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?

Explain one thing

From a very BRITISH perspective

How can you TAKE A TURN .. when you're not in the queue? You have to be in the queue to take a turn.

We queue. Its what made our nation great.

This is going to make the list of what foreigners don't get about the UK, isn't it?

Twigtwoolett - nice argument, but it doesn't hold!

It is very simple, of course you can queue and not actually be directly behind someone in a line. In pubs there is always a very definate queuing system, people know when their turn is and who was before them and who will be after them at the bar, but they are not standing in a line behind each other!! So waiting your turn at the bottom of the slide does not go against any Brittishness of queuing. What made out nation great is that we can form an orderly queue in our heads even if people are just standing around!

Well i think my ds should learn the consequences of his actions. So if he climbs up the slide he has to step off the slide and fall to the ground. He has only done it 14 times so far with only 3 trips to a and e. he is learning well.

DS climbs the slide, under my supervision. In my local park, I can't recall seeing a child who hasn't climbed the slide. What does this say about my local area I wonder?!

Actually Georgina without being a foreigner, I WAS going to put this on the what I don't get about the UK thread!

Here kids climb up, hang off the edge of the slides, slide down alone, in groups, sort of on top of each other. Run up from both sides and they're all laughing and giggling and having fun and it somehow works out fine. The younger ones do manage and they figure it all out between themselves. Think German mums would find you totally weird if you complained about their dc climbing up the slide.

SSSandy - not just the german mums, a lot of british ones too

Germans would fail to understand that this discussion has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not it's right to allow your child to climb up a slide - it's all about class values.

Sorry - that really WAS a joke!

Oh the semiotics of class as examined through attitudes to playground etiquette are so loud on this thread that they are barely contained in the subtext!

Slide-climbing, it seems, is the preserve of either middle-class hippy-types keen to promote the athleticism and creativity of their offspring, OR conducted by brats unsuperbised y White-lighhtening-drinking counsil estate mothers.

Meanwhile the steps are occupied by the polite, convention-respecting children of middle class parents keen to use play as a way to insyill social mores such as queuing, and of devoted doting middle-class parents of tots, spending the long minutes thier prodigy spends dallying on the stepds glancing round looking for indulgent admiring smiles form the waiting crowd.

The parents of SN children, however, occupy a class-free zone of difficulty, with everyone being unsympathetic and censorious towards them.

Tee hee!

sad but true re: the sn kids, though

LOL ... reckon you're spot on there, Blu.

mannered middle class mum here... apparently i encourage my kid to go up the steps in order to instill conventions and respect for queues etc. - blimey well i apologise for being so boring and conventional and I can't wait till little sebastian grows up to be a civil servant!

If my toddler clambers speedily up the slide in an empty p'ground i won't physically drag him off the slide or tell him off but i will encourage him to go up the steps, and if there are children using the slide and he is trying to climb up the slide i will take him off and direct him to the steps - if other children are climbing up the slide i will only intervene if someone is liable to get injured through a collision. i won't tut.

I think consideration is something children do need to learn from their parents as it is extremely natural for toddlers to be self-centered. I certainly don't think manners are somehow the preserve of the m'classes, it is a shame that sn children are given a hard time as manners include being non-judgemental and considerate of others feelings a much more important issue than the rights and wrongs of slide use.

I am more concerned that my son seems to be the only child using the park at all most days we go making any worries about how to use the slide or anything else immaterial - don't people use parks outside of london?

mannered middle class mum here... apparently i encourage my kid to go up the steps in order to instill conventions and respect for queues etc. - blimey well i apologise for being so boring and conventional and I can't wait till little sebastian grows up to be a civil servant!

If my toddler clambers speedily up the slide in an empty p'ground i won't physically drag him off the slide or tell him off but i will encourage him to go up the steps, and if there are children using the slide and he is trying to climb up the slide i will take him off and direct him to the steps - if other children are climbing up the slide i will only intervene if someone is liable to get injured through a collision. i won't tut.

I think consideration is something children do need to learn from their parents as it is extremely natural for toddlers to be self-centered. I certainly don't think manners are somehow the preserve of the m'classes, it is a shame that sn children are given a hard time as manners include being non-judgemental and considerate of others feelings a much more important issue than the rights and wrongs of slide use.

I am more concerned that my son seems to be the only child using the park at all most days we go making any worries about how to use the slide or anything else immaterial - don't people use parks outside of london?

As the OP I'd like to point out that although the class observation is quite funny and maybe mostly accurate, I don't fall into the stereotype!

I'm not a middle class hippie-type or a council estate mum, I'm on the other end of the class scale (we have a family crest)

(please don't anyone take the class comments people have posted seriously, it's just meant as light-hearted banter and a bit of a joke )

apol for double post not offended by class comments maybe i did take them to seriosly but i have nowt else to do as its peeing down here and so no park today

Was thinking about this thread as DS was climbing up the slide yesterday.

The only other child around was DD and as I was holding her, all was fine .

haven't actually read the rest of the thread, but presume by its length there are made points to be made.

Sliderule....you haven't read the thread, have you The 'conventional' group have been entirely self-defining...and although my bad typing demands an apology, soe of it is a phonetic transcription of me talking with my tongue-in-cheek.

So keep yer hair on!

x-posted with you, Sliderule!

Think I swerve btwn the Lambrini driking sink estate and hippy creative mum bit. Today is a day for the Lambrini.

I think we have found the two categories of pple in the world. Slide climbers and non slide climbers.

My father's royal and my mother's working class which plonks me firmly in the middle classes just by the law of averages

I am a bohemian which has been well-established previously

I still think kids should climb stairs of slides when there's other kids using the equipment .. nernernanernerrrrrrrr

respect blu - i haven't read all the posts as i need to set aside a day to do that i think - it is raining but i am not that bored...

but are the two type of peoples: slide climbers and non - slide climbers..

OR

adventurers and those who couldnt ever beat the slide and climb the darn thing and so are forever embittered to those who can ;)

350 now

I was a slide climber from time to time - and had I known about this trick that PretendFriend mentions (which I can't quite visualised) I would have tried that, too. It sounds bad for coats as well as teeth?

But I would have taken turns with people coming down from the top. And done it when my Mum wasn't there.

As yours may well do too, TwigHoooOOOoooo