Bringing your own toys to the playground-what's the etiquette?
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Anonymous
What's the conflict? It's not like OP was there playing catch with her toddler. The only thing OP/toddler had to do was not go after the frisbee. |
Anonymous
How is it conflicting if the dad and kid came to the playground to PLAY same as Op and her kid? The dad probably had ZERO clue OP had a bug up her butt about the fact he was at the playground, playing with his kid, same as she was. It's not like he could read her mind to leave the area with his contraband frisbee. |
Anonymous
We know there was playground equipment, and we know that it was small enough that a three year old could throw a frisbee to the furthest edge of it, and we know it is fenced in. I have a pretty good guess on the set up. |
Anonymous
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Op here. Bottom line (for me) is that I slug it out with my 18 month old all day, every day. Tbere is a lot of boundary setting and testing of said boundaries. Our playground is a safe and fun place where he can run and I can relax a little bit as well. It's not like I can sit around and text, and I'm still on him a little (use the stairs, don't walk up the slide!), but overall we mutually love playground time. I was annoyed because the pair brought an off-limits object to a place that is normally a place where I don't have to say "no" as frequently, and all of a sudden I have to go back into high toddler vigilance mode. [/quote]
First of all, yes it is annoying. When you're the parent of an impulsive little toddler, with no sense of personal safety, lots of things you never noticed before suddenly become annoyances. Like rocks just the right size to go into someone's mouth, or tree branches, or people who mow their lawns during nap time. However, I think you're coming at this from a perspective of the mom of a young toddler who looks at that 3 year old as a "big kid". The reality is that 3 year olds, in general, do far more boundary testing than 18 month olds. Other than, perhaps 14, 3 is the height of boundary testing with parents. And it's not just that you have to set more boundaries, but they're harder to set, because 3 year old run faster, remember longer, and find fewer things exciting and distracting than 18 month olds. And many of them don't nap either. This parent came to the park for the same reason you did. He wanted a chance to be with his kid in an environment where he could follow the kid's lead, enjoy their time together, and let his guard down because if it's like most 0 - 3 year old parks it is fenced. You're essentially asking that he give you a break from limit setting by going into limit setting mode with his kid, saying "No, you can't tell that baby not to play with your toy. No, you can't knock him down to get the toy. No, you can't scream to get that toy back. No, you can't get the frisbee we put away out of the backpack to play with it. No, you can't throw wood chips as a substitute." Why should the burden of limit setting be on the other parent? [/quote] +100000[/quote] Because the OP was there first. If two people using a public space want to do conflicting things, the person who got there first gets the space. You tell your three year old that you will get the frisbee out when the baby leaves, or you go to an unoccupied space and play. [/quote] What's the conflict? It's not like OP was there playing catch with her toddler. The only thing OP/toddler had to do was not go after the frisbee. [/quote] I guess I am confused. Did the OP go to the playground in order to teach her toddler not to go around possesive kids frisbees? Because if she did, then the dad was right on. I thought she took her toddler there to play on her own on the playground equipment and she wasn't able to do that. |
Anonymous
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Op here. Bottom line (for me) is that I slug it out with my 18 month old all day, every day. Tbere is a lot of boundary setting and testing of said boundaries. Our playground is a safe and fun place where he can run and I can relax a little bit as well. It's not like I can sit around and text, and I'm still on him a little (use the stairs, don't walk up the slide!), but overall we mutually love playground time. I was annoyed because the pair brought an off-limits object to a place that is normally a place where I don't have to say "no" as frequently, and all of a sudden I have to go back into high toddler vigilance mode. [/quote]
First of all, yes it is annoying. When you're the parent of an impulsive little toddler, with no sense of personal safety, lots of things you never noticed before suddenly become annoyances. Like rocks just the right size to go into someone's mouth, or tree branches, or people who mow their lawns during nap time. However, I think you're coming at this from a perspective of the mom of a young toddler who looks at that 3 year old as a "big kid". The reality is that 3 year olds, in general, do far more boundary testing than 18 month olds. Other than, perhaps 14, 3 is the height of boundary testing with parents. And it's not just that you have to set more boundaries, but they're harder to set, because 3 year old run faster, remember longer, and find fewer things exciting and distracting than 18 month olds. And many of them don't nap either. This parent came to the park for the same reason you did. He wanted a chance to be with his kid in an environment where he could follow the kid's lead, enjoy their time together, and let his guard down because if it's like most 0 - 3 year old parks it is fenced. You're essentially asking that he give you a break from limit setting by going into limit setting mode with his kid, saying "No, you can't tell that baby not to play with your toy. No, you can't knock him down to get the toy. No, you can't scream to get that toy back. No, you can't get the frisbee we put away out of the backpack to play with it. No, you can't throw wood chips as a substitute." Why should the burden of limit setting be on the other parent? [/quote] +100000[/quote] Because the OP was there first. If two people using a public space want to do conflicting things, the person who got there first gets the space. You tell your three year old that you will get the frisbee out when the baby leaves, or you go to an unoccupied space and play. [/quote] What's the conflict? It's not like OP was there playing catch with her toddler. The only thing OP/toddler had to do was not go after the frisbee. [/quote] I guess I am confused. Did the OP go to the playground in order to teach her toddler not to go around possesive kids frisbees? Because if she did, then the dad was right on. I thought she took her toddler there to play on her own on the playground equipment and she wasn't able to do that. [/quote] The only thing stopping the OP and her child from using the playground equipment was her child's desire to play with someone else's frisbee. As someone else pointed out, it could have been anything that distracted her 18 month old; that is the nature of 18 month olds. |
Anonymous
| I haven't read the whole thing but - are you actually asking if it's ok for a father and son to bring a frisbee to play in a public playground? SERIOUSLY? |
Anonymous
| The etiquette is that if you don't want to deal with situations like that, you need a yard and private play equipment where you don't have to deal with other people. My kids are 7 and 9 now, and it is just a reality of life that people won't always want to share with your kids, and they have to learn to deal with it, and you have to learn to manage them. If you don't want to do that, don't go to an area where others will be playing. I encourage my kids to share and always have, but frankly, your expectation that these kids would not use their own toy is entitled and unrealistic. |
Anonymous
Yup, that's what having a kid is like. You have to deal with them, set boundaries, and it is often unrelaxing with not as much down time as you would like. Welcome to the reality of parenting. |
Anonymous
uh, you better learn to read a little better. The OP basically said the 3 year old said "no baby no baby" once. ONCE when her baby was interested in the Frisbee. After that OP assumed there would be drama and kept redirecting her kid. She said something like "based on the 3 year old's reaction when we looked at the Frisbee, I kept redirecting my kid." That's a lot of assumption on OP's part. She should have let her kid play the way her kid wanted to and see if drama would really happen. My bet would be that if her kid kept getting in the dad's/3 year old's way, they'd find a better place to play. |
Anonymous
Yes - and all of these things become much harder before they get easier. |
Anonymous
OP, NP here. I hear this! My kids have been on all sides of this interaction at different ages. My spouse (who SAH, and so is in this position a lot) talks this way too, like the vigilance is so constant that he really values the few places he can let his guard down. Here's the thing from my perspective though--I think he can be overvigilant, and I think you were in this case. This is one I would have put at least partly on the other dad. I don't think he needed to leave the toy home, but I do think he should have managed his kid with more skill, and understood that bringing a coveted toy along with a jealous toddler to a play area would create situations he couldn't ignore his way out of. It's nice that he wants to go to a public area and play with his kid like nobody else was there, but he has to deal with the fact that it's a public place and others ARE there. He has to manage his kid's age-appropriate unreasonableness everywhere he goes, just like I have to manage mine's. What neither of us have to do is manage the OTHER's kid. He shirked his duty to interact with you to mitigate the situation, and you took on too much responsibility for his parenting and came to resent him for a decision you made. I can see wanting to manage your own kid when someone else isn't managing theirs, to avoid social conflict with the other parent, but understand that that was your choice to make. I can't think of a time I ever took on the full burden of both of our parenting by being the only vigilant parent and letting the total stranger family have free rein over the public space while my kid is the only one with limits. esp with those age differences when it's so easily managed because the attention spans and distractibility are so different. My kids at 18mo would just have wanted a brief interaction and then be happy to go on to the next thing (as heavily redirected by me). What drove my kids mad at that age was restrictions on their behavior of the type you were imposing. Jealousy and not wanting to share is more what drives 3yos mad. It's on that other dad that he didn't know/remember that "babies" like an 18mo can be managed much more easily by working with the other parent to redirect the younger kid than by ignoring them. Doesn't exactly make him wrong and you right, but it does make him a crappy citizen of the playground 
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Anonymous
So, you're annoyed because a three-year-old yelled, "No baby!" ONCE? And you had to correct your kid two or three times? Parenting must be exhausting for you. |
Anonymous
And I never think of the playground as a place where I can relax. Sure, my kid can run around and blow off steam, which is great, and maybe play with some other kids, which is nice, but whether or not someone brings a toy to the playground or not, there are always things you have to keep an eye out for. The idea that no one else should ever do anything that might require you to parent is absurd. It was a public space. A parent and a child came to play together in that public space. You chose to interpret a single comment by a three-year-old as a threat. You chose to interpret the father and son focusing on their play together as "unwelcoming" and rude. I've been at the playground when someone else had a toy that my kid wanted to play with, and I just don't get being so uptight about it. |
Anonymous
OMG, OP, a frisbee is now "an off-limits object" to bring to a park because it required you to say no to your own child when you would prefer not to do so? It's almost inconceivable to me that anyone old enough to procreate could be this insufferably self-involved... |