Going to a playground without children?

[CantWaitForOctober]

Just watched a video on Facebook of a woman confronting another woman who entered a playground and sat down without having a child with her. The woman was shouting at her asking her why she was in the playground if she doesn't have any children with her. This happens a lot where I am adults will come and sit down in the playground on the benches. (To be clear I am referring to a children's playground gated with swings and slides etc not a park with loads of grass and benches) although this isn't something I would do personally AIBU to think this is ok and she shouldn't be confronting her and recording her? Lots of people in the comments agreeing with the woman and saying she was right to confront her.

If I’m perfectly honest, I might pay closer attention to a younger woman to confirm she wasn’t acting strangely. If she was just sitting reading her book or drinking a coffee, wouldn’t bother me, and I certainly wouldn’t challenge her.

Our local playground has a skatepark, mini football pitch and gym equipment, there's often adults there using the equipment without DC.

It's actually improved anti social behavior.

The shouty woman was rude and unreasonable. Maybe the woman in the playground was waiting for a go on the swings.

This.

There was a guy who works out at my local park using the monkey bars for pull ups etc when me and my mum where in with the kids. He had his music blasting without headphones and it was around lunchtime so busy with toddlers. We found it a bit odd that he chose that time to go and was also doing a lot of floor work which could have been done at home but we got the vibes he was trying to impress the mums opposed to sinister motives! I think if someone was using a bench I wouldnt think too much of it but depends on the context.

I’ve been accused of being this woman before but in a soft play, it wasn’t nice. I was with my then-small DD (unsure exactly how old DD was as years ago) but she’d ran off to play and as I’m disabled, I needed to sit down & watch her, rather than play with her in the playframe.
This awful woman arrived, took one look at me overweight, not particularly feminine-looking (but not at all masculine either) and decided I must be a lesbian <I am not> and as she was a mum of girls, I therefore must be some kind of threat towards her girls…..🤦🏼‍♀️
I was screamed at, called a lesbian-slur I won’t repeat on here (Dk) and ordered to leave the centre before she called a manager - all before I could get a single word in!
Right at this moment, my DD arrived, grabbed my leg and asked for something.
Now, you’d think this would be the point at which the woman apologises profusely but nope! She crouches down, takes DD’s hand and starts ‘reassuring’ her that she’s not to “be scared” and asking where her mummy or daddy is!!!!!! I won’t bore you with every word as it went on & on for a long time but I ended up having to show photos of DD as a baby to a very suspicious play centre manager who kept walking away then coming back to demand to see more ‘proof
and then staring at me after I produced it (and asked a staff member to keep filming me, despite them presumably having CCTV of me arriving with her…..), in order to ‘defend’ myself and avoid involving Police. Absolute, humiliating madness. Even after it was resolved and I was ‘believed’ I never got any kind of apology and the other mother had already left which is in itself, infuriating as she will have left feeling like a fucking hero!
It still haunts me whenever I think about it.

One day AI will provide a magic filter for the tiresome child-dislike on a forum called Mumsnet.

That's sweet and I can see why, lonely or not. Kids playing is a thing of joy and brings happy memories for most people. I'm Irish and old Irish people of both genders tend to enjoy being round kids / seeing kids, so I guess I wouldn't find stopping for a bit to watch kids playing strange?

Im really sorry that happened to you, disgusting behaviour from the woman and the play centre staff 😢

This is heartbreaking 💔 😢 It sounds like she would have loved more children? Did she ever marry? Did she ever get in contact with her child?

if it’s the video I think it was, the lady didn’t sit on a bench, she sat on the slide climbing frame and it put the young kids off playing on it. It’s not right they confronted her and filmed it. But why does an adult sit on playground equipment kids are playing on, when there are free benches.

No, never saw the child again. She did marry but before she met him she went to hospital for a routine op and the surgeon took it upon himself to sterilise her at the same time (see above, Ireland, 1970s, fucking evil). So no more children. I often think about someone getting in touch to tell me that they’re my cousin but as they were taken before they were a day old it’s possible they don’t even know they were adopted.

This