To take daughter home from soft play after 3rd hitting incident?

[Slightlyneuroricnat]

She is 3 1/2 and today at a soft play area hit another girl repeatedly as soon as we arrived and then jumped on top of her :(
The girls father picked my daughter up off of his and said quite loudly " no "
My daughter ran away but then looked back at shouted at the man for being horrible.
Obviously I apologised, put her in time out and made her apologise to the child but within 5 minutes she had hit another child in the face and then proceeded to push her younger sister over.
So we went home with her screaming and my mother in law telling me I was completely over reacting as she's only little.
She can be a lovely kind child but probably once a fortnight will have a day that there's just no talking to her and her behaviour is aggressive, even at home this morning she was kicking her toys around even when I began removing them.
Worried as she is starting nursery in April and I don't know what they will do if she behaves like this.

In no way is crying and undermining helpful.

And children don't "grow out of" selfish play and aggressive behaviour without being given consistent boundaries.

Your younger child didn't "suffer" from being taken home early. In fact, she will benefit in the long term. So if you ever get that wheedling bullshit again, you can dismiss it briskly, with the same guilt-deflecting line, that it is letting both children down, not to correct such behaviour.

100% agree with you last poster
I didn't appreciate being made to feel bad for taking her home and I've hot my husband to speak to her, more so that she's fully aware that if it happens again, I'll be doing the same!

you did the right thing, you warned dd what would happen if she hit/was horrible again-she was-and you carried out your threat

mil is being silly - ignore her

She shouted at the other child's dad for being horrible?
You were unreasonable to give her two more chances before taking her out, IMO

Really?
Maybe I should have just taken her home on the first occasion but I don't think that would be very fair on my youngest and personally unless it was behaviour happening constantly it seems a bit extreme but obviously after yesterday's incident there are no second chances, if she hits anyone whilst we are out we come home, and that's what will happen.
So maybe yesterday needed to happen for me to realise a drastic change was needed