if your child started playing with a mum's phone would you intervene?

[m0therofdragons]

In soft play with my 2 pre school dc. We were about to eat and just waiting for lunch to arrive. Dd asked if she could play cbeebies on my phone. Rather than get her back in the soft play then out again in minutes for lunch I said yes. She sat playing and another boy (2 years older) sat almost on her watching. His mum said he had to ask if he could watch so he did and dd said yes. They sat nicely for a few minutes then the food came. I started cutting it up at the table and heard the boy ask dd if he could play. She said yes and gave him my phone as she came and sat up.
I guess I expected the mum to step in as I know I would have. I wouldn't let dc go to soft play and use a random parent's phone. Yes dd said he could but she's 3!
I ended up nicely saying to the dc that my dh might message me so I needed it back. I removed the phone and dc went into tantrum. His mum proceeded to tell him I was making up excuses because I didn't want him to have it and I shouldn't have let him have it (I didn't and anyway I believe in giving dc reasons rather than just saying no) and anyway it will rot his brain and its very bad for him. Dc had a tablet that he'd been on previously. Overall it was very odd. His mum carried on but I stopped listening.
It just made me wonder if I'm unusual. I'd be embarrassed if any of my dds just picked up a mum's phone they didn't know and would tell them to give it back to the owner or leave it where they found it - that's surely the usual reaction isn't it?

No it doesn't but playing baseball is nothing to do with this situation. Not even comparable.

A three year old doesn't have the authority - that's why you are expected to override her response if at that point or any subsequent point you feel it's inappropriate. The mum was just trying to be polite getting the DC to ask your DD, OK she could have said "Best to ask the little girl's mum first", but she didn't.

I don't think she did anything wrong. I don't think you did anything wrong either, it was just a simple misunderstanding. But if I was the mum, I would have been perhaps slightly confused because I would have assumed that you would understand that "ask" meant that I was really asking your permission, just framing it through the DC to teach them the social norms of manners. I think that is how most people would interpret that. If your 3yo said "Here, you can take this home if you like!" and handed her favourite toy to another child, you'd override that and say "Actually this toy belongs to us and we're not lending out out today, sorry." The same if she gives permission to somebody to use your phone or other item.

But then I also wouldn't have been snotty about it afterwards.

Yanbu. Its your phone you can take it back for any reason at any time.
I would have too due to distraction and worry i would forget and child would have wandered off to soft play with it.
It probably would have made sense to have taken it back as soon as DD stopped using it.
How can someone shout at you for 'putting your own possession away'
Surely easy enough to distract with the equipment. And a good lesson for the boy that phones are not toys to be shared and respect for other adukts. Which was not helped by the other mum.

You might have wanted to use mn while kids were eating.
I mean surely if she lets her dc use her phone shes had to take it back for various reasons