Whyyyyyy don't parents supervise their kids at soft play?!

[Notmycircusnotmyotter]

It's the holidays so another of these threads. Took my 2 and 4 year old to a soft play today. All fun and games until kids start getting hurt by children that are either too big or need supervising.

If you have a child that is totally fine playing without supervision - great! This isn't aimed at you.

If your kid is unruly - keep an eye on them FFS.

I've seen so many little ones (2-4ish) flattened or pushed around roughly by big kids today. Parents nowhere to be seen. including a young boy with autism (he was wearing a lanyard saying as much) who was in the baby bit hurting them - not intentionally but jumping about and landing on really small kids, clearly hurting them. Not his fault but again, no parent in sight.

Is it that hard to look after your kids?

Yanbu. I was at the park today and a woman and her daughter arrived; daughter must have been 5. We were there for 45 minutes and not once did the mum look up from her phone, to the point her daughter left the park and she had no idea!

Not sure what kind of 2 year old you had, but mine is quite capable of playing in a soft play without getting confused. She easily climbed the stairs made it through all the obstacles to get to the slides and did time after time without any problems.
there was a little boy in the baby section 5 days older than her who was being played with like a baby tho 🤷🏻‍♀️ so maybe mine is very forward and advanced

I couldn't agree more with this. It really worries me that people think children should have absolutely no opportunity for unsupervised play. It's really bad for their development. Yes, they may sometimes have conflict with another child - that's part of the learning. I don't know how they're ever supposed to do that if parents are hovering ready to intervene constantly.

We were at soft play yesterday.

Two mums next to us generally ignoring their kids. Kids then came to table and took socks off. 'OK poppets ' the mums said. My eye starts twitching as its against the rules and unhygienic.
Poppets then start running up the slide the wrong way generally causing carnage. Mums sat right by slide.
Soft play staff come and tell kids and mums not to run up slide and to put socks on.
Poppet 1 (5/6yo) has a tantrum, lots of crying. Mum 1 says 'if it was up to me u could run round with no socks on and up the slide but the lady says no'.
I just can't believe they are allowing their children to thjnk that the rules dont apply to them. And when they were told by staff the mums made it look like the staff were the bad guys.
Mum later was loudly complaining that Poppet 1 had put all their shoes in the bath and turned on the taps the night before.
I wonder if she blamed the soft play staff for that!

i have 5 year old twins and a 10 year old - I can’t get in soft play with them so yes I’m bloody going to sit and have a coffee and have 5 mins to actually have a hot drink by myself! All those twisty bits when you climb up a level - great performance holier than though parenting if you do that but most normal parents don’t go to soft play to then put their back out crawling around in it and actually the parents helicopter parenting are more of a nuisance in the tight spaces. They also tend to be the “one and done” types I’ve found.

it does annoy me when the clearly too old for soft play older siblings are in there though and it should be more closely policed about age and height of kids who should be in there

🙄 yes perhaps your child is particularly advanced. Perhaps it was a smaller soft play than some of the ones I’ve been to. I’ve definitely taken my child when she was 3/4 and there were bits she physically struggled with, the giant step type things (don’t know how to explain but it basically involves climbing upwards vertically) she just wasn’t tall enough to do without a push from an adult. And she’d say ‘mummy I want to go on that slide/that bit over there’ but it was a bit of a maze and she couldn’t work out how to get there. Frankly I’ve been in some 3/4 storey ones where I couldn’t work it out that easily either.

Anyway, when you send kids in to the main play frame unattended it’s a bit law of the jungle. They often have signs advising 3+ or even 5+. Other children will also be unattended and won’t always behave perfectly and if you’re not happy with that you need to keep them in the age appropriate bit or go around with them. Older toddlers going down stairs on their bum is not bad behaviour or unkind behaviour it’s exactly what soft play is designed for.

YANBU this drives me nuts too - especially when unsupervised older children end up in the separate space designed for under 2s. My 15 month old DD ends up half trampled on whilst parents are nowhere to be seen... some responsibility also falls to staff who turn a blind eye and I have told them as much!

I've just came on here to have same rant ha! Clocked a wee one (maybe 2?) wandering around crying looking for Daddy. Two minutes go by, three... I'm getting increasingly anxious and dying to jump up and take his hand! I know it's not long but must seem like an eternity for a little kid. Finally work out which dad he belongs to... The one with his nose in a book, not paying one ounce of attention!

I'm heavily pregnant so my husband has been doing a lot of running about so I've then tried to give him a break by taking our son to the bit for the younger ones. It's an absolute free for all with too old kids and I'm the only one trying to police it and make sure they're all happy/nobody being too rough (while avoiding ball pool balls being thrown at my stomach ha!). I often end up entertaining other people's kids.

I’m a parent to a 2 year old and I can’t understand why people leave young kids (4 and under imo) unsupervised in the soft play.

I’m not saying you have to follow them around but at least sit somewhere you can see them and keep having a check every 30 seconds? No one is saying you can’t have a well deserved cup of coffee for 15 mins whilst your child plays but you are still a parent.

I have witnessed 2/3 year olds throwing toys down slides and one mum shouted at me “can you grab her please she’s near the slide!) to go grab her daughter that could just about walk so 12-14 months away from the huge slide by herself? Mum was downstairs not even with her.

Always breaks my heart when I see young kids who have been pushed over crying for their parents but they are too busy on Facebook to look up every so often to see if they’re ok

Some soft plays are massive. There’s no way you can check on them every thirty seconds. I wouldn’t leave a child under about 3 unsupervised but after that the whole point is they can play somewhere safe independently.

I go to quite small ones because mine are 2 and 4.
You very much can go inside and keep an eye on your children. If you know you have a child who can be a bit rough you really should be keeping an eye on them and especially if your child has additional needs that means they won't realise the consequences of their actions/size/strength.

Parents with bigger kids really should keep them out of the baby bit. It's not fair on 1/2/3 year olds getting squished and pushed around.

Our local soft play is a new state of art,5 storey, multilevel death slide, free fall bonanza. Nothing worse than when parents send their ‘advanced’ toddlers/preschoolers in there alone and sit smiling at their independence until they inevitably get in the way of the bigger kids and get upset. I actually saw the staff kick a family out, the kid couldn’t have been older than 2 and fell backwards down 20 soft steps and sat screaming with no parent in sight. Parents of younger kids are quick to moan about older ones in the littlies section but it works both ways.

DD is old enough and sensible to go alone but if your child is young, or has special needs or can be a danger to the other kids, parents really need to be supervising at all times, yes you need a break but kids need to be safe.

At 8 and 10 gone are the days of me hovering over my kids at soft play. It is my time to sit and drink a coffee in peace and leave them to their own devices. I check on them periodically which means scanning around to see if I can see them, getting up if I can't.

They are getting to the upper limit of soft play now, the upper limit is 12 at the one we go to and the lowest age range is 5 I think for the main bit so they might collide with a younger child accidentally but there isn't anything I can do to prevent that.

Keep small children out of the big child bits and big children out of the small children bits and then the only ones that need constant supervising are the tiny babies and toddlers who are still learning not to push and shove.

If every child in a soft play centre was being supervised or followed around by an adult it would be absolute carnage. It’s just not doable.

There are age specific areas usually so it keeps the smalls ones out of the way of the bigger ones.