This happened a few weeks ago but has been playing on my mind. Myself, DD (4) and DS (7) were in a fairly large local park. There is a piece of equipment that is always popular- it’s basically a spinning seesaw. Two girls around 10 had been on for a while and once they vacated, my two children were quick to hop on. With in around 20 seconds one of the girls returned and said to me “can I have a go?”. I replied “oh they’ve just gotten on but once their go has finished it can be your turn again”. The girl immediately responded “Can I have a go?”. At this point I noticed the sunflower lanyard. I couldn’t see any parents nearby. So I tried “They will be done in 2 minutes then you can get back on”. At this point the child started yelling “get off, get off, get off”. With no parents in sight to advise- I then said “let’s set a 2 minute timer and then they will be done”. The child then ran at the equipment, towards my 4 year old in an attempt to grab the seat. What actually happened was she got smacked full speed in the face by the spinning seesaw and fell to the ground. She also nearly knocked my 4 year old DD off who was now hanging off the seat whilst it continued to spin. My immediate attention was to ensure DD was secure (and the seesaw had stopped spinning). After that I tried to attend to the now wailing child
lying on the floor. As no one approached I started to gesture towards them whilst yelling “is this child’s parent here?”. After a few moments I noticed a man and women sat on a bench on the other side of the playground visually acknowledge us, the man then came across and attended / tried to encourage the child to to leave the seesaw and return with him. Which didn’t go well as they continued to scream that they wanted a go. At this point I removed my children from the equipment and we went elsewhere. I am wondering if I should have dealt with this differently. Once you noticed the child was SEN would you remove your children immediately? Should
I have not engaged with the child directly at all once I realised that were SEN and instead tracked down the parents? Obviously it didn’t turn out well with the child getting injured. I’m wondering what would be the best approach if it happens again as they may also be local to us.