to ask you about slide etiquette

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DS is 4.4, he's my PFB so i've no idea about most things especially slide etiquette. Have always tried to teach him not to climb up slides and when sliding down to wait until the person before has got off slide before he starts sliding.

Anyway today we have been to a well known pub chain for lunch and DS was playing in the garden after. There weren't many children about but then a couple of children turned up around the same time and i presumed they were together, an older boy of around 8 and a younger boy of 5, maybe 6. Anyway DS gets chatting to the younger boy and they end up playing together showing each other how they can climb on climbing frame and then they start playing tag.

Next thing they are chasing around and the younger boy has ran up top of slide and wants to slide down cus DS is chasing him but the older boy is climbling up slide so the younger boy just slides down anyway, there was no harm done the older boy didn't get knocked off or anything but then this woman comes storming over shouting 'you don't slide down slides when some one is climbing up are you stupid or something' to the younger boy. The younger boy didn't seen at all bothered and i sort of presumed it was her child and thought she was being abit harsh on him, if i had realised at the time it wasn't her child i would have said something there and then. But as we sat longer we sort of realised that the younger child wasn't with her at all, his parents were inside the pub (but thats a whole different topic).

With my DS and slides i teach him not to climb up, obviously sometimes he still does (because he totally ignores what i say) but if he was climbing up and he got a slight knock from someone climbing down i'd tell him thats what you get for climbing slides, i certainly wouldn't tell off the other child.

I helicopter parent sometimes. ... means hovering about behind your child...

this for several reasons.

busy park dd moving about among smaller children, which may get hurt as she is hypermobile and not body aware

dd going up something she is likely to fall off.

ds has a disability and sometimes needs support to use equipment appropriately.... like not climbing the toddler slides when toddlers want to slide down...

One of my earliest memories is climbing up a slide then getting kicked in the face. I remember my nursery teacher picking me up and cuddling me and saying "I'm sorry you got hurt, but you shouldn't have been climbing up the slide". I never did it again! I try to teach DS not to do it as it bloody hurt!

this was part of a bigger climbing frame def not for toddlers as DS can only just manage to get up the logs/ rope for getting to the top. The kids all appeared to be playing nicely and i wouldn't have batted an eyelid about the other kid climbing up the slide, or even if DS had climbed up the slide i prob wouldn't have gone and said anything to him, but then if someone had slided into him i wouldn't have told them off.

My local park has a slide that is impossible for young children to use as it doesn't have steps. Just an odd sort of ladder a foot away from the platform at the top of the slide, or a vertical wall with climbing hand-holds. For many children, climbing up the slide is the only way they can use it unless their parent wants to be constantly lifting them up.

As soon as he's able, I'm going to be teaching DS2 to climb the slide.

The rules in my family are:
Don't slide down the slide when someone else is on it
Don't climb up it when someone else wants to slide down
When you're one of the bigger boys and there are smaller children around, don't climb up the slide as the toddlers might copy you and hurt themselves.

I've given up caring now about climbing up etc. spent ages telling dd not to and just realised I'm usually the only mum doing it, why not just let them do it if they are having fun.

I have no problem with kids climbing up the slide but I do believe those wanting to slide down have right of way. So if you're climbing up and someone appears at the top, slide down out of their way

Something else I'm doing wrong! I let ds go up the slide if it's not busy. He can't get up any other way,it's part of a frame that's too tricky at the moment. He waits his turn nicely but am I committing some parenting faux pas?

I'm with Hollie84 on this.

Sliders have right of way, but you can climb up, climb over the side and dangle and drop down, swing from there onto another part of the structure, or do anything you want if you're not getting in anyone's way IMO esp if you're the only ones there :o

Should be about developing common sense surely - don't do anything unreasonably likely to hurt anyone, including yourself. DC over the age of 4 should be able to work it out normally.

The shouty woman was U, the kids sound as if they were getting on fine and nobody was hurt or upset...

I strenuously disagree.The younger boy was to blame.
.
If the younger boy ran straight up the slide and slid staright down , it sounds as though the older boy was already climbing up the slide or at least had no way of knowing that someone was going up the steps.
But leaving that aside, if a slider collides with someone climbing up the slider might get a bump, but the child standing on the slide ( being hit below his centre of mass) may flip over and fall head first potentially breaking his neck of worse.