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? 🫣🤣