To think a 14 year old can play in a playground?

[RedSkyLastNight]

Whilst out today, we passed an adventure playground and DS (aged 14) decided to climb up some of the tall climbing structures and hang off the ropes. He was not in any other child's way.

A small child (aged about 5 or 6) came up to him, asked how old he was and then said "My Mummy says you're too old to play in the playground". DS said "well I'm not", and carried on doing his own thing".

DS was luckily oblivious, (my hackles did rise against the unknown parent), but was he BU? There was a sign up indicating that one area of the playground was only for children up to age 7, but no signs anywhere else suggesting acceptable age (and DS was no where near the under 7s bit).

Would you consider a 14 year old (playing considerately in respect of other playground users) to be too old to play in a playground?

Bigger*. Bugger would be a while set of different problems.

My DS is also 14 and often plays in the park with his younger brother. Noone bats an eye lid. He is careful and respectful of other children.

Which makes me wonder if in fact OP's son looks like a 23 year old...

If you look at the reported statistics of who’s sexually abusing whom, you’d see that with child sexual abuse, the average age of both victim and abuser is going down. That means that sexualised behaviour is becoming more prevalent in children, and their victims are younger still.

I work in this field and have seen that half of the children we treat are toddlers, aged 2 to 5 year old. Some are pre verbal.

It’s not the fault of any of the children in in the OP’s question that these figures are true, but it does explain to me why the mother was suspicious and wanted him out of the park.

You don’t have to have a ‘hard life’ to be able to read reports, and to understand how life has changed with the Internet making porn widely available to children. Unfortunately the copycat abuse teens inflict on smaller children is rapidly increasing.

Every parent wants to protect their children. A 14 yo isn’t a child, he’s a teen and should be aware that little children’s needs come first, and that’s he’s behaving suspiciously if he insists on being there.

The one thing that paedophiles have in common is that parents think they’re nice, and would have never in a million years guessed that they were predators.

Maybe the mother of that little child is more up to date than you Sirzy. Maybe she saw something in the teenager the OP didn’t?
Maybe she had read the notice, else how would she know “he was too old to play in this playground”?

Of course you’re entitled to your opinion about how lovely all teens are, but the facts of increasing incidents of CSA by teens against younger children suggest that it’s better to be safe than sorry with teens.

Best to lower the risk of your Ds being misunderstood OP, and get your DS involved in sports with his own age group.
It’s naive to think everyone will look at him benevolently in a children’s playground.

Are you also missing that most abuse is carried out by people known to the child?

And as both mothers where present it was hardly a dangerous situation

It's for the parents to be protecting their 4 and 5 year olds - no-one nowadays sends their little children to the playground on their own.

If the equipment is robust enough for teens, and the playground hasn't been restricted to under 10s or whatever, then teens should be allowed to play on it.

There's plenty of stuff to do with your pre-school and primary aged children. But there's not much for teenagers. user is wanting to ban them from playgrounds, they're not encouraged to play ball games on their own, any group of more than two is seen as a threat and is moved on, skateboarding anywhere but a skateboard park is frowned on (and there are few skateboard parks, and even fewer challenging ones). And then we wonder why they get up to mischief?

I don't mind teenagers in playgrounds. I do get annoyed if they're using the equipment as seats, and just sit there chatting oblivious to the little kids who want a shot though.

You aren’t trying to say that she honestly believed a boy visiting the park with an adult was going to assault her child while she was right there? Or even that anyone was going to assault her child while she was right there...

It's sad that people don't want teenagers to play in parks. DD/DSD still love playing in parks. They love climbing, and going on spinny things. They give the tinies a wide berth, and aren't sweary etc. I think a lot of mums who like to give teenagers in playgrounds evils have got a massive cheek. The same mums are the ones swinging side by side with their kids, or going on the roundabout/zipline/down the slide. These mums clearly enjoy playing in the park, and it's not always with a toddler!

Me (33) and 2 colleagues (20 and 45) went playing in an adventure playground while at work. However it was at 4am when no children were about and it was great fun!

Yes, it is unbelievable, until you read the facts.

As I say you’re entitled to your own opinion about CSA, but the facts show that it’s increasing, and that the age of perpetrators is also going down. It’s a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless less.

You have to see it from everyone’s perspective OP. It’s naive to think your DS will be universally liked and understood by all and sundry. He must learn that he must be above suspicion by behaving appropriately at all times.

Most child sexual abuse is carried out by males, and increasingly teenaged ones. Children are groomed by teens. Those are the facts.
Maybe this mother who was in the park knows all about that?

Clutching pearls and becoming outraged on behalf of ‘all teens’, and putting your head in the sand by denying these facts serves no one. Not the child victims, not the teen abusers.

We also have some adventure playgrounds near us with zip wires and huge climbing frames. They’re designed for older children and teenagers. I think it’s great we have them and they are really fun!

I don’t even mind some of the groups of younger teens (14ish) who hang out in one of our play grounds. They’re perfectly nice and just hanging out.

But I did once go all cats bum when I overheard a group of older teenagers with a college aged girl swearing every other word; not just a wee slip but, “oh for FUCKS SAKE! My fucking mum is fucking coming over here. Fuuuck. Fucks sake. Fucking hell. Fuuuuuck”. I told her to shut the fuck up. Ok not really . I did ask her to stop swearing quite so much though. She looked at me as if I had two heads but she did shut up.

@UserHistory

You must live your life being entirely scared of everyone and everything. I'm sorry for you.

Terrified of men because most rapists are men.
Terrified of teens because most drug users are teens.
Terrified of water because most drowning happens in water.

A 14yr old boy, by himself, with a parent nearby, is now a sex predator taking aim at under 10s. Oh the humanity.

It’s fine if he wasn’t spoiling it for the younger ones. But it’s when you get a group of teenagers bouncing about being stupid that they become a problem. Or sitting on the swings just looking at their phones. No need for it.

There was a hysterical arsehole like User in our very large town park recently. DS (8) wanted to stop there in the way home and DS(16) was with us. He has severe LD's and is 6 ft 3. He specifically went to an area of the park where there was no other children as he has horrendous social anxiety due to years of bullying as he's 'odd' and sat on a bench with his phone, hood up over his face as usual. I went off with youngest DS and came back to a woman frantically telling other parents about the 'man' hanging around in the park and someone should call the police. I had to step in front of several men who were going over to challenge him. I must admit I went a bit apeshit.

Honestly I hate self important twats who have nothing better to do than start a problem when people are doing nothing wrong! I would have told the woman to get stuffed OP.

Wouldn't bother me if a teen was playing as long as doing so safely.

Why is it ok for parents to have a go which they will do and a teen can't.

I'm always in the zip wire myself.

I wish there were playgrounds for teens. There's fuck all for them to do. No youth clubs anymore either.
It would be great if there were places they could swing from monkey bars and climb for free. I'm sick of teenage boys in particular being demonised. They don't suddenly become evil at 13. They are still kids.