a startling realisation about soft play
The hail started the second we stepped out of the door today. By the time we got to the end of the road it was like driving through a car wash.
We’d told the kids we were going to the shop. Sometimes it’s nice to tell cheeky little lies to your children that will result in fun for them (as opposed to the necessary small lies you have to tell them for the sake of peace). It’s a bit like creeping across the landing to fill up their stockings on Christmas Eve, only less exciting (but also less tense).
We pulled over in an industrial estate fifteen minutes later and turned to the kids, waiting to see if they clocked where we were. Neither of them said anything.
‘Right!’ I said after about 1.5 seconds of silence, because I couldn’t bear it, ‘Shall we got to soft play?’
‘YAAAAY!’
Soft play is a funny thing. I always used to find it loud and germy and generally distressing, but since Covid, our local soft play is much quieter. We’ve been a lot recently and it's nice for them to barrel around for couple of hours getting all their wriggles out. Especially on a freezing cold, stormy kind of morning.
Anyway, it hit me as we sat there with our cups of tea.
I don’t get to go on the soft play anymore.
When you have babies or very small toddlers, you have to sit in the ‘under fours only’ zone with them. Your presence is needed to help crawling babies get to things, and to stop older toddlers from murdering each other. Then when they get older, they can kind of go off and do their own thing.
Unless you have nervous kids.
For a long time I had a nervous kid on her own. And so I had to follow her around soft play constantly, contorting myself into impossible shapes and squeezing through tunnels etc. Then I had a curious, bold baby who wanted to follow in the footsteps of his sister, so then I had to accompany them both, stopping him from getting squashed and helping her to get to where she needed to go.
(I got through a lot of pairs of jeans at this stage. It’s a good job ripped jeans were fashionable in the time period between 2013 and 2020).
But that bold baby turned into a wild-haired and bruised-shinned little boy and the nervous girl grew out of her fears and became ‘the leader’ and now they can go off, together.
At soft play, they are a unit. They have each other, and they can make their own plans. If one of them gets stuck somewhere the other one can help. They can hold hands as they go down the death slide. They’re a team. They don’t need to make new friends (although they sometimes do) so I don’t really need to get involved.
My Dad used to take me and a friend to soft play every Saturday when I was a kid. He used to sit there with his book and his coffee and I’d think, ah, what a lovely Dad, sitting around waiting for me while I play, he must be so bored. Thinking back on it that was probably the most peaceful two-hour period of his whole week.
Now I have that luxury. I can sit back and let them run around and play and not worry about it and drink tea and try to sneakily buy/eat a sausage roll without them noticing.
But.
But.
There was a small part of me — despite the aching bones and worn-out jeans and the general feeling of stickiness that you get from touching anything in soft play — that would quite enjoy chasing them around, seeing their little faces as they shouted ‘this way, Mummy!’
Also, I quite like going down the death slide.
That is how it is I guess. The ‘lasts’ slip into your life without warning. Maybe the last time I went on soft play I had a pounding headache and felt like I might throw up in the ball pit (wouldn’t be the first and won’t be the last. Frankly you don’t want to know the kind of stuff that goes down in a ball pit).
Maybe I was so worn down by how physically needy my children were that I rushed through it, longing for home, wishing for a nap, wondering if I would ever feel fully awake again.
That’s what I was thinking about as I watched them go around happily together. It’s a good job the lasts don’t announce themselves really. It would be too sad.
Plus, you can’t appreciate every single moment of life with your kids, that’s an exhausting and impossible standard to reach for. So you have to take the risk knowing that one of those ‘lasts’ might happen and you may not have really made the most of it.
But maybe next time I’ll follow them in there to surprise them. I’ll pretend to be the Gruffalo and chase them around. And then they’ll ask me to do it twenty more times and I will regret ever starting it in the first place.
OR! Maybe I’ll convince some friends to book into an adult soft play, have a few drinks, and hope I don’t break any bones. That could work.
