Soft play showdown

[ThisWildHedgehog]

Sorry this is long; if you make it to the end, you deserve a medal for patience and probably a biscuit. 😂

I took my toddler and baby to soft play yesterday to meet a friend with her two little ones, who are around the same ages.

Now, before anyone tells me “you knew what you were walking into…” YES. I absolutely did. I understand that soft play is essentially a mum’s version of full-contact dodgeball, complete with sticky hands, rogue socks and the desperate hope that ear defenders will be a trend for fall 2026…

HOWEVER, yesterday was particularly unhinged.

We were all sitting on a baby sensory mat when my baby started crawling around. A two-year-old girl came over and immediately grabbed him by the leg from underneath him, causing him to flop onto the mat. Thankfully, he was completely unbothered. I picked him up and she came back and tried to grab his leg again. This time I was holding him, so I moved him out of reach and said, “That’s not kind. We don’t pull other people.”

She then came over again and tried to kick my friend’s baby. We blocked her because, by this point, we were starting to see a pattern.

A little while later my older son was happily shovelling sand from one section of the indoor sandpit to another when she grabbed the shovel and tried to wrestle it away from him. I stepped in again and said, “We don’t snatch. That isn’t kind.”

At this point, I was getting a little fed up with spending my playdate supervising a child who wasn’t mine, so I went to find her mum. She was stood about 30 metres away, around a corner, in the café area.
I approached her and said, “Have you got a daughter in a pink top?”
She immediately replied, “Oh no, is she being naughty?”
I said, “I think she’s needing some supervision.”
She asked what had happened and I just said, “She just needs someone with her.”

So Mum came over and stood outside the sandpit.
In the most monotone voice I have ever had the displeasure of hearing, she repeatedly said:
“I told you no sandpit. Come here.”
The child completely ignored her.
This continued for what felt like the length of the first Avatar film.
Eventually another mum in the sandpit actually offered, “Did you need someone to pass her to you?”
Honestly, I nearly applauded.
Eventually Mum got hold of her and wandered off muttering “You are a good girl” to her.

Fine. Situation over. We can all go back to enjoying our children.

Except… apparently not.

We then noticed Mum going around speaking to the owner, then the mum who had helped her retrieve her daughter and, finally, she approached my friend.
It was essentially an investigation into the alleged crimes committed by her two-year-old.

She wanted to establish exactly what her daughter had supposedly been accused of, followed by the declaration that “her daughter would never do those things.”

Okay. 🤷‍♀️

Nobody was trying to cause a scene. We just wanted her to stop kicking/grabbing/snatching from our children.

But then she came over to me and repeated the same bizarre assertion, despite not having witnessed any of it, that she was absolutely sure her daughter hadn’t done anything.
At this point I said:
“If you had been watching your child, you wouldn’t have to interview the entire soft play to find out what happened.”
She replied:
“I can’t watch her 24/7.”
She also said “it’s hard to teach a two-year-old right and wrong.”

Yes. I agree.
That’s generally why we… supervise them and teach them.

The conversation was becoming heated and I didn’t want to stand there arguing in front of my children, so I ended it with:
“I politely came to get you, I was respectful and calm with you, and you are making a mountain out of a molehill. Please leave us alone.”

And then came her closing statement:
“Well, I won’t have my daughter apologise for something she hasn’t done, so I take back our sorry.”

There was never even an apology to retract…

At this point we just wanted to get on with our playdate without either her or her daughter bothering us.

The owner then came over, apologised to us, invited us back for another playdate and explicitly said that, of course, children need to be supervised.

And the other thing that really struck me was the layout of this place. There were loads of stairs, raised platforms and areas where a two-year-old could quite easily get herself into trouble.

So even putting aside the behaviour towards other children, I genuinely don’t understand how you can be 30 metres away around a corner while your two-year-old is roaming around a large soft play independently.

I completely accept that two-year-olds grab things, snatch, push, kick ect. I don’t expect toddlers to behave perfectly. I do expect their parent to be somewhere nearby when they’re doing it, though.

Right, where are those biscuits? 🫣🤣

Some of these replies accusing OP of being ChatGPT, honestly. 🙄As OP has pointed out herself, some people enjoy writing, like to make their posts entertaining and are good at it. Imagine that! Personally I like her writing style and no I am not a sock puppet, before anyone chimes in with that one. 🙄

As for paragraphs... people can't win on MN. They get chastised for writing in paragraphs, for not writing in paragraphs, for setting out the full scene from the beginning ('I couldn't get through all of your LONG post OP'), for not setting out the full scene from the beginning ('massive drip feed')... I mean, there's just no pleasing some people. 🤷‍♀️

A common theme on similar Mumsnet posts is that people are extremely ignorant of what a two year old is capable of doing or understanding. A lot of people despite the numerous literature that is out there, expect a two year old to behave like a 4 or even 5 year old. Well there not going to and yet people keep being surprised at this.
If you choose to venture into a public space that is frequented by other children at all separate stages of development, then you must accept what comes after. The good and the bad. You cannot control an outside environment.

A two year old doing what you describe would not phase me one iota. I would interact and explain to my own child that two year olds sometimes hit or kick because they are learning and exploring and this is a normal stage of human development. I would then demonstrate to the two year old how to be gentle.
I would certainly not hunt down the mother and have a fraca over it in public, because frankly that is for the uneducated and ill informed. Grown adults arguing over young children's behaviour is pathetic and yet we expect so much more from children themselves.

The use of paragraphs seemed correct to me - breaking up events according to time

although long overall it didn’t read as long as many other things because each section was too the point

I think OP did very well keeping it light rather than descending into an angry tirade - long term a much better approach for overall mental health

Does anyone else think 'Soft Play Showdown' would make an epic pitch for a new Channel 4 reality show in which one toddler+parent pair are eliminated each week by public vote and the winner gets lukewarm Fruit Shoots for life?

So you think this mother is parenting adequately?? Good grief.

Soft play; the seventh circle of hell made so much worse by mothers like the one you describe. Appalling behaviour and she’s going to have a rough time with that kid going forward

Lazy parent ! And u called her.out she didn't like it poor child

I did stop hovering over my child at around that age, only because I knew her temperament and she wasn't the type of toddler to cause or get into trouble. I would still have an eye on her most of the time but I'd be sat having a coffee on the sidelines. In this case, her child is a menace because she condones the behaviour, and she will get worse as she gets older.

I totally agree.

I like to see posts well written and laid out instead of a wall of badly spelled, badly punctuated writing. However, I don't pull posters up on their bad grammar, nor do I accuse someone of using AI.

Are these posters jealous?

I wouldn't watch it, because it would give me PSTD, but it would probably get commissioned...

Love this 😂😂😂

Oh Lord it's hard to be humble. when you're perfect in every way!

That's for all those who have never made a typo, misused an apostrophe or made some sort of mistake.

As a very old lady I think that the mistake people make is being too polite or 'gentle', if the offender repeats an action having been spoken to already then maybe No, stop doing that, it's very naughty! would have a better effect and damn what the absent, neglecting parent thinks.

Exactly why they should be supervised their not 4 or 5 she was 2 years old she shouldn't be roaming around by herself she could get hurt as well 😔

If she enjoys writing she should have written it herself surely? I promise you, that third paragraph is pure AI slop. You can spot it a mile off.

She was awful, babies could have been injured. She should have been watching.

People don't like being told .

I think that a lot of the 'oh, it's AI' responses come from people who are slightly jealous of a post which is written by a person who is eridite and is grammatically accurate, except the use of ect instead of etc of course. Hope I've corrected all my errors by proof reading.

The use of “Fall” rather than “Autumn” was the giveaway…

2 year olds need their parents with them in soft play.

you don’t get to graduate to coffee, cake and kindle till your kid is about age 5

Indeed and unless they are all professors of the English language at Oxford they have no right to criticise.

The key giveaway is the ‘owner’ of this gigantic softplay which houses a sandpit 30m away from a cafe appearing out of nowhere to ‘invite’ an irritated parent back for another ‘playdate’. None of that quite lines up with how things work in reality. Owners of large businesses do not mill around resolving the kind of disputes that occur daily. Customers are not ‘invited’ on ‘playdates’ although perhaps might be given a voucher for a visit if the upset had been more significant. There is also the casual certainty about details that wouldn’t actually be known in that situation, like the girl’s age, as well as somehow knowing which woman to approach in the 30m distant cafe. It’s a very recognisable tone and it’s not beautiful hilarious writing, it’s formulaic and hollowed out writing that sounds like observational comedy but is actually one step away from reality.

Well apart from ‘erudite’.

It isn’t because of the lack of errors, it’s the fact she is clearly trying quite hard to write in a highly amusing way but it doesn’t quite land.

Sadly you missed one, it's 'erudite'.

There are plenty of well-written, grammatically correct posts on MN which aren't accused of being AI. This one clearly is, and not because it's 'well written' (not least because it isn't).

We all have an interest in AI slop being passed off as human output, and when a post exhibits many of the widely-recognised tells of AI, it's absolutely fair to call it out.

Absolutely this. So many little mismatches with the way reality operates which sound plausible to people taken in by the authoritative tone but which don't bear scrutiny.

I don't read the reactions that way at all.

I read, "wow, it's in that annoying and affected style that is now everywhere; it must be AI."

💫 Key Takeaway 💫

It's not about jealousy. It's about dismay. 😞

(Sorry. I couldn't resist 🤣)

Was this in Preston, by any chance? Admit it would be too much of a coincidence, probably not the same mum, but there's one with a kid that age who threatens to punch people doing what you did.
So I wish I could say I'm surprised, but that's actually quite mild. Awful, but mild. And the stereotypes about it being Vicky Pollard types is very out of date-the worst permissive/gentle parents now, who don't stop their kids being brats, are often middle class!
Dread to think what things are going to be like when this lot grow up.