Its a transition and in some ways tidying etc makes it more gentle transition than right times up leave immediately.
15 mins does seem excessive though. If necessary i would just leave a few min early.
Frankly ive had to leave places with much worse scenarios. (The time dc1 slapped me in the face but we were locked in the forest school area so i couldnt just take her home. Or the time she didnt like being told off by me for something and ran up to a boy at toddler group and yanked his hair really hard. )
Generally the kids dont like stopping playing with their toy so its not directly the tidying thats the issue. But true that without staying to tidy it can be quicker to distract and move away home.

personally i would be taking a language delayed chold to toddler groups etc with 1-2-1 or 2-1 parent attention with different toys, different kids etc, songs and or storytime is obviously going to advance language.

The thing is, it would take one person a considerable amount of time to clean up the destruction of potentially 20+ toddlers. So yes, they could do it themselves, but then it would be a different business model as it would have to factor in the time taken between sessions to tidy up. So either shorter sessions for the same cost, or the same length sessions but a higher cost.

Your choice of wording didn’t sound very kind.. ‘I don’t get how he couldn’t handle it’ especially coming from a parent with an ASD child themselves, so that is why I assumed you perhaps didn’t understand how difficult it can be.

Honestly I know a part of my OP was that it upset my son but my main part was that the tidying was taken away from their playing. The fact I paid for 15 mins of an advertised play session and they weren’t allowed to play during those 15 minutes because all of the toys were taken away from them is what my post was mainly about.

It’s so great that all of these play groups and 1-2-1 groups help your child with additional needs but I know my son and I know they only cause upsets and meltdowns. What is great for one ASD child isn’t necessarily great for another. He visits his family, he goes to parks, soft plays, attends a mainstream school 5 days a week, we pay for private speech therapy, he’s doing enough.. it’s okay for me to want to take him to one role play village and want him to have fun, without it being something that needs to be done to advance his language. Can a child not just go somewhere for fun? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Fair enough. From your descriptions it sounded like he was maybe 3-4 etc.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Help's prepare them in a way. Instead of just right we're going now without a warning.

OP You still need to speak to them even when they are non verbal. Or they will never understand.

OP You still need to speak to them even when they are non verbal. Or they will never understand.

How patronising.

I'd wager you have little to no experience of ND children or you'd understand that some ND children just do not understand.

I can explain to my autistic son till I'm blue in the face that he must fun into the road - and have been doing so for all six years he's been alive - he still doesn't understand.

Thank you, I mean honestly.. as if I don’t speak to my son or try and help him understand. What a ridiculous comment, I wasn’t going to give it the time of day.

You think the OP doesn’t speak to her child?

Literally.

It’s like another commenter said.. I can speak to him ‘till I’m blue in the face about certain things and he still won’t get it. Some ASD children will unfortunately never get it and it sucks but that’s our life. We try and try every single day with him, I give that kid my absolute ALL and the way some people can STILL make ridiculous comments like ‘You just need to speak to him more’ is downright mind blowing honestly.

I also want to add that he isn’t non-verbal, he speaks A LOT. He just has very, very poor and delayed receptive language, and just to clarify, that means his understanding is extremely limited.

Google probably puts it better than I do..
”People with receptive language delay struggle to understand words and connect them with ideas. So they don't always “get” the meaning of what others are saying.”

Hope this helps.

I have a child with ASD who is the opposite, he has extremely good receptive language but is almost non verbal. Many people on this thread don’t seem to understand that all children with ASD are different, and face different challenges.

Yup. Someone once described it to me as being like a sound board in a recording studio.

You have 100 sliding keys, all controlling something different and for every single autistic kid those keys are set at different positions.

Trust me, if you don’t factor i tidy up time, a lot of parents just feck off at the end and leave it to the organisers to do. Particularly if their kid is ‘that child’ having a tantrum because it’s time to leave 🙄

Do you charge?
Because I don't do the dishes when I go to the pub and I'm failing to see how this is different.

If they did ask you to do the dishes they could charge less, though. So I guess it’s the same at the play centre… they could do all the cleaning themselves and charge more (or charge the same but a shorter session) or they could ask people to help tidy and keep costs lower.