“Your kid is really annoying us” - soft play rant

[HolaPedro]

Took my DC (4,2 & 20m) to soft play today.

I go in with my children and supervise. Oldest goes off and plays for a little bit in the “bigger” area but is within eyesight/earshot.
Comes into the baby area (designated 0-4 years) to play with his siblings.

a group of about 7 slightly older children come and play in the baby area… would say they ranged from about 5/6 to 9ish.

they are playing roughly - climbing on things they shouldn’t, throwing things around. All while their parents (5 of them) are on a table the other end of the room, chatting and eating a picnic, completely ignoring their kids. The only babies in the baby area are mine so just keep them away and kind of hope their parents will see in a second and address it.

My oldest is going to school in September so I’m trying not to smother… they want to play with these older children so I hover within earshot and tell DC not to do xyz. DC asks “can I play with you” and one of the older children happy and being quite sweet telling DC what game they are playing.

DC being quite chatty telling older child what they like doing - other children start saying “get lost/you’re so annoying/shut up/why are you here” and mocking my DC copying what they say etc..

in the end one of the girls in the group marches right up to me and says “you’re kid is really annoying us” right in front of DC. I was shocked and just said that this was the baby area and they can always play in the bit for older children if they don’t want to be near little ones

Now, with DC going to a big school in September I have been trying to explain that not everyone will want to play with you all the time… but at the same time, I think their parents should have at least had an eye/ear on them!? If I heard my child saying that I would have had a word with them

In the end my DC was so upset they just asked to leave so we did.

would love some thoughts, my DC honestly can be quite annoying but on this occasion I really don’t think they deserved to be spoken to like that. I do also appreciate that many older children won’t want to play with younger ones and would never force it

but I appreciate it’s something they might experience more at school. DC gets on fine at nursery and has some really good friendships

thoughts on how to discuss this with them? They are nearly 5 and quite good at understanding things so not worried about having a bit of a serious conversation

also WHY tf do people just ignore their kids at soft play? Does my head in

I actually have done this when a similar situation occurred in soft play where much older kids were playing in areas for babies. Solved the problem immediately! parents looked really embarrassed and got them out of there

They shouldn't have been in the baby section but had it been in another section, it would be different. Kids that latch onto other kids/adults and don't take a hint can be very annoying.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I basically told my kids that some families have no maners.

Why didn't you tell them to leave the baby/toddler area? If they didn't i'd have had a word with the owner to get them out, they shouldn't have been in there. I never tolerated older children like this, if the parent wasn't around I'd tell them myself.

Never go to soft play when schools are off, that's the easiest way to avoid many of the issues.

But you were not kind or polite in the response you gave in your anecdote. You were actually spiteful and quite bullying in tone, using the fact that you are bigger and ‘untouchable’ as the adult to be calculatedly hurtful and cutting in your words. A child saying someone is too slow in the tunnel is not deliberately intending to emotionally wound the slower child, they are merely being descriptive, and , as children, are developmentally and empathetically less able to understand their words might hurt another and are, appropriately for their age, focused on the impact of another’s behaviour on themselves.

A kind and polite response would have been to calmly point out this is an area for the littler children and little children are slower. That’s a response a child can listen to and learn from. That’s a sentence a child can develop empathy from.

All you did is model that it’s ok to be shame and be mean to someone you are pissed at, especially if you are bigger than them.

I'd say that was a win.

All you need to do is tell your child that some people aren't very nice, and move on. You are massively overthinking it.

What a MN response 😂

Children are brazen like this because adults don't tell them what's what. I would have very firmly said that her group were too big to play in the preschooler area AND that their behaviour was unkind.

That's not the point. The point is they were being nasty and very bold little blighters while their parents sat their gossiping and not supervising their little darlings.

I know 😂

I think they mean as opposed to the rougher middle class types...

Why do women always described as 'gossiping' but men get described as 'chatting'?

So sexist.

Soft play sounds like hell on Earth-
Have rarely heard good things about it.

There’s always one 🙄

Well they're wrong to be so rude and nasty

“ Soft play=Rough kids”
There was a little girl severely bitten by older children at one a few years ago.

Don't overthink it OP - tell your child that in future you'll ask for older children to stay in their section and that sometimes people won't want to play including him and teach him a polite way to handle it. They sound nasty, but sometimes kids in a group can be rude and spiteful.

This kind of thing has happened to me before. I just tell the kids off and tell them it's mean to be rude to small children. I don't care if they're someone else's, the parents are nowhere to be seen and they're in the toddler area, so they're in the wrong. Your DC will perk up I'm sure, just tell them those kids won't bother them again.

Pray let them not cross my path…. I don’t think I could contain my peri menopausal rage!

They were very rude. 🤬

Soft play is full of different types of kids, you have to steer your own DC away from ones that arnt going to be kind and when they get older they can spot it for themselves and stay clear of trouble. . If you’d already clocked they were little oiks from their behaviour then you should have discreetly suggested to your DS that he might want to find nicer kids to engage with and leave them alone before the inevitable happens . It’s the same at school and yes you have to put your own values and expectations of behaviour first and guide your kids by simply saying don’t play with them these kids seem nicer.
I agree soft play is for independent play with parents keeping an eye on what’s going on and kids learning life skills like spotting kids they should give a wide berth too.

Those bratty kids just wanted the soft play area to themselves. They have probably done this before , driven other kids out . Selfish kids raised by selfish parents.

Complete with spelling error and all! Someone will now start one of those boring threads about whether soft play is upper, middle or working class

Vividly remember my mum breaking this one out to one of my snotty school “friends” at primary. Excellent.

I think my inner child would have made an appearance and said something like ‘yeah, well, your face is annoying!!’

my nephew was around 5 or 6 when I taught him about karma.. a lad told him off at the small bmx track, I didn’t hear what was said but he came back over to me and I was just about to have a word with the lad when he tripped and fell right on his face.. I explained to nephew that day that if you’re mean to people karma will get you.. he always referred to it in similar situations and he still remembers it now and he’s in his twenties! 😂

I know that a child as described by OP has no manners! dc do behave differently when away from parents (she was only a short distance away) but if they've been taught how to speak to people they don't usually deviate too far from what they've been taught. The non-chalant entitled attitude of the parents as OP described plus the one dc that came, 'marching up' tells me this is a child used to getting their own way, has no boundaries and rules the roost at home. If this child marched up to me like that I would give them short thrift! too many people tolerate this kind of precocious nonsense all in the name of being kind, 'not my child', it does the child no favours at all. A quick sharp word is all she needed and she'd remember it for a long time.