To not understand why so many parents hate going to Soft Play?

[BlueMoon1103]

I’m at soft play with my DS (9 months) and I actually love bringing him! There are loads of nice soft play near me with baby areas and smaller versions of the big soft play the older kids use. I guess we’re lucky to have so many nice ones to choose from where I am but so many parents say they hate soft play and I don’t get why, both me and my DS think it’s great fun!

I hate everything about it. Mainly:

1.The noise- the ear splitting screams and shouts go right through me and it makes me want to claw my own ears off

1. The harsh lighting and everything being so bright and in your face (same with 1 but with my eyes)

1. The food - its always disgusting: greasy and sloppy and generally stuff you'd expect from a van at the side of the road

1. Other people's kids. I dont mind kids that are fairly well behaved but whenever Ive taken my kids to soft play there has always been some older kids there who look way too old to be at soft play and who seem to enjoy bullying the smaller ones and making them cry. Its horrible.

1. The toilets: the toilets always REEK of shit and have pee all over the floor and never seem to be cleaned properly.

1. I always leave feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and weirdly down.

Germs dont bother me so much as I think challenging your immune system is always a good thing but the above makes the experience awful for me and I grit my teeth every time I have to go.

Disgusting filth pits full of big kids drop kicking toddlers. I’d rather boil my head.

It becomes significantly less fun when they won’t go into it by themselves and you have to squash your way down the bloody slide at about 30mph with a two year old on your lap. Might not be so bad if you’ve got another child that can drag them around but my only child is not up for going solo yet and it is mind numbingly boring.

Those of you saying yes you enjoy it as you get to sit down with a book and a cup of tea...are you the ones in blissful "ignorance" of what your children are getting up to?

Those of you saying yes you enjoy it as you get to sit down with a book and a cup of tea...are you the ones in blissful "ignorance" of what your children are getting up to? No. My children are well behaved and don't hit or hurt anyone or throw the balls and padded shapes, unlike some kids I saw on New Year's Day. Their dad was there watching and talking to them and did fuck all to stop them wreaking havoc.

I hate it most when I take my children to soft play or the park and they can't even get on the equipment because a load of toddlers are on the bits designed for older children with their daft parents helicoptering them, throwing daggers at any other child attempting to use it.

@KimchiLaLa not at all. I’m still very much “one ear open” “one eye” observing. And I can hear my son above anyone else as he has such a distinctively husky tone. There are only about 4-5 other families there, two are babies who stay in the baby part which my toddler isn’t interested in and the others are all good friends. We actually take turns to watch each other’s kids, and there’s one mum who is always with her daughter (my sons best friend ever) who crawls around with her (the mum seems to love it) and ends up keeping an eye on my son too as the children play together.
The staff also know him very well.
So yeah it’s actually a really nice break for me, I swap with the girls mum for an hour or so and we all have a slap up lunch together.

Germs. DS2 slid down a slide covered in vomit once. At ourdoorn playgrounds they don't get stuffed with sausage rolls and fruit shoots and then get overheated.

And the broken arms.

They're awful, germ ridden, dirty, smelly, full of mystery fluids and kids (some lovely, some awful) and their parents (ditto).

There always seems to be at least one instance of a child being a terror and their parents either ignoring them or being nowhere to be found.

Also DS isn't great at self preservation so I feel obliged to run around after him.

I don’t mind them too much but after my last visit where I saw a girl emerge out of the soft play covered in someone else’s sick 🤢 I find them a lot worse now!! X

People allowing their massive kids run havoc and jump around the toddler area.

Grinds my fucking gears

We’ve got 3 young kids. It’s unmanageable in large soft plays. Smaller soft plus are fine, but the eldest (5 years old) gets bored in those.

I like soft play, but not with all my kids at once.

Too much going on , way too noisy for me and too busy it gives me anxiety!

Norovirus central

Ummm it's very loud and hot and plastic and often the food is all squash or concentrate and processes and glary lights and noise ... so bit of a sensory overload in an unnatural environment ...

However, as an occasional activity and if you go early you can avoid the overcrowding and for parties when they get older where they all hare around madly having a lovely time ... especially enjoying the battles with other children from other parties that used to get quite firey from time to time.

I always used to think, how much nicer a walk in the woods with the dog or up on the moors watching the clouds.

I liked it when ds1 got to stage he could play without me trailing after him, so we would meet friends, the kids would play, grown ups would have a coffee and catch up.
Then I had another bloody kid and am back to scuttling on my knees after a 1 year old.

We are spoilt with them where I live. There are about 7 a quick drive away and most are quite new and well designed.

During school holidays or busy weekends it can be hell on earth. Hideously overcrowded, no tables, dirty, horrible bigger kids pushing in and the general noise/chaos. The bigger they are the worse they tend to be in my experience.

We go frequently in bad weather as my kids are very active/ bounce if the wall types

I used to love soft play with toddlers. The school holidays or weekends are a different experience altogether- that’s when it’s hell. Noisy, packed, an assault on the senses....

Attending soft play with a (I’m guessing relatively) immobile 9-month-old is quite different to attending with a 2-year-old who wants to do everything herself but is still too little for all the bigger equipment she is determined to play on. You are still at the stage where you can sit round with your pals and have a chat, I went to a soft play recently with three friends and our 2/3 year-olds and we literally did not see or speak to each other the whole time we were there, the kids all went off in different directions. It’s exhausting chasing round after them. You may feel differently in a year or two.

I love softplay. I prefer it when it's quiet though so we tend to go on school inset days.

Ita dirty and noisy, shit coffee. Awful places but have taken the DCs many times of course.

I honestly don't mind it. The kids bloody love it and mine are old enough now to get on with it, very rare I have to go in and rescue one of them. So most of the time I just have a coffee, stare into space and be ready with a cold drink when they come out all hot and bothered!

I must admit though, I do give their hands and face a good wash and get them to change their clothes as soon as we get home. I know how dirty they must be!

Wait until your child starts school OP, when you can only go at peak times when they double the entrance fee, it's so rammed it's dangerous, you can't get a seat and older ones far too old to be in there are racing round knocking little ones flying.
It doesn't help that my local one is grubby, smells of sweaty feet, the toilets are unusable and disgusting, and I usually end up assisting many children in various states of distress whilst their parents sit gossiping and drinking coffee oblivious.

I quite enjoyed softplay when DC1 was nine months too We had a lovely, small, clean, empty in term time one near us that was actually quite peaceful It was a good place to go when she was at the confident crawling/cruising stage.

Then we moved and DC got older and I discovered why most people hate it Our local one now is soooo crowded and loud and dirty and we've definitely had one stomach bug I can attribute to it. To be honest we only go as we get free entry with a music class we do on the site but it's usually a quieter time and I usually only let them play for 45 mins or so afterwards and definitely make them wash their hands before eating/leaving etc

I hadn't even considered worm eggs . It's the little shits that push the decent, well mannered ones about. Made worse by their equally moronic parents who just sit there looking at their phones while their 10 year old flattens a bunch of toddlers

I take no shit at soft play. I’m in the baby area, chucking all the great hulking 8 year olds out of there.

I never get any comeback from the parents, because there’s no fucking sign of them.