Soft play. Lack of supervision

[mysterytoddler]

I take my 19 month old DD to soft play most weeks since they’ve reopened. I’m 7 months pregnant with DC2.

I’m so sick of parents not supervising their kids properly. Today was a classic. Another mum with 2 boys, at a guess I’d say that the oldest was 7, youngest 3. Both really boisterous kids. The mum spent most of the time sat at her table on her phone. She checked on them now and again but mostly left them to it. At one point she even took the toddler to the toilet and left the older one completely unsupervised.
I took DD to the large bit of the soft play that’s recommended for older ones which is my own doing but DD is really headstrong and finds the baby bit really boring now. But they were running all over the place and she got knocked over twice.

I also don’t understand why the 7 year old wasn’t at school. Part of the reason we go on weekdays is because it’s quieter and usually full of toddlers. I wouldn’t go on weekends cos I accept that there will be school age kids there.

I’m just sick of it. I manage to clamber all over the equipment and supervise my toddler despite being heavily pregnant. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for others to do the same

@mysterytoddler

I take my 19 month old DD to soft play most weeks since they’ve reopened. I’m 7 months pregnant with DC2.

I’m so sick of parents not supervising their kids properly. Today was a classic. Another mum with 2 boys, at a guess I’d say that the oldest was 7, youngest 3. Both really boisterous kids. The mum spent most of the time sat at her table on her phone. She checked on them now and again but mostly left them to it. At one point she even took the toddler to the toilet and left the older one completely unsupervised.
I took DD to the large bit of the soft play that’s recommended for older ones which is my own doing but DD is really headstrong and finds the baby bit really boring now. But they were running all over the place and she got knocked over twice.

I also don’t understand why the 7 year old wasn’t at school. Part of the reason we go on weekdays is because it’s quieter and usually full of toddlers. I wouldn’t go on weekends cos I accept that there will be school age kids there.

I’m just sick of it. I manage to clamber all over the equipment and supervise my toddler despite being heavily pregnant. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for others to do the same

Good lord, I’m not going to hover in soft play!

A 7 yr old alone whilst mum takes toddler to the loo is fine.

@mysterytoddler how is that very young? Another judgemental under 30, shouldn't be a parent thread. Boring.

Should bear school and not knocking over toddlers? Seriously get a grip. The soft play is not there for your sole use! And you were in the wrong area! As PP have said, it's for the kids to run off their energy.
I find it interesting that both children you were critical of as 'boisterous ' were boys. As a parent of 3 boys I cannot stand the constant criticism of boys being loud/wild/ boisterous/ dangerous. It pisses me off no end to see Ms Prim with her spotlessly clean, perfectly polite little girl tutting at the wild boys and completely solidifying gender stereotypes into her child.

This is hilarious. Give it a few years love and you’ll be the one enjoying your coffee in peace whilst your children play.

Have you read Lord of the Flies OP? That’s what soft play is, you protect your kids until they’re big enough to take down others!

Mine is also 17 months and I stay with her the whole time and would only take her into the main bit if it was absolutely dead and I could walk her round it without ruining the fun for older ones. I cringe when I see people with a tiny baby and a kid of 5 year olds chomping the bit behind them because they want to run riot.

YaBu and very judgemental too. You decided to take your 19 mo into the big bit and are annoyed when they are knocked over it's unfair on the bigger ones taking toddlers into the parts where they should be able to run free!

Leaving the 7yo while taking the 3yo to the toilet- can't see the issue with this at all. If all adults followed all their children around in soft plays there would be no room to actually play.

It doesn't matter that your child was supervised. If your child is under five and requires close supervision in an over fives area then they should not be in there and neither should you. Both of you being there would inhibit the play of children of the right age. Competent three or four year old who can hold their own, fine!

@mysterytoddler

I just mean that the (few) families I know who homeschool the kids have much older parents who have built up money so they can afford to have one parent at home. Also I guess I assumed kids who were being homeschooled would actually, you know, be at home being educated rather than knocking over toddlers

This is all very judgy. People home school for all sorts of reasons and one of the benefits of homeschooling is that the learning doesn't have to be in school hours.

Plus, different schools have different inset days. Do you know the inset days for all the schools in your area.

Lots of posters have suggested your DD was too young to be in the area for the older children. I suggest you look at your own behaviour before judging others.

Yab a bit U - in the soft play I used to go to (pre covid) there were signs up saying adults not allowed in. I def kept an eye out but probably did a fair bit of staring at my phone too. Or working. Or chatting to a friend. That's the point. and totally ok to leave a 7 yo to it while you take the 3yo. Would you really drag all three?

Loads of schools where I am are partly closed because of self -isolating staff. Kids themselves not self isolating.
you may not have seen but a quarter of a million children were off school last week.

And don't pretend you weren't judging the mum for being younger than you. PFB mothers are bad enough, never mind PFB mothers who are like an aunt looking down their nose at you.

I had mine at 32/35/39 and would have far rather had them 10 years earlier. Good luck with 2nd baby at 40- you'll be bloody knackered- I remember it well.

I don't troll hunt but fuck me this is MN bingo all over

Yeah YABU. I've had 7 years of soft play and I've earned the right to sit and have a cuppa on my own. I even go to the loo and leave them both! 7yo and 4yo and they look after each other. You're being a bit silly tbh.

YABsooooooU. I took my 3, nearly 4, yo to soft play today. I plonked my pregnant ass in a chair and told her to go play with her friend. There were some (much) younger kids toddling around where they shouldn't have been but it wasn't busy at all and the parents were in there with older kids.

I did plenty of time in soft play and other activities with DD when she was tiny and I needed to be more hands-on (often not by choice but because we'd been invited there). I'll no doubt do it again with the next little ones. For the moment though, I've trained her to know where I'm sitting and to play independently/with other kids in situations like this, and I'll be damned if soft play now means having to pay money to clamber through a ball pit with a preschooler.

🤣🤣🤣

"I allowed my precious angel into an area unsuitable for her and nobody changed their behaviour to accommodate that."

You're going to cringe at this in a few years time op.

The world doesn't revolve around your kid.

I was with you until you said you had your toddler in the big bit and she was knocked down by older kids running about... well yes thats why there's a separate toddler bit.

My pet peeve is when the big kids are in the toddler bit and parents do nothing about it. If your kid got knocked down by 7 year olds running about in there, you'd be right to be annoyed - they shouldn't be there for that exact reason.

Sorry but it’s incredibly annoying when people take babies on any play equipment they can’t manage alone and expect older kids to make allowances for them.

My pet hate is when parents put their children on equipment not age appropriate and then get annoyed. Local park has one of those wobbly bridges that you run from one side to the other, often people stick their barely walking kids on it and then get terrified when an older kid runs fast down it nearly knocking their child over, don’t like it put your child in their age appropriate area. It can work both ways I get annoyed with those parents.

Also a 7 year old can be left alone whilst a parent uses the toilet and is it really your business why the child is off school? You’ve got it all to come.

You become more unreasonable with every further comment you make OP. You didn't know different schools have inset days on different days, you apparently don't know how home schooling is usually conducted, you don't realise that 7 year olds don't have to be watched over like a hawk and you didn't realise that taking your 19 month old into the soft play section for big kids was a bad idea.
You're in for a hell of a rollercoaster ride as your kid gets older.

God OP, please just stop now. You are just coming across as more and more unpleasant with every new post that you put up.

It pisses me off no end to see Ms Prim with her spotlessly clean, perfectly polite little girl tutting at the wild boys and completely solidifying gender stereotypes into her child.

😂
oh the irony!

These posts are what makes MN what it is.

You took your toddler into an over 5 areas and then moan about being knocked over , what do you expect . As for why the child wasn’t at school that is absolutely none of your business , one of the joys of home schooling is that you don’t have to stick to school type hours .

One day yours will be all grown and you will be sat having a coffee and you'll watch wistfully while a woman chases a toddler through softplay while she's pregnant or has a baby in a carrier and maybe you'll shed a little tear because thank fuck you don't have to do that anymore.

You sound delusional. Not every child goes to the same school, so how can you comment on whether it’s an inset day or not? I’m starting to think you are a troll at this point because no parent gets to 40 and doesn’t know that they vary.

I have a 3.5 and 1.5 year old.

With dc1 I would have thought the same as you re older kids, as I semi nervously followed my 18 month fb around.

Now, I realise the joy of letting kids go in soft play areas- my older one specifically. The younger, I mostly follow around, for now.

As long as there is no malice - hitting, shoving etc or completely out of control boisterous behaviour then leave them to it. That is the point and joy of soft plays.

You'll probably realise this when your dc1 is a little older (plus exhausting younger toddler) and you realise how to reap the full benefits of soft play.

There are all sorts of reasons they could have been there. 3 isn't much older than your child, a 3 year old isn't in full control of its body just yet and can easily knock another child over with no malice.

And why on earth would the mother take a 7 year old along to the toilet with her? Bonkers.