Couple things. The OP is asking us for opinions. Second, this isn’t HIS playground, it’s public property, and he yelled at a kid for playing the “wrong way” on a slide.
He disciplined a kid for playing in a way that he personally didn’t like. The kid wasn’t bullying someone, or hitting or spitting, he was climbing up a slide, which is perfectly normal behavior for a kid.
Actually, he disciplined a kid for playing on the slide in a way that violated the posted rules and was not safe. Yeah, its perfectly normal behavior for a kid - but its behavior that the playground has posted as against the rules - because it isn’t safe. This isn’t a “its just my opinion that the slide goes one direction” - in this case, he had the city’s buy in on that along with the posted rules.
Yes, I’m saying posted rules a lot. Because that does change it from being a matter of opinion.
I don’t get how I can write a detailed OP and people will latch on to one part of it and ignore the rest.
I don’t care if your kid breaks the rules. I don’t care if your kid does something unsafe. I DO care if your kid breaks the rules in such a way that keeps my kid from getting to play or puts my kid in danger. This kid was doing both of those things, so I called him on it. I’m not going to cuss a kid out, I’m not going to call them names, I’m not going to insult their mother, but I’m also not going to treat them like a precious snowflake when they’re breaking the rules in a way that interferes with my kid.
Some kid wants to go down the slide? My kid has to wait. Some kid wants to hog the swings? My kid has to play somewhere else. Some kid wants to break the rules in a way that is dangerous for my kid and keeps him from playing? I’m going to say something.
I came here to get some advice for dealing with other parents and I got some, and I appreciate that. But damn if it’s not frustrating for posters to ignore half the OP and the castigate me for the rest out of context.
We read the whole post and got the context, and in some of our opinions, you were unnecessarily harsh with the kid. You disagree and that’s fine. It’s not about treating them as a special snowflake, but you can still show respect and understanding for a young kid who wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt anyone. You got some good advice on dealing with the parent, and some of us are pointing out that you might not have had to deal with the parent at all if you’d handled the kid differently.
We can’t read the tone in which things were said, so our advice may or may not be applicable. You can judge that and discard the advice that isn’t. But don’t get bent out of shape when you ask for feedback and people give it.
Your son will be an eight year old full of energy some day, and he’s going to piss off the parent of a toddler. Think about how you’d like other parents to talk to him, and how you’ll react if a parent is harsher than you’d like. An eight-year old seems big to you now, but when it’s your own son, you’re still going to see him as a little guy.
No it doesn’t, it changes it from your opinion to the opinion of the person writing the sign. Facts change things from being opinions, do you have facts that show climbing up a slide is sufficiently dangerous to prohibit the behavior? Is it more dangerous than “appropriate” use of other equipment, like climbing walls, jungle gyms or swings?
The problem isn’t how you dealt with the parent, it’s how you dealt with the kid. You yelled at him because his play was interfering with your child’s play.
If you want to say something, then say it, don’t yell it. It’s exactly what SP said, don’t talk to the kid “that way”. Feel free to instruct the kid in playground rules, safety and sharing. You don’t need to yell at him.
Here’s some advice for dealing with other parents at the playground. Don’t yell at their kids, because they won’t take kindly to it.
The person writing the sign is acting of behalf of the owners of the playground, in this case the city.
Is this where I ask about whether I should yell at people who jaywalk, or don’t come to a full and complete stop at a stop sign? The point isn’t entirely that the rule is silly and overprotective, it’s that the response doesn’t have to be yelling “knock it off!”
I absolutely guarantee that if the OP didn’t yell at the kid, there would have been no confrontation of any sort. It is actually possible to interact with children without yelling, I’ve done it before.
For the OP, what kind of advice are you looking for? Or are you just looking for validation?
Some thoughts I had reading this thread.
Not everyone shares the same world view and the same ideas of parenting, and certainly we don’t all agree on how much other adults should or shouldn’t correct other people’s kids.
One major difference in worldviews is the degree that “rules” need to be followed. At three, emphasizing them is better, but not all parents do that all the time, and the older the child, the more flexibility (some? most?) parents give.
It’s really important to keep in mind what is age appropriate. Three-year-olds need constant reminders to not bump each other off ladders. Seven-year-olds need to get bloody noses to learn the limits. (IMHO, of course, other parents will disagree.)
Obviously, as a parent, it’s imperative to protect your three-year-old from older kids who play roughly either by removing your child or getting the other child to stop, either through talking to the other parent or by saying something directly.
When you have to talk to someone else’s kid, it’s going to be much smoother if you follow the advice given by others in this thread by being polite and reminding them to be careful. Treating children with respect by telling them why their actions could hurt someone else goes a long ways to not escalating the situation. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be firm or that showing respect makes you lose somehow.
Lefthand of Dorkness’s post is really good. Rather than jump on people for not following the rules, teaching kids why the rules make sense is helps them grow.
Not all parent agree. My parents were both very authoritarian, we had to follow rules simply because they were rules and there were no questions allowed. I don’t like that myself, but some people do.
With confrontations in public, stressing safety first makes your position stronger. People are going to have a hard time arguing against that. The second level is appeals to fairness, such as if kids are cutting in line. Again, if you’ve told an older kid to not cut in line, their parent would have to be a real asshole to argue that OK.
As you aren’t the Sheriff of the Playground, placing the argument entirely on “The Rules” is pretty weak, especially if the rules aren’t necessarily universally followed. You may think they should be, but not everyone does.
For a bunch of rough and tumble seven- and eight- year olds, their activities aren’t seen as “misbehaving” by many parents if there aren’t other kids around.
You said yourself that you were pissed off, which is going to lead to confrontations. Challenging someone’s parenting skills based on your values will get make some people unhappy.
If you wanted to deescalate the situation, rather than you comment: “Look, that kid was horsing around, he was keeping my son from playing, he’s not even supposed to do that, I stopped him, there’s no problem here,” if can be framed as appeals to safety and fairness. “That kid went up the slide right when my son was going to go down, so I was concerned about his safety.”
I’m not really sure what you mean by “keeping my son from playing.” Is it that he’s “jumping” the line? “Hey, can you wait until he comes down?” can address that.
So which is it? Is your problem with how he dealt with the kid or that he addressed the kid at all? You seem to want to make the YJC out to be some anti free play activist when it’s clear to anyone who read the OP that he was just concerned with his kid’s safety.
That wasn’t clear to me (or at least it wasn’t clear to the kid). In the OP’s words, he said “Hey Kid, Knock it off! Slides aren’t for going up!” Saying it like that suggests his concern wasn’t his son’s safety, but the fact that the kid was playing the wrong way.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the OP was wrong to speak to the kid. He was right to do so because the kid was a safety threat when a toddler is already on the slide. It’s solely the way he spoke to the kid that was a concern. The OP might be fine with other parents speaking in such a manner to his kid, but as TokyoBayer said, parenting styles differ. Would you be OK with someone yelling at your kid “get the f*** off the slide!” just because that’s how they parented their own kids? What you consider too harsh might be what other parents classify as “special snowflake” territory, and vice versa. Kids are different and parents are different, so err on the side of respect.
FWIW, if I were grading yjc, I’d give him a C for his interaction with the kid, a D for his interaction with the adult.
The kid gets a C, because “knock it off” isn’t really that out of line to say to a kid. I think it’s a phrase that should be reserved for when you’ve already let the kid know what’s wrong, OR when their behavior is so egregious that they certainly know better. A kid who’s smacking their little brother on the head, a kid who’s snatching books out of someone’s hands, a kid who’s running up behind others and screaming in their ears–this is the kind of thing that “knock it off” can be good for.
Yeah, the rules were posted. I’d bet my lunch money that this 8-year-old hadn’t stood before the list of rules and read them. That’s not how kids tend to interact with playgrounds. He probably didn’t know that rule.
So you get a C. But you don’t get lower than a C, because even though it was unnecessarily harsh, it’s not gonna damage the kid; indeed, it’s possible that the unpleasant encounter with an unpleasant adult might make him a little more nervous about rough play next time, and that’s a good thing.
With the adult, you appeared to escalate pretty quickly (and your dad did, too). Every one of your responses to him was contemptuous and dismissive of his concerns, first accusing him of being a bad parent and then accusing him of being a busybody. His concerns were valid, and even if they weren’t, it would’ve cost you nothing to hear him out and de-escalate, to say, “Fair enough!” or something like that. The fact that he walked away when your dad told him to was probably because your dad was being so unbelievably rude that he had to wonder whether Dad’s next step would be violent.
It should be clear from my first post in this thread that I think the OP could have handled the situation differently/better with the kid and the random parent. My post you’ve quoted concerns the OP’s motivation behind the confrontation. Cheesesteak’s post implies that the OP was motivated simply by the kid going up the slide the wrong way and breaking the rules (“…yelled at a kid for playing the wrong way…,” when in fact he was motivated because his kid, who was there first, would either have to wait or chance a collision on his way down.
His child was never, ever in any danger. When a 3yo comes down a slide and bonks into a 6yo, he barely bumps off the latter’s legs. Any other imaginary scenario is right up there with Irwin Mainway demonstrating the dangers of a Nerf ball on SNL.
My primary criticism is with the yelling part. The fact that it occurred over an issue that I feel is very minor plays into my feeling that yelling was uncalled for.
If the OP was motivated to stop the child and ask him to wait his turn, so that the 3 year old can come down without getting hurt, I wouldn’t criticize him at all.
I agree that this was motivation and I think that actually contributed to the conflict. He brought rather adult-minded concerns about time and convenience to a playground–an environment where play and unrestricted movement are of highest priority to the user population.
I agree with the general consensus here that YJC was too abrasive with both the kid and the other adult. I like both Left Hand of Dorkness’s and Tokyo Bayer’s posts.
My little addition is that I think YJC should reconsider his policy of not talking to other kids on the playground unless there’s a conflict to be resolved. In think case, it might have been helpful early on to say to the group of bigger kids, “Hi, this is MiniCoder. He’d like to play on the playground today, but he’s only three. Can you guys keep an eye out for him while you’re playing?” Also, help your little guy learn to introduce himself to other kids and make new friends, or at least temporary playmates. In addition to making playground time more fun for your kid, you also have the advantage of having laid the groundwork for when you need to redirect someone.
P.S. Playground rules should be understood as CYA efforts by the parks authorities, not something that you’re actually supposed to adhere to. Slides are for going down? That’s just crazy talk.
Not really related, but I once lived close to a neighborhood park that had a “No loitering” sign.
That’s hilarious and sad.
As a teacher, more than once I’ve called a kid over, pointed at something, and had this conversation:
“What’s that?”
“Uh, a slide?”
“A slide, huh? Not a ‘climb’?”
“Noooo…”
“You get where I’m going with this, right?”
“Okay!” The kid grins and runs off.
If there are lots of kids on the playground, it really is a good rule to follow.
There’s nothing wrong with going up a slide. The only wrong thing was not looking to make sure someone wasn’t coming down first. You way overreacted and made it more of a thing than it was, though.