to not stop my DC doing things because other people don't want their DC to do them?

[hollyvsivy]

My children are adventurous and unless something is dangerous or unsafe for themselves or others, I don't see the problem. Increasingly I find myself being scowled at by other parents whose DC want to copy mine as if I should stop mine to help them out. I've had passive agressive comments, too. As far as I'm concerned, it's up to them to enforce their rules on their children - not me.

Some examples to give you an idea of the contexts of these situations:

Splashing in puddles
Climbing trees
Standing up on the swing
Climbing the slide (as long as no one else is waiting to go down)
Painting their hands and feet at toddler group
Rolling down hills

AIBU to continue to let my children do what I'm fine with them doing and ignore disapproving outsiders who expect me to stop them so their children won't do the same?

[CheeseQueen]

A very well put post from Bertrand there, nice to see there's still some sanity out there.

[Blimey01]

I love these kinds of threads...make me think I'm laid back.
Slide climbing 😱

[Greenifer]

Yes I am. I also advocate for a child who wants to paddle in the paddling pool rather than fill it with sand, make sand castles and have them left standing rather than having them stomped on, and swing on the swings as they are rather than throw the seats over the bar to make the chains really really short. Also for the child who wants to sit and listen to the story rather than play the musical instruments put out for later. Oh, and the child who wants to feed the birds, fish or whatever rather than have them scattered.

Hear hear!

[Jenwen22]

YANBU at all. I did all these things back as a kid before political correctness/health and safety freakishness appeared. So long as they are aware of others around them theres no problem, carry on and give the dissaproving glarers a cheery wave and smile. Just kids doing kid stuff

[BertrandRussell]

How on earth did you shoehorn "political correctness" into this ?

[DeleteOrDecay]

Political correctness??

[mygorgeousmilo]

zzzz I hear you about it often being seen as poor form to bring up OPs other threads, but she's listed all of these various things under AIBU in the last 48 hours under the same user name. She barely engages with anyone either, so nobody gets much by way of answers, and she goes off and starts another stealth boast/AIBU thread about her brilliant kids, while we all squabble.... Perhaps she's an evil genius

[BetterEatCheese]

Feel the same as you op. It is mostly my sister who glares at me but she is very protective of her children and doesn't let them take any risks, so we do clash. I just let dd carry on. I have tried to stop her to save a situation, but now don't as it feels wrong.

I am fine with standing on swings and slide climbing, as long as dd doesn't mess up equipment with mud, is respectful and careful. She is learning to share and judge the situation.

I had no idea so many people were against it.

[mathanxiety]

zzzzz Fri 28-Apr-17 07:07:58
DO "locals" take precedence over "blow-ins" (shock**@terminology**)?

Surely public playgrounds are for "the public" not "the public who live nearby". I'm aghast that your ds is feels free to marshal children she has no connection with to a set of rules she created and enforces shock. It's quite outrageous behaviour really.

Where did I say anyone took precedence?
Yes, the playground is for the public. That means all the public, locals and blow-ins, (and I do not know what has outraged you about that term but heyho).

If you read my post again, you will see that what I said was the locals had a set of unwritten rules that weren't all that hard to imagine or anticipate, if a parent was paying a modicum of attention or had any sense of consideration for others including children speaking with thick Dublin accents.

Basically, the rules boiled down to "don't hog the equipment". Not complicated, not difficult to comply with, requiring only ability to see how many children had formed a queue beside the equipment and to hear the odd remark from the children to the effect that they were fed up waiting so long.

It shouldn't have taken a heavy hint from my DSister (not DS, but DSis) that the playground wasn't a private facility laid on by the Dublin City fathers for the use of a single child and his or her entitled parents on Saturdays.

[mathanxiety]

And DSis did not make up the unwritten rules. They were established by consensus among the children who were the normal daily users of the playground, a natural occurrence. If anyone had studied them I am sure they would have found there was some sort of communal sense of what was fair for everyone, some kind of mental arithmetic involved where number of pieces of equipment, number of children and time on each piece were the elements involved in the calculations.

[mathanxiety]

zzzzzzzz
I AM "aghast" that your sister genuinely thinks it's ok to boss people around in public places. I'd be mortified if mine behaved like that.

Seriously?

I love my sister precisely because she behaves like a grown up.
I do not see how you came up with 'boss people around' from 'hinted' to oblivious prats either..

The rights of a whole playground full of children from the corpo flats were to be ignored so that the feelings of the parents from the suburbs could be spared? If it hadn't been my sister it would have been the Russian grannies who always accompanied their grandchildren to play who 'approached the parents tactfully'.

[vdbfamily]

the climbing up a slide thing reminds me of my youngest at about 14 months. She was not walking yet and had not ever attempted to exit the back patio door but one morning I could not find her and she had crawled down the patio step and along the path, up 3 steps to the back garden, along the garden and had started at the bottom of the slide and hauled herself halfway up and there she clung! I was well impressed. Friends still remind me of being in the park with us when she was a similar age and used to get up the steps of the big curly slide and throw herself down. She did not walk until 16 months but loved slides!
My DS is 12 and last time we visited my brother who has a son born the same week as DS, we found them on the roof of the garden shed, fencing with walking poles that they had hammered flat into sharp spears. I wasn't sure whether to be more worried about impalement or falling off the roof,and we did suggest that they at least got off the roof and that they flattened the ends of the spears slightly!! Parents fall in to one or another camp and I do find alot of disapproval from people when you let your kids climb high in trees or go to the park after school without a parent there etc but I just make sure they are not alone, have a phone with them and know the basics of what to do in an emergency.