to think that parents "reserving" play equipment is a bit shit?

[ruthosaurus]

I queuejumped today. I honestly didn't mean to. I saw a vacant piece of play equipment (a tractor, fwiw), vaguely clocked that a woman was standing near it but had no kids with her, and helped DS (20mo, too short to climb up on his own) into the seat. Ten seconds later, I was getting the unblinking stare of death from the woman and her two children, who I swear were nowhere near when we got on. A small steely voice piped up "We're waiting...". I told the wee moppet,that yes, it was called queueing, only to be informed by the woman that she had been waiting for a while on her children's behalf.

Well, really. Can people actually do that?

Not got either near me, so I think we're OK.
He's usually hurtling round with a list in one hand, trying to get all the stuff in the shortest time possible, whilst snarling 'Don't talk to anyone mum, or we'll be stuck here forever'
He usually gives up and walk home if the queues are too long for him to bear.

OP should see if any threads come up about "A woman could not see that I had reserved a ride for my child and just barged in!"

That woman is a fool, if they tried that around here she would have got a smack (bit rough)
Maybe it only happens in posh places?

debs, I can't believe you do that. It does show a certain self-absorption

And pityt the poor person who joins the queue behind your daughter thinking you've only got half a trolley loead, and you pitch up with the other half! They amy have picked that queue because they were in a hurry!

Olderandwiser - Ah, but online you CAN book slots ahead of time, so you can reserve your Xmas delivery.

this happened to me over a picnic table at the local park. Sat down- am very pregnant, and it was very hot, set out food. Ds and dd came over- all this taking a good 5 minutes, when a girl marched up and yelled-- ' WE are sat there".
There was no one near it when i sat down.

I was too out of breath to be very polite. I'm afraid, and just snapped 'it was empty' and carried on.

We were sat there at least 15 minutes before the rest of the family turned up. They made a huge fuss of putting their food out on the grass. It is a public park, not bloody Claridges!! No doubt, the family had been reserving the swings/slide/see-saw before eating

Next thing you know she will sit on it herself...LOL.

YANBU.

Oh Lordy - I get so cross with people like that. Last time we went to a park DS1 (who is disabled - ok he doesn't look it but he's severely autistic & has severe learning disabilities - he can't swing himself or anything) wanted to go on the disabled swing because that's what they do with school I guess. Some father did exactly what you describe for each of his kids in turn- and he seemed to have millions of them. DS1 was shouting, hitting himself, biting himself- I couldn't let go of ds1 & was concentrating on trying to stop him injuring himself so I couldn't get close enough to the father to tell him to get his NT kids off the disabled swing so the one disabled child in the park could use the blinking thing.

Hate bloody parks with other people in them.

No one fessing up to being the other woman then???

What lovely adults those children will grow into

Debs, doing that is very unfair. Do you mean that when you get back to the queue people who are already there have to wait???

Sharp-elbowed middle-classes - love it!

She'll most likely go to church to get them into the best local school whereas others will be more honest and put up with a bog-standard comp.

It's a competitive world out there and I think she won, alas.

I am dreading the other woman coming on here and saying that a crazy bitch with a massive attitude problem shouted at her DCs yesterday, when they were clearly waiting some yards away (and productively using the waiting time by playing nicely and quietly) and had in fact only come there to g on the damn tractor. I am also expecting to find out that one of them has SN or a serious illness. Now I'm quite paranoid that I was being a loon and should have joined what was obviously, to everyone else there, a civilised and orderly queue. Arrgh.

what does NT actually stand for please?

ruth please don't think like that. she was being silly!

No Ruth she was being completely daft - dont worry about it.

I must admit the facepainting at festies annoys me as well - ones where the dcs have to queue - I make mine queue with me becasue otherwise they never learn etc whereas lots of people in front are stood there with no dcs and then it transpires they are queueing for 3 or more...

neurotypical i.e. 'normal'.

This 'reserving' marlarky drives me mad, reserving sunbeds and my biggest issue - reserving the front row of a school concert for relatives that hadnt arrived yet.....

I agree Rocky and really think it these situations the reservers should be challenged by those in charge ie supermarket staff should not allow shoppers to skip the queue, teachers in schools should not let parents put coats and bags across ten front row seats etc. I always get annoyed when it's left to individuals to challenge these brass necked types.

I've just started a thread in SN called 'queuing and the DDA'. I'd be interested in any non-SN views as well if anyone has any opinions (still not sure what I think). It's not strictly relevant to this thread so won't hijack - although supermarkets were mentioned in the last post and that's somewhere that queues can make inaccessible to me when I'm with ds1.

The only response you should use is to look her up and down and say "Really? You are reserving this? Do you think you'll fit?"

When she explains she's reserving it for her DCs you laugh kindly and say "For a second there I thought you were serious and had images of helping you into the tractor! You realise you can only queue for something you personally are going to use? It's standard etiquette. Ah well, no harm done, and now you know."

Can't stand knobbers. And at that man for you saintly. You were saintly not to have said something.

Was this on a public playground?? WTF?

I'm going to store the Q-Bot response up for future use. Genius.

Our worst ever playground experience was when ds1 was about 5 or 6.

We used to visit a particular playground because it was nearly always completely empty. DS1 set up a routine there, about 3 swings on a tyre, onto the see-saw, down a slide and then he would go off and do whatever.

One day we arrived and as he ran towards the tyre a girl headed towards it and arrived seconds before him. OK fine, ds1 has to learn to wait his turn never mind the severe autism. But he started kicking off - this is OK, this is what he does and he didn't have the understanding to control that at all at the time - still doesn't really. The girl was swinging, he was trying to hit his head on the ground, I was stopping him. After a while the girl tried to get off, the mother looked at ds1 and said to her dd 'no, you get back on that swing, you haven't finished yet' - she kept her dd on that swing for 5 minutes, by which time ds1 was beside himself. Once the girl was allowed off, ds1 did a few backwards and forwards swing, got off and did the see-saw and slide and was fine.

I really couldn't understand the woman's POV tbh. Apart from the fact it should have been obvious that something was up, if ds1 is on something and someone comes along and is struggling to wait I get him off to give the other child and turn. To make her child get back on when she wanted to get off was insane! No matter how apparently badly my child was behaving.

Saintly - on your behalf that people can be so fucking stupid & rude. Fair enough if she got there first, I'm guessing she probably wasn't old enough to work out that your DS would be upset at having to wait, but if I was her Mum & close enough to her I would have said - DD, let the little boy have a turn then we'll come back in a minute - if she'd already got on the swing I would have encouraged her to get off and play on something else and at other times, I may not have been close enough or paying enough attention to notice your DS getting upset (tend to zone out a bit at the park!!) but FFS how could anyone do what she did??

Unless... is it possible that your DS looks like an NT child chucking a paddy over her getting there first? If I thought that was the case, I might let her play on it as long as she wanted to, rather than hurry her up

Oh yes ds1 looks entirely normal - but I don't think most children bang their heads on the ground or bite themselves also he can't speak but will shout naya naya or something -but obviouy not words iykwim. It's really been quite obvious for a long time. I remember tears ago when pregnant with ds1 I spotted an autistic child kicking off in a shopping centre and it was v obvious - I'd had no exposure to autism then at all.

We still get this sort of hassle tbh and he's 11 now. Although often we get it now when he's behaving really very well but standing in slightly the wrong place to wait or some other minor transgression of the rules.

She did look slightly surprised when ds1 spent less than 5 seconds on the swing before running off to complete the rest of his routine. She then avoided all eye contact so no chance of an explanation once I was actually in a position to speak.

I almost puinched a granny once...well I didn;t but I was so mad...

We were in Mothercare and DD1 wanted to go on the Noddy car - she was really into Noddy..

There was another little girl on it, so we stood nicely and waited, made eye contact with the granny, I spoke to DD1 telling her that she was waiting wonderfully well on the Noddy car and it would be our turn soon..

It was "3 goes for £1" - when we turned up the girl had just got to end of her 1st turn....so we waited patiently through turns 2 and 3..

THEN instead of getting her off to let us have out turn, Granny went back into her purse, got ANOTHER £1 out and we had to weait through 3 MORE turns...

Oh I was narked...it was so obvious we were waiting

I suppose I should pity the people who are queueing behind me.
But they don't pity me when DS has a major meltdown like saintly's son. His favourite trick is kneeing himself in the head when he gets distressed. He usually ends up bruised and distraught and one day he is going to miss and break his nose. When he is like that out shopping I try my best to do it as quickly as possible and that means sending dd to the till with a half load of shopping whilst I do the rest. If you get behind her you can see she has a lot of shopping so are in for a long wait, plus at xmas the queues are halfway down the aisles so you are waiting for half an hour or more.

My kids are also growing up very well knowing that the world doesn't help fit in an autistic child, you have to make some allowances or you would end up frazzled. We try and teach ds to wait and to calm down but in some situations the more you try and 'control' his outbursts the worse they come.
Getting through xmas shopping without blood, bruises and tears is more important then worring about holding someone up for an extra 5-10 minutes.