Soft play centres - my boys seem to keep getting into trouble

[mandbaby]

We have a local soft play centre which my two boys (4.7 and 2.11) adore. However, I hate it because nearly every time we go, I seem to have to warn them about their behaviour towards others.

Now, I'm of the opinion that we all take our children to these sorts of places so that they can let off steam and burn some energy, and I expect there to be rough play and for the odd, accidental bump to occur. But it seems some parents go over the top and I end up leaving before some mothers get out the stakes and pitchforks and light bonfires ready to throw my children on top of them.

Yesterday was no exception. It started off with my boys being the victims of an older, bigger boy (aged 8). My hubby overheard this boy saying he was going to "karate kick" our 4 year old in the face. Moments later, he did. My hubby had a word with the boy and that was enough for him to stay away from our boys. (His own mum appeared to be studying for something and had her nose so deep in a thick text book that her son could've committed murder and she wouldn't have noticed).

However, half an hour later and my boys were dominating those wrecking ball type things (big balls that you sit on and they run on rails from one area to another). A very small boy (aged 2ish) was in there and unfortunately found himself getting knocked down a few times by the balls that my sons were on. My hubby told them to calm down and be careful of the boy, but before we knew it, the young boys mother was there yelling and actually crying, before going to a member of staff saying her son was being "bullied" by our 2 boys. Now, I'm sorry, but whilst my boys weren't being angels, boys will be boys right? And if you leave your 2 year old son to go unattended in a rough play centre, don't you expect that he's going to get knocked about a bit? Hubby and I were both watching our boys every move and would NEVER let our boys get violent or angry and the moment they go over the top, we remove them and have them sit with us for 5 minute to calm down.

What bothers me more than anything though, is that something of this nature seems to happen every time we go. It really stresses me out because my boys must appear to some parents like really horrible children, and they're not! They're just boisterous boys letting off steam.

How do you deal with your kids when "rough-housing" becomes over the top behaviour? Where do you draw the line?

P.s. hubby didn't anticipate the 2yo getting knocked over as the boy came running in from the opposite end to where he was kneeling. One minute nobody was there, the next the boy came running in and was knocked over. Besides, we're in there to take care of our own children. Do you honestly expect that we keep an eye on and parent every other child in there? I've really heard it all now.

OP, I would go and have a nice glass of wine or snuggle up in front of the TV and forget all about this and MN.. I'm sure your boys are perfectly lovely and normal and it sounds to me like u are doing a brilliant job (mum of two boys also )

A couple of things that occurred to me whilst reading this - the soft play we go to has an under 1's bit, under 3's bit and an under 5's bit. I've only ever complained when much older children have been playing, what seemed roughly to me, but just playing to them, in a bit way younger than they were. when he was 1, 5 year olds were launching themselves into the ball pit at his head without a care in the world or parents watching nearby! Last week my ds wanted to play in the youngest bit. I went with him to ensure he was playing gently near those much younger & smaller than him. I would expect parents of older kids to do the same. If your soft play place doesn't have distinctions I'd find somewhere new to play, cos what seems 'rough' to a 2 yr old isn't the same as for a 4 yr old.

Also, I never see these places as a place where I get a rest; quite the opposite, tbh I'm almost always climbing up there to keep an eye on ds (2.10), mainly to ensure others aren't rough with him as he's at the younger end of the age range, but I'd still do the same when he's the eldest. They are not somewhere where the staff are there to moderate behaviour or actions of anyone, young of old.

At the end of the day youve not brought up the other kids in their with your values and you've got to keep a close eye to ensure they're not having other kids being tough to them or being rough to other kids.

I agree with summerlovingliz!

I have two boys and we have spent a fair bit of time in various soft plays over the years. I've only ever been involved in one confrontation with another parent. It was the day we found out that a friend's baby had died. I don't think that's a coincidence.

I think these things often aren't about the kids at all. We go in stressed and tired, maybe anxious having had a bad experience in the past. It's hot and noisy, we can't get a seat. It's a stressful environment and people lose their tempers.

It costs a fortune too. So if it doesn't make your life better, save the money and do something else.

At 2yo my ds would have been in the toddler area and if exploring the larger and more boisterous part of the soft play I would have been with him. There is no getting away from the fact that soft play areas are big, loud and boisterous. There is a massive difference between a child deliberately hitting or kicking another child and knocking them over accidentally. I think the op has been given a bit of a rough ride actually.

As for rough play, there is some evidence that suggests this could be beneficial for children. If you look at the animal Kingdom it's how young animals learn their boundaries with their siblings. It also helps channel aggression meaning they're less likely to act out . It's the same reason boxing in a controlled environment is encouraged among young offenders or those at risk of offending. There are physiological differences between the genders (testosterone v estrogen) and I don't think we do ourselves any favours by ignoring that fact.

"As for rough play, there is some evidence that suggests this could be beneficial for children. If you look at the animal Kingdom it's how young animals learn their boundaries with their siblings. It also helps channel aggression meaning they're less likely to act out . It's the same reason boxing in a controlled environment is encouraged among young offenders or those at risk of offending. There are physiological differences between the genders (testosterone v estrogen) and I don't think we do ourselves any favours by ignoring that fact."

I totally disagree.

Fair enough.

In that case, is it possible that some of this sense of being judged by other parents might actually be in your own head?

I do tend to keep an eye out for other kids when I'm around - I thought that was the norm?

Dr David Whitebread from Cambridge University wrote a report called The Importance of Play which raises some interesting points about the benefits of rough and tumble as one of the 5 main types of play. I'm talking about willing participants of course and still believe children need curbing at times. And of course they need teaching how to be gentle with and cognisant of others too.

I do too.

If other LOs are around then we must be careful not to endanger them, or allow our children to.
It's part of social responsibility.
I have brought up my kids to enjoy their fun but to be sensitive towards the needs of others and act in a way that will not injure others.

Yes the parents of the smaller children need to safeguard them, but we all must make sure that we are not behaving in an unsafe manner.

It's part of being a community. Soft play areas are not bear pits with no rules and an "anything goes" attitude.
We still need to make sure our children are behaving in a social and responsible manner when they play at these places, and that means being mindful that their behaviour does not jeapordise younger or more vulnerable children.

I get your point OP, even though after reading the whole thread and re-reading your opening post I have to agree with the others that your wording painted an ambiguous situation that led itself to the two contrasting interpretations by everyone up thread.

First at all, I think that rather than asking for advice about where to draw the line about “rough-housing” behaviour, what bothered you the most was the over the top reaction by the mother of the 2 year-old and you wanted to know how to deal with such over the top reactions when you said that “something of this nature seems to happen every time we go”.
I can only comment on the isolated incident you describe, and definitely it was not your fault (although I wasn’t there, and only have your side of the story).

I can see that the 2 year-old being knocked down the one time by your children was an accident. You said your 4 year-old immediately apologized and that your DH told your sons to tone it down as they could accidentally hurt someone.

This is in complete contrast to the 8 year-old announcing he is going to “karate kick” your 4 year-old in the face and then doing it. Not only there is deliberate intention to hurt another child, but the child who did this was also much older in age and should know better than to do this kind of thing.

Despite the “karate kick” incident being more serious in nature, you described how you calmly dealt with it and that the oblivious mother didn’t even become aware of what had happened. I personally think you should have mentioned it to her, because otherwise how can she reassess her parenting and take corrective measures at home if she doesn’t even know what her 8 year-old son is up to?

And then, on the other hand, the subsequent incident that took place when your two sons were playing boisterously with each other and accidentally knocked a 2 year-old that they hadn’t noticed had entered the area, despite being milder in nature (i.e. not deliberate intention from your sons to hurt the 2 year-old, and immediate apology when this happened, plus father being aware of it and exercising parenting to reinforce correct behaviour from the children who caused the accident), it was the one incident that elicited an over the top reaction from the 2 year-old’s mother.

I can totally see how you felt. So, as someone else recommended, have a well-deserved glass of wine and put it behind you.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do about other parent’s reactions. Just as you cannot be expected to watch over or parent every single child in the soft play area (not your children, not your parental responsibility), you cannot expect to raise the levels of parenting of everyone else there and expect their reactions to be like yours would be. Everyone else is as they are, and you just have to accept it, and grow a thicker skin like someone else up thread wisely advised you.

Obviously, you do the best you can to keep your children out of harm, and make sure they don’t harm other children, like you seem to be already doing.

Whether the previous incidents on the other occasions that you mentioned are also just small accidents that fall into the “boys will be boys” or “kids will be kids” category; or are actually a reflection of your own children’s behaviour, I cannot comment on that because I don’t have the details.

And what is wrong with the expression “boys will be boys”? (By the way, English is not my first language so I might be missing something in translation here).

I actually agree with LittleLionMansMummy’s post. Even though I am not claiming to be an expert in this area, I have read several books on raising boys, and it is not the first time I hear about the evidence that suggests that rough play could be beneficial for children.

And I know my personal sample is small, compared to the ones they must have used for this kind of research, but I am the mother of two boys (1 and 5 years old). Among my extended family (nephews and nieces) there are a total of 8 boys in contrast to 2 girls, and all I can say is: Oh dear…

Every time there is a family reunion, trip, Christmas, etc, I can see first-hand how boys are so different to girls. Plus, I can also see how friends with only daughters similar ages have such a different experience to ours dominated by boys.

Obviously, not all boys have the same level of boisterous behaviour and like the same level of rough play. It’s more like a spectrum, with different children being at various different points of the scale. But I am not deluded that there is no difference between boys and girls.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with OP’s post (I just wanted to mention it because it has been my own experience). And whatever biological difference between boys and girls, it is not justification for over the top rough play that ends up in someone being hurt or antisocial behaviour.

In response to your question OP, you have to draw the line yourself. You have to decide when you think rough play is over the top and could end up in an accident, and make sure your boys follow your rules for “rough play”. And bear in mind that your line might not be the same as the one of other parents. When playing with other children your boys need to be extra careful, and possibly avoid playing rough if the other child is too young, not up for the same level of roughness that you allow, or has a very sensitive parent. Not a straightforward one-fits-all recipe for “rough play”. More like trial and error until you get the line to a level you and your boys are comfortable, and that you think it would prevent accidents between your own boys and any other children.

I don't like the phrase "boys will be boys". In my experience in RL, what it really seems to mean is "I'm using my DCs gender as an excuse for their bad behaviour that I'd rather just shrug at than deal with".

Not saying boys aren't boisterous and there aren't differences between boys and girls, but the 'boys will be boys' line gets trotted out far too often as a justification for behaviour that really shouldn't be acceptable.

Rough play can be a good thing for children - not just boys - who enjoy physical play. However it needs to be closely supervised by an adult and soft play, where other children could be hurt by it, is not the best place for it

Lotta I agree, many children enjoy rough play, but soft play is not an appropriate venue.
Often crowded, visibility poor, children of mixed ages around, supervision often lax, too much potential for injury.
Not the best environment to encourage or allow rough play.

Rough play can be a good thing for children - not just boys - who enjoy physical play. However it needs to be closely supervised by an adult and soft play, where other children could be hurt by it, is not the best place for it

This.
Both boys and girls enjoy 'physical play' (in girls, this is often repressed: physical girls tend to be discouraged, introverted boys pressurised to enjoy rougher play, but that is another proven and not by self help books issue).
But too often it is trotted out by parents physical play is confused with inconsiderate play.
For rough play to work it needs to involve children of the same body size and 'toughness' who want to play. They must want to AND be able to. Only when children understand that, can they engage in low/no supervision rough/physical play.

If they happily dive in with a 2 year old there, that's not on. Depending on the child they either don't understand yet and need more supervision OR they are being knowingly selfish/careless and deserve to be spoken to firmly.

Funnily enough when girls do something stereotypically 'naughty' for their gender (e.g. verbal unkindness might be an example) no one says "girls will be girls". It isn't about type of play IMO: it's about expectations and standards.

The personal qualities both boys and girls learn from low-supervision physical play can be seen in adult contact sports such as Rugby, Gaelic Football or boxing: although it seems very rough from the outside, there is a huge sense of what is 'fair' and 'unfair'. This is not just because people of influence are watching, it's inherent with most adults passionate about these sports. You can also see it in many adult workplaces etc' - we don't need someone to tell us the difference between mates joking and a nasty joke... we learned this as kids. First through structured physical play and then with more freedom.

Where it goes wrong is if adults allow kids to think 'rough and tumble' = no rules.
Or if they fail to notice patterns of behaviour/incident and intervene.

Re previous post... past life as a play worker/playcentre manager/child-development type bod. :) Might have dealt with too many 'accidental bullies' (i.e. kids hurting others again and again because they didn't care, rather than out of malice) whose parents said "boys will be boys" and often had a perfect girl not allowed to get so much as a grass stain on her knee in tow, waiting to rebel.
And oh yeah, I've done my time in soft play hell. Inflatable soft play hell. Shudder.

squizita- I completely agree.

There's a 2 boys at school ( one in dd1's class and one in dd2's class, brothers ), every day they run around bashing into people whilst their mother stands their and does nothing other than say 'oh, they are just being boys ), yesterday the younger boy ran straight into me and hurt my ankle, now if that was a smaller child he had run into he would have knocked the flying, turns out later that day he did run into another child and knocked them flying breaking a bone in the boys hand ( boy has to have surgery ). I don't understand what part of that is 'oh, they are just being boys', what happened to respecting others?

I don't let my dd's knock into people, push people or trip people up, not because they are girls but because I expect the. To respect others around them.

'I didn't raise my boys to be boisterous...but by the very nature of their gender they are likely to be'

That is unreasonable.

I no longer take my 3 year old boy to soft play anymore because it brings the worse out in him.

All kids, good or naughty, seem to turn wild in there. Mums and Dads are just sitting and chatting and not watching their kids.

I have a 1 year old, so as my 3 year old is not allowed in the baby section, I cannot always watch them both.

I didn't like how my 3 year old was behaving in there.. Wild and heavy handed at times. 3 Older kids cornered him and began pushing him and goading him with a biscuit and he began screaming and pushing them back. The mum did actually come over and apologise, which was rare to be honest, but still.. It just seems to make them
All wild!

We haven't been for 4 months now. We used to go every week from November to February.

"All kids, good or naughty, seem to turn wild in there"

I can't agree with that.

Forgot to say, his nursery rang in March saying that he was becoming heavy handed and had even pushed a member of staff!! I was absolutely mortified and stopped going to soft play and began to watch my own behaviour as a mother. I limited my shouting and tried to calm things down more instead of me reacting to his bad behaviour by going from 0-60! I was more attentive with him and made sure he was reassured with lots of hugs and kisses etc.

Within two weeks we'd cracked it. And we're still just trying to calm things down more, I have 4 kids! I must also add that his speech is quite poor so I think he sometimes got frustrated.

I also hate gender stereotypical stuff as the mother of a boisterous 5 year old GIRL.

ya all bu imo, if you don't watch 2 year olds its a recipe for disaster. The 4 year old is old enough to stay away from unpleasant 8 year olds but obviously he enjoyed winding him up. The 8 year olds mother shouldn't let him behave like that.