To block a child at soft play

[Avopopcorn]

Just had a bizarre interaction with a lady at soft play today and want to know if I am being unreasonable. DS (two years old) was playing in the toddler section with building block. It's just us, and there are loads of other blocks. We're all sat on the ground (my baby is with me too). Another toddler, same sort of age comes charging over and tries to grab the block my DS is playing with. DS is obviously about to get upset and react. We've been working really hard on DS not hitting in this sort of situation and saying "mummy help" instead which he did, despite being obviously upset by the other toddler.

I put one hand on the block and one between DS and the toddler to block him coming closer but don't move him away or anything like that, just a barrier arm while I say to the toddler that DS is still playing and he can have a turn in a minute. Cue the mum storming in, shouting "he's autistic! He's autistic! He doesn't understand, what do you think you're doing?!?!". She was mad. So I explained and she's still mouthing off. Then she takes him away and thirty seconds later it all happens again. Cue more shouting about him being autistic (but no extra supervision from her...) as I still wasn't letting him just take the block. She gets him, calls me a bitch and storms off to complain about me to the staff.

Poor staff member comes over, and says that she says I pushed her child. I explained obviously not, didn't think much more of it. Twenty mins later we go to leave and this woman is still crying to the staff member!

I've played it back in my head a few times and I don't know what else I could have done really. This kid was all over us, no parent near, and it would have escalated into a toddler hitting match if I hadn't done anything. Plus it's unreasonable for my DS to have to tolerate some random toddler taking a toy he's actively playing with (everything else in there wasn't being used, it wasn't busy). All toddlers require supervision and surely even more so if he's autistic and doesn't understand? If she had been with him she could have sorted it out herself.

If this ever happens again just say my child is autistic too and does not understand someone taking his toy away.

It would have depended on if my child would have got hurt. Most other parents with SN children did the same. Just said no we don't snatch. Sometimes it was easier to take the toy they were fighting over away. Then distract them both with something else. But they do it for attention and a reaction. The less they get a reaction the less that behaviour happens. As I said they did grow out of it so I must be doing something right.

The tone doesn't read entirely that way...it suggests more that the other child comes charging over and tries to take the toy and OP stepped in to prevent it from happening / also to protect the other child from potentially being hit, maybe. It isn't strictly written that she put her arm out to protect the other child as you suggest.

Will she always be around to prevent other children taking toys from her child so he doesn't hit them? Odds are unlikely. Especially at soft play.

Surely the aim of soft play is to encourage friendly play/toy sharing and acceptable behaviour.

But OP's child wasn't fighting over it, he was playing with it @Wetblanket78 and she may not have verbalised "no we don't snatch", but that's basically what her body language was saying. The other child didn't want any block, he wanted to take the another child's block and it's highly likely that if he had snatched it away and OP's child picked up another one, he would have tried to snatch that one too. OP may have reacted differently if the mother had been there to explain. But I don't think that was the issue of this thread, I think the issue was the other mum's extreme reaction.

I have no doubt you have done a lot more than just getting it right (from what you have said) and your children are probably lucky to have you

As I said earlier, my child was diagnosed at 2.4 . I still didn't allow him to snatch however many meltdowns I'd had to deal with that day

Obviously I was always right behind them even so could intervene sooner. Even when I had a baby hanging off my boob with dc2. I wouldn't have disciplined someone else's child though unless they were my neice or nephew also autism.

Of course she won't always be around but at 2 when he is a hitter, of course OP should be keeping a close watch and intervene if necessary. Especially as she has been working with her son to ask for help instead of hitting and he did exactly that.

Snatching isn't sharing. Plenty of blocks were also available, the other child wanted the exact block OP's son had.

Twat.

What a psycho she was. You did nothing wrong.
Interesting to note that a child that young has an autism diagnosis.

Literally everyone knows you did nothing wrong. Anyone denying it is a shitty parent who lets their kids snatch and hit other kids and wants the world to parent their children and revolve around their children.

And they're hoping that soft, weak parents will be idiotic enough to allow their own children to be bullied, hit and have toys taken away from under the auspices of "be kind".

I used to work in a school, long time ago, and I saw kids who couldn't/wouldn't play well and their attempts to force other kids to let them away with it a lot.

What ended up happening time after time is that the other kids started sneakily hitting, pushing and excluding the badly behaved child. They'd run off at the start of break and hide or pretend not to hear them, shove them and run away - it's just human nature. My solution was to try to take the badly behaved kid to do another activity , spend some time one to one with them when I could, because no way was I forcing kids to drop their boundaries and force them to be around kids they didn't like who couldn't or wouldn't do the right thing.

Kids have a right to boundaries and they will enforce them any way they can if another kid is badly behaved.

And again it just doesn't matter about the "reasons". Even where there are good reasons. Nobody has the right to expect anyone to be their punchbag, no matter what age.

In fact, it's at that age we start to learn that behaving like that means exclusion. And if a kid can't/won't learn that, they have a sad and sorry life ahead of them.

So if you're in the "but my child is allowed to be have badly because (excuse of the day) what will actually happen is that other children will start bashing, ignoring and excluding your child, and they won't give a shit about the excuse making.

And never forget that apples don't fall far from trees. If a child is behaving like a pain in the arse, it's often the mothers and fathers who are teaching that. No diagnosis required.

Well done idiotic parents who refuse to understand that the world doesn't revolve around your kid, no matter what challenges they may have.

Whine all you like, reality doesn't care how you feel.

It’s difficult. My now adult son is severely autistic. I still have to supervise him as he’ll take/grab stuff or food off of others. I used watch him like a hawk at that age as I knew what he’d do.

I have an autistic young child who really struggles to delay gratification and has had meltdowns because of it and I feel awful because I want him to experience the same things other kids can because it feels like he's always shut away so other people aren't inconvenienced, but he also needs firm boundaries and I don't see anything wrong with what OP did and if that were my son I'd appreciate other parents holding firm boundaries, however I'd expect them to hold them with me not for me.

The mother absolutely should have been keeping a closer eye on her child.

I’ve been in similar situations as the op a few times over the years and let me tell you that often giving the other child what you have doesn’t work. When your child picks up something else they want to snatch that as well.
They don’t want the block. They just don’t want the other child to have the block.
If the child was autistic then the mum should have been right there following and helping the boy.
You did nothing wrong and it’s entitled horrid parenting to just leave an autistic 2 year old to snatch other kids stuff. They need to learn and be taught how to cope, autistic or not!

The kids is 2 not 7. Ffs of course it’s not why older kids can’t cope.
Doing What you have described would probably why older kids have security and trust issues.
I mean who is going to be there fighting on your side if not your mum!!?
Yeah kid, you’re 2 now, you’re on your own! Off you toddle.
FFS

You know you're not in the wrong. I'd just write it off as a mother going through a really tough time in all honesty.

You’re wrong. I’m right.

I’m always there, but I’m not going to put my hand between a fucking child trying to take a block away from my child 😂

I don’t think you’re BU
Autism seems to be for some people a card to say “I can do what I want when I want fuck everyone else”

Healthy boundaries are a valuable lesson regardless of whether NT or ND

You’re odd.

It seems pretty obvious to me that she's walked in just at the moment her son has bounced back from charging into your outstretched arm, of course that looks like you've pushed him!

I think what you did was fine, but if she wrongly thinks an adult shoved him then her reaction is to be expected.

My sons are both on the ASD spectrum and one is ADHD. I taught them that the world won't change for them and they must adapt. They weren't allowed to go round snatching toys and being obnoxious. If my children misbehaved they were punished. My children were high functioning so I appreciate some may have a much harder time. I would have watched them like a hawk if they had done those things though. Sometimes my sons would ask me how to act in certain scenarios so they knew what to do - things like picking up a prescription at the chemist. My sons are in their twenties now and it may be a different era but I don't think parents of non-NT children then thought it gave them free licence to thump other children. The boy at creche who acted like a little thug and left mine with a fine set of toothmarks on his face and pushed him over because he didn't want to hand over the book he was reading was I think eventually asked to leave. The staff simply couldn't keep other children safe from his hitting, biting etc. As far as I could tell his parents never disciplined him. There was no suggestion that he was non-NT but I suspect it wouldn't have mattered because they had a long wait list and there were plenty of nicer children they could be dealing with.

The CCTV will expose all.

It's hard to teach children give and take.
Children snatch, then learn to not snatch.
To learn about aking turns - taking a fair time playing with something and then giving the other kid a turn - is hard for children to understand.
Compromising with those smaller and those less able to control themselves takes patience. Parents should actively supervise their own child.

The parent of the Autistic child did not watch her child well enough to read the situation before it occurred.

Had I been you, I would have prepared my child to give the other child a turn after the first blow up.

I would have explained to my child that that kid was finding it hard to wait for his turn (his think was like a little baby) and that we could be kind to stop him crying again. We could give him the block and use another.

The other mother should have been supervising her child! Full stop.

I've had this situation a lot in soft play unfortunately. One child was going on and on and on at me that he wanted the soft ring my son was sitting in. I explained very politely that there was an exact identical one a few feet away for him to use. He didn't want to, he wanted THAT one. In end I just had to blank him out and did not feel guilty for it.

I have had a couple of incidences where another child put there arm around my child's neck and was hurting him. In those incidents I did not think twice about physically pulling them off and telling them off.

You did nothing wrong OP, I think you just met a bad mum.

If you know you are right then there’s no need to care about what others think, you can’t stop them thinking it anyway

It must be so stressful for the child if his mother shouts and cries over tiny things like this.