Do you let your DC climb up slides in the park?

[rosie79]

My ds who's 3 has always been really into climbing (like most kids this age!) and for as long as he has been able to has climbed up slides in parks as well as sliding down them. He always waits his turn if it's busy and doesn't climb up if someone is about to slide down. I have always let him do this as I know that he knows his own limits and has yet to have any accidents, he is careful. Our parks are rarely very busy either. However, I have often heard other mums say to their kids as they try to climb up the slide "no dear, go up the normal way" or the "proper way" or similar words to this effect, or worse "you'll get the slide dirty" !! So their shoes doen't make it dirty if they slide down?! .
It doesn't bother me what other parents let and don't let their kids do, that's their choice, but to imply that my child is doing something wrong or abnormal and give me funny looks or say stuff extra loud so I hear them, that's annoying!! surely in playgrounds children should be able to use the equipment however they choose to, exploring and being adventurous? Isn't this what childhood is all about? With a bit of adult supervision it isn't dangerous. Am I on my own in feeling like this?

Dear Blu thanks for the welcome - i can see that i'm going to have fun on this site!
Those of you who supervise your kids, teach them respect for others but allow them a little freedom to do things 'wrong' now and again WILL reap the benefits!
My 2 boys are both at secondary school now and doing really well - learning musical instruments, getting glowing reports etc even though I'm the least pushy parent you'll ever meet.

Meanwhile the little sh*ts who pushed them down the slide when they were two have all either been suspended or spend most of their time hanging around outside McDonalds in their hoodies so that no one recognises them when they go off to spray graffiti and swear at old ladies.

Tongue in cheek?

ha ha QPH, 'fraid so!

forty plus, that IS tongue in cheek, isn't it?

You don't really know what became of those 2 year old slide pushers - or do you?
Supervision and doing well at school... now I beg to differ.....
FWIW, I let my ds2 ( age 7) take a big bag of toy guns to the local park. He goes up to children to ask if they want to 'play armies' with him. Some children aren't interested, but some are, so eventually he gets a gang of 'soldiers' together, lets them pick a gun and off they go.

The game might not be very PC, but it is very rare for the children to have problems with each other or with the children who are not playing the game. They take orders from one another and rarely seem to quarrel, cry or hurt each other. This game is all pretty much unsupervised by me. I take the time to catch up on reading. My son got a glowing report from school.

Parents have even come up to thank me for bringing the toys to the park and enabling the children to have such a nice time together. All summer, going to parks at least once a week, I have had only one parent complain to me about my son and situation was not clear cut.

I know every child is different - my oldest ds needed much more supervision in order to play well at this age. Ok he is at a good secondary school and does lots of extracurricular activites, but you should have seen his end of year report . Not one I'd want to cherish.

Tigermoth, I too think by the time they are 7 they should be able to play unsupervised. My DS1 would love to meet yours in the park, he goes to our park every day with swords, guns and a bow and arrow. And always comes home with a 'really cool stick Mum'

My problem is the pre school kids who climb up the slide and their parents halfheartedly or just don't bother trying to stop them.

I'm trying to show DS2 how to behave in the park so that he can go on his own when he's older and to me slide climbing is just part of the park etiquette

I let my kids do whatever if no-one else around BUT if other kids around, I do have the rule "up ladders down slides" - teaches manners, stops arguments

Message withdrawn

but climbing up the slide is no worse than hanging around on the bottom of the slide, or halfway up the steps to the slide or, in fact, anywhere that's in some other child's way.

not sure why slide-climbing has been so demonised in this thread tbh...

Oh my god - can't believe this thread! Yes of course I let my ds's climb up the slide - how bizarre to think that they shouldn't. They don't do it if anyone wants to come down 'cos they've got good manners, but I always think it's good exercise for them - great for the legs, for balance and for working out that you can do things in different ways!

Tigermoth - yes, Dulwich Park, and in Brockwell Park too. the parents from the road Jay Rayner lives in, I think!

PPH - of course there are 7 trillion posts about slide-climbing - you don't think anyone would be so judgemental, undermining each others parenting choices and in breach of the MN Philosophy about anything IMPORTANT like ..oooh, I don't know...affairs with married men, do you?

Message withdrawn

Yes.

i just told dp about this thread and he's been pissing himself laughing ever since at the concept of parents who actually get upset about this. his exact word 'don't they have anything better to do with their time than worry about how a kid plays on a slide?'. think he has a point tbh

i'm with the hippy majority.... i don't let dd get in the way by doing it but if no-one is playing on the slide she can go up and down it whatever damn way she wants, and trust me it's not for fear of confrontation, it's beacuase i bring her to the park to play, as a break from the structure, rules and routine of being at home, it s the one place she can play whatever way she wants so i let her (within reason obviously, i don't encourage anything dangerous). it really amuses me that there are actually people who see the park as a lesson in 'social ettiquette', wtf?!

Please don't let this thread get to 300 posts...for the love of all thing holy.

Please.

Go and post about cling film, the etiquette of teaching your children to tie laces over the merits of velcro, names for your fanjo, NSPCC mailings, spam text messages, the weather in your area today, how gingery you like ginger biscuits (or indeed whether you like them at all), when you stopped believing in Father Christmas (with an incidental meander into why he now seems to be known as Santa Claus), why religion is evil, a la Richard Dawkins - just Don't Let This Thread Get Any Longer. Because it's BONKERS to care This Much!

Or, post at will, you mentalists. Because I know that line-drawing and beseeching not to post work about as well as trying to stop child abuse by priests [ooh]

well, you just said you don't let her get in the way. Isn't that social etiquette?

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im taking dd to a park tomorrow and im going to force her into climbing up the slide the wrong way just to see how many other mums get in a flap over it!!

and i will give her a fruit shoot to drink at the same time!

not really as she rarely notices why i've pulled her away and aimed her at something else, far too little to understand the concept of sharing and taking turns.... and when she's old enough she'll have learned those lessons elsewhere, at home with her db, at montessori etc..... she won't be aware that it's ettiquette..... it'll just be second nature.

like i said.... the prk isn't for teaching lessons, its for play

i

dont know

what all

the

fuss is

about.

Ha!

oh FGS!
my son is 6 and has never been able to slide down a slide.

if he managed it i really wouldn't be interested how he got up there and if anyone had something to say to me about it i would explain in words with very few syllables just why i wasn't bothered!