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!

The noise
The smell of fried food
How unclean everything probably is
Bad food & drinks
DD doesn’t like it that much (end up going for birthdays etc) so I can’t even enjoy the fact she’s having fun!

I sit on an uncomfortable plastic chair in a room full of other people’s screaming kids. If I’m lucky there’s a sticky table in front of me and I get a shitty cup of coffee. I may also have to endure conversation with other parents.

What is there to like?

I like it when people ACTUALLY Parent.
Cannot stand it when they shove their kids in and sit down and do nothing and ignore their kids being shits or crying or jumping when they are older into the 1-3 tots n baby area ball pool....

For me - baby soft play is fine, spacious and flat. Soft play for older children is fine, can supervise from ground level.
Soft play for toddlers/pre-schoolers - horrendous. I would go into the multi-level hell with my DS, dripping with sweat after 5 minutes, following through tunnels and rolling over the...roll over things. Then realising that I was being tailed by numerous other kids who I irrationally felt responsible for because their parents were at the bottom on their phones, casually sipping a coffee

It's mostly the small amount of children dropping snacks all over it as their parents can't be bothered to stop them wandering in with food and hitting/shouting at/pushing over the others. I recently went to the toilet in one to change a nappy and a lady pulled her kids trousers down and sat him in the hand washing sink to wash his poo covered bottom. It also seems to be where people go when their kids are ill to pass it on to everyone else too.

They are vile.
Crawling with all sorts of germs.
Ball pits give me the boak.

I worked at Wacky Warehouse when I was a teenager. The ball pit only got cleaned twice a year despite children often peeing/pooing/puking in it. Once there was an awful smell for about 3 days...we eventually found it was a dead mouse in the ball pit. 🤢

It sounds like they are OK for babies but not for slightly older and older children.

I am sincerely glad there was nothing like that years ago, I might have pressurised to go and know I would have hated every minute.

Children can play and socialise in far more civilised ways - where parents aren't forced to be conversational.

The large popular one near is costs a fortune, smells of fried food, piped music, we once found a dead mouse in the ball pit, and another time it had to be evacuated when a Nappy explodes and children were emerging coverered in poo. Also the coffee is usually dreadful. Not my best places....

One soft play party my eldest attended the boys were all running round screaming, they were running away from the mice! Gross!!

The filth
Other people's kids

It's like a circle of hell. Horrid.

I love your style LaurieMarlow Please come to our local soft play. I will pay you. We need dem bouncer like skills!

The one near me is full of parents staring at their phones and completely checking out whilst their offspring go round walloping the other kids.

Also the toilets are always fucking disgusting....

We occasionally go to a small one for pre schoolers/toddlers that's ok but it's still too loud, too hot and serves terrible coffee.

The big ones with the massive frames terrify me. What if I get stuck? What if my kid never comes out and instead joins the feral band of children who live in there? What is that liquid in the ball pit? Why don't other parents take their shoes off when they go in the soft play?

Kanga83 I'd like to know which one in Harrogate serves that too!! We normally head to Kidzplay, but there's also Twiggy's in Thirsk or Temple Fun in Leeming bar.
If you want something a bit closer then there's a role play cafe in West Tanfield that normally has some kind of messy play/dance class on too.

Disgusting smelly badly run germ ridden noisy and summing up: most unpleasant places.
Imho

I just don’t like other people’s children...

Oh and bullying in the ball pool and children unsupervised

What, apart from the shrieks decibel level, filthy loos, beige food, bad coffee, sticky tables, feral children, mysteriously smelly ball pits?

One I used to go to shared a party wall with a mosque, which I tended to imagine must have been the least conducive to prayer in the history of Islam.

Because of other kids that are badly parented bullies , and stupid fucking parents who think the softplay is for them , and think they are hilarious and cool for going down a slide.

My grandchildren regularly go to soft play and I don't think it has a ball pit. However it does have inflatable giant slide and a bouncy castle. When I've been with them I've only seen one child bully others and that was when a group of younger kids were playing in a tunnel and he held the "door" shut so they couldn't get out. None of them cried but it was obvious they didn't like it. It took a while to convince them to come out the way they came in. Cue one older kid who couldn't work out why the tunnel was empty.

Because you have a 9 month old.. not to be patronising but everything is lovely with a baby! Age 2/3/4 it starts become "lord of the flies"

Because your kid is 9 months. Mine are 10, 8 and 5. Come back in a decade and tell me how much you love soft play 🤢

My toddler once came running to me out of the soft play area with another child's vomit on her tshirt . . .

other people's children