Soft Play - Age Discrimination

[Humphflumph]

Please bear with me on this. Not sure I’m I am being unreasoned or the company.

Soft play type centre. Activity for under 7 years old. For health and safety reasons. Absolutely fair enough. However children age between 8 and 18 are not allowed entry to the site at all. They can’t even sit and have a drink with the adults.

DD4 has been invited to a party. I am required to attend because understandably the party mum can’t look after all the small children alone. But DD10 isn’t allowed in.
She’d happily sit and play her iPad or do some art whilst the little ones played. I imagine in the past lots of bored and then subsequently badly behaved older children have run amok. But this seems discriminatory on the basis of age surely?
Obviously the solution is to sort child care for the oldest. But I’ve used up all favours and play dates for the days and work. It’s the holidays and the juggle is hard enough.

I think they'd have a hard time defending this policy when it comes to a young mum who wants to bring her toddler to soft play.

I imagine they lose a lot of trade when a loyal customers first born turns 8.

Not ideal?! 😂

You’ve got out of going to a soft play party, I’d say that’s an ideal result 😂

Not sure ... If I had an 8 year old and a toddler, I simply wouldn't take them both to an activity place where only the toddler could play and the 8 year old had to sit and watch.

I'd take the toddler when the 8 year old was somewhere else, or I'd simply find somewhere else to go.

Which I assume is factored into the company's marketing because parents of younger children who know the "no over 7s" rule will be enforced are probably more likely to go there, and this will outweigh the parents who don't go because they have children in both age ranges.

And I imagine if 7 is the cut off, the play equipment is mainly aimed at 5s and unders so 6 and 7 year olds will be starting to find it dull.

MAYBE SPEAK WITH ANOTHER FAMILY ALSO INVITED TO THE PARTY WHO ARE IN THE SAME SITUATION, PERHAPS ONE PARENT CAN MIND THEIR CHILD AND CHILD AT THE PARTY, WHILE THE OTHER PARENT WATCHES THE OLDER SIBLINGS AT HOME. THEN THE NEXT PARTY SWITCH OVER ROLES.

They're probably sick of parents who don't stop their 8yo+ kids run amok.

That's not discriminatory, they provide a service for younger children, as is their right.

IT'S BEEN SORTED, OP HAS FOUND CHILDCARE.

Or your other daughter could go to a friend’s house?

I can understand them not being allowed on the equipment I suppose, but not to sit at tables is really bizarre!

I expect they've had experience with bad parenting practice in the past, where parents have allowed older DC to dominate the play areas. Not all 10 year olds are nice or well-behaved people - mostly because their parents are lax.

Imagine the opposite thread.

I took my 4 year old to a party at a soft play. Imagine the shitshow as every parent accompanying a 4 year old had brought all their siblings, aged from 8-18 along. There were kids everywhere, no room to sit. Great hulking teenagers intimidating the little ones while 12 year olds pushed them around on the bouncy castle.

There's the reason. And it's a damn good one.

I suspect you may find that the party is quite sparsely attended; it can't be that unusual for the children attending to have older siblings.

I’d leave the 10yo at home alone for a bit. Or even better, take up the offer of someone taking your younger one.
It’s a bit pointless for your 10yo to sit on her iPad for 2 hours surrounded by mums and very small children.

TBH, I often wish my local soft plays would enforce this. I’m sick of going to places and 11yo+ children who are the size of adults (sometimes very large adults) zip around crashing into the little ones. And I don’t believe an 8yo could go to a soft play and sit not joining in

Thanks everyone. I’m sorted now and can see the pro’s and con’s. I too hate it when big children dominate play areas designed for smaller children.

Surely they rule out loads of potential customers with this strange rule

I think your 4 yo will have to miss out

I can see why they’ve done that but it sounds very frustrating. Much better to make a teenage area with an arcade or something like that.

If they have enough people who like it then it won’t matter about the people they’re ruling out.

It's an awkward age to cut off at as 8yo siblings are too young to leave at home alone, and I wouldn't want to leave a 10yo to take a younger sibling either as they are still interested in bigger soft play frames.

It must be quite a small frame and presumably the owners think they can make enough money out of it from families without older siblings, but families with an age gap of several years will outgrow it quite quickly.

Get your dd a very tall hat