Soft Play
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- Category: Blog Thursday - Euan
If you have kids under the age of five then chances are you taken them to a soft play facility. You know the place? You turn up, pay a few quid and then let your kids throw themselves into walls and into ball pits.
It can work beautifully if you need a little bit of time with a newspaper and the kids occupied. I know a parent should not say that but let’s be real here. Sometimes it’s good when your kids can occupy themselves for 30 minutes while your mind thinks about non child related issues, like tea and biscuits.
I have observed a number of different scenarios that have played out repeatedly.
- I am not the only parent who turns up with the hope that their kids will play happily on their own for an hour or so without needing any parental assistance and I am not the first parent to be disappointed how this rarely works out as planned.
- There is no dignity for a parent to be derived from visiting the soft play. At some point in your visit, you will end up face down in a ball pit flapping around like a half dead seal trying to get your head above all those plastic balls that smell faintly of urine. Or you find yourself crawling along a tunnel in the belief that you are following your child only to end up face to face with another parent who also appears to be lost. You exchange glances and maybe a faint smile but inside both of you are wondering how life led you to this juncture.
- These places have the fastest slides on the face of the earth. The number of times I have had to talk my daughter into going down the slide only to watch in horror/amusement as she breaks the sound barrier and nearly dices herself on the netting at the bottom. Do they grease these things every night?
- Finally there always seems to be a kid without any parents. The amount of times I have been drinking my tea and reading a paper only to feel someone staring at me. So I look up and there is this little kid looking at me with a crazed look in their eyes. I usually mutter something about clearing off to find your parents and the kid disappears. However, it always disturbs me that they are then when you arrive and are there when you leave. Do they sleep in the ball pit?
Anyways, tread carefully. What looks like a melted Mars Bar in the ball pit at the bottom of the slide probably isn’t.
Just saying.
