To think this mum could have done something a bit more effective?

[Canonlythinkofthisone]

It's not very exciting but I'm just a bit perplexed by events of today.

Took DD to an adventure type playground thing. There was a slide. Long story short at one point, a child held the slide hostage by sticking himself half up and half down, refusing to move, meaning no other children could use the slide.

No big deal right, loads of other stuff to play on. However, I'm a people watcher and so I watched this unfold.

Mum, looking a bit harassed, repeated approx 30 times, come on joey. Off you get. That's it. For 15 solid mins she stood at the bottom of the slide repeating that, quietly.

Kids were queuing up to use the slide. If it had been mine DD. A couple of nice asks, a stern get down, and if still no budging. I'd have just gone to remove her.

Eventually a bigger child approx 8yo (the one in question was about 3/4) took matters into his own hands and barreled down the slide taking out the 4 year old.

There were then loads of tears and tantrums and the mum of the 4yo was having a right go at the dad of the 8yo.

But AIBU to think the mum should have/could have just removed the problem from the slide? 15 minutes when toddlers/young children are involved is a long time, and I was just a bit baffled by her complete ineffectiveness. Or AIBU?

My rule is that if you want to play with the babies or in the baby area, you have to play by baby rules, be monitored like a baby, and put the babies first. And be picked up like a baby if you're behaving like one.

I can't stand feral 7yo in the toddler play areas who want to play with the babies whilst their parents ignore them.

I hate seeing parents repeat themselves multiple times and when kids don’t listen they go on and on. Repeat once and then act.

There have been times in my life where I would not have been able to lift a child off a slide.

And at those times, I would have folded my arms and said, "Well, it's up to you, Jimmy, you know I can't get you off the slide but if you don't get down yourself someone else is going to slide down and push you off and I won't be able to stop them either." And waited.

If he hadn't moved after 5 mins I'd have removed him. And I identify as a gentle parent. As the subsequent events show, it was a safety issue.

And btw, she wasn't being a gentle/authoritative parent. She was being a permissive parent.

'A bigger child approx 8yo took matters into his own hands and barreled down the slide taking out the 4 year old' For some reason that description really tickled me 😂
That kid learned that actions have consequences. Some parents are so bloody namby pamby. On a recent thread someone advised that parents should praise good behaviour and ignore the bad. Ignore bad behaviour? No wonder the world is in a fucking mess.

The mum ought to have thanked the 8yo for saving her a job.

If my toddler was blocking the slide, I wouldn't bother climbing up myself. After a couple of warnings, I'd ask my bigger one to dislodge the slide-blocker.

As a general rule, it's not for older kids to pussyfoot around little ones in the playground. Barring deliberate violence or inconsiderate recklessness, it's for their minders to hoick them out of the way.

I remember being at RHS Wisley last summer, they have a great playground. Same thing, kid blocking and parent being oh so gentle. In the end this woman just yelled out to the mum JUST GET THEM OFF….and she did. Loved it.

her child learnt a valuable lesson about social hierarchy and behaviour today at least. The 8 year old clearly saw the most direct solution. Had the 4 year old been hurt then perhaps the Mum might think more clearly next time. My only thought if my child did that would be that another child would just barge him out of the way so apart from it being naughty behaviour, the Mum allowed her child to stay in a precarious situation by being useless.

The 8 year old barrelling through is a natural consequence

Speaks volumes that she can't tell her own kid off but lets rip at the dad of the other kid!

We had a funny incident when a younger child shoved dd1 off a bed on a group weekend away. She was about 8 so this was quite unusual and came downstairs to tell the assembled parents. The parents of the offender looked like rabbits in the headlights. Dd1 who was usually polite but said loudly “I cannot believe I have been shoved off a bed and the parents are doing nothing about it”.

Other kids hate gentle parents they want natural justice!

YANBU.

To add my own recent slide experience, my DS was on one, it was a good one with different rope climbing approaches to it and then the slide itself was a curved, tubular thing, so three quarters covered. Because of the curve and the cover it was particularly dangerous for kids to be climbing up the slide itself as kids coming down wouldn’t necessarily see kids climbing up. We hadn’t been there long, think DS had been down once, and kids were constantly climbing up it. There were two adults near me, sat fairly close to the bottom of the slide, neither saying or doing anything about the climbing up. One of them was definitely the mother of two kids who were doing a lot of climbing up. Just kept looking at her phone.

I gave it a few minutes, but in the end I just called quite loudly near the slide ‘can you stop climbing up please because you’re stopping anyone else from using the slide’. It was a safety issue as much as anything.

To the kids’ credit, they carried on a bit but when they emerged from the slide they started catching my eye and they then stopped. I made a point of smiling at them after that, sort of as a thank you. They needed a bit of direction rather than just being ignored.

I think what the OP describes is even worse though. Totally ineffectual but probably quite helicopterish at the same time. So you would find it much harder to intervene yourself.

The thing I'm not getting is what kind of slide is suitable for age 4 and age 8. Surely a 4 year old is in the littlies part of the park.

But if he stopped because he was scared then maybe telling off isn't the approach

I would have told him get off there are others waiting to use the slide. Then maybe ask the mum to go get her child as we’ve limited time to wait to use equipment. Then I’d have told 8 yo well done for moving the obstacle!!!

Kid got what they deserved. I would have told the mother to go grab her kid or gone and yelled at the kid to get off.

My 4 yo plays with 8 yo in the park. Maybe you're thinking of a 2yo? Most 4yo are very capable

She was being a shitty, ineffective parent 😁

Maybe he's the type to get more stubborn when given an instruction? Some children I know (the minority, but some) would be more likely to stay there longer if properly told off, or coaxing him down may have been her attempt to not send the park trip into a screaming tantrum and she was exhausted and couldn't deal with it.

I wouldn't particularly be judging her, I might think her parenting isn't ideal but that applies to lots of choices and considering we don't know the child she could well have been doing the best choice for how he generally reacts to things.

I would be annoyed if my DC went into a 3/4 year old at that 8 too, wouldn't have any problem with them telling them to move, but potentially hurting them isn't OK at that age.

It's interesting how these parents who can't say boo to their own child suddenly get very assertive with other people.

We were at a big slide which was, frankly, the main attraction of the playground. It had a twisty enclosed slide (like a tube) and a boy (about four) was trying to climb up it from the bottom. Obviously he wasn't getting far. The mum was standing nearby chatting, glancing over occasionally, but doing absolutely nothing. Then a child at the top, not seeing what was happening, set off down the slide and this boy's head was in the tube at the bottom. I acted quickly, bearing in mind the other child was now in the slide, and said "come away quickly or you'll get kicked in the head." He got off, just in time as the other child shot out the bottom, but the mother immediately came over and had a go at me: "He's not doing any harm." I just said " He was about to get hit in the head by a child sliding down." But I did wonder what was going on in her mind when she was just letting him do it.

I agree. I expect it was more like 2 or 3 minutes, but felt like much longer.
The parent was ineffectual and put her child at risk. I do not agree that the 8 year olds actions were correct he was likely double the size and weight of the 3 year old, and could have sent them flying and broken their arm. Two wrongs don't make a right!

AIBU to think its hilarious that the 8yo did this? 😂

I saw a dad yesterday pleading with his DS to walk nicely. Child was about 3 and stroppy. Dad was getting increasingly flustered, trying to negotiate. My teen dcs were with me and just looked at each other, knowingly.

A few minutes later a mum was threatening her young daughter with calling the police because she was mucking about in the toilets. The girl completely ignored her and ran off laughing.

I never smacked my dc. Not once. They were by no means perfect and they would push the boundaries. But they knew that “No means no” and no amount of pleading would change that.

With the 8 year old in the OP, that’s exactly what would have happened in my childhood. We all played in the park as a group. The older ones looked out for the younger ones but they also kept them in line.