Had a near-meltdown in our local park this afternoon when a couple of parents let their kids monopolise the baby-swings for ages, while others (especially me and DD2!) were waiting.
The park is OK - could be much better, frankly, but it's what we've got - there are a couple of baby-swings and no 'big' swings. But there's a slide, climbing frame, tyre-swing, see-saw, etc for bigger kids. DD1, who is 5, makes the most of what's there - she often meets friends there and they find something to do. DD2 is only a year old, so she's pretty limited to the baby-swings. It's always pretty grim on a Friday afternoon, in terms of being packed with kids and parents. We live in a very mixed inner-city bit of south-east London, but the park is located right beside a small private 'pre-prep' school - the parents of kids who go there do have a tendency to treat the park as an extension of the school and their own private space, and this seems to manifest itself particularly obnoxiously on a Friday, when they're all out in force. DD1 goes to a very good state school nearby, and many of her friends use the park too - but today, as often, we were outnumbered!
So the baby-swings were monopolised by older kids - maybe 5-6 years old - they'd been on for ages, and their parents were right beside them, chatting loudly to each other and disregarding DD2 and me hovering nearby. My usual experience is for parents to notice other children waiting and to limit the amount of time their kids spend on the swings; certainly if my own DD1 is on a baby-swing I make her get off if we see a baby or toddler waiting.
Eventually I get fed up of waiting and say 'are you going to share the swings?' Couldn't quite believe the hostile response I got. First I'm told they didn't see me, and the 'rule' is to wait somewhere other than where I was standing (it's my local park, FGS, I've been going there day in day out for 5 years, even if my DCs don't go to the local 'pre-prep'); then I'm told it's first-come-first-served and there's no reason why older kids shouldn't play on the baby-swings for as long as they like. Eventually one of the mothers said 'come on darlings, let's give the swing to the lady' (note - not 'the baby'!) I was furious, and felt like saying - but didn't, to my shame - 'you might pay for your kids' education, but don't you feel the need to teach them how to take turns and share'.
So AIB horribly U? I would have felt the same on the sharing issue regardless of who the parents were, but am I just being hideously chippy because it's the private-sector tendency? I've always found the cliquiness of that particular set of park-parents intolerable - it's not a one-off, although I've not had a run-in like that before. It drives me insane the way they treat a public park as an extension of their kids' private school and effectively exclude other families (we definitely won't be going there straight after school in future, unless as part of large group). I felt like smacking them!