Surviving Softplay

When you are on a plane or a boat it does not take too long for your brain to ignore the noise of an engine. For some reason, probably the evolutionary need for parents to hear their offspring’s calls, the background noise of a group of children is harder to cut out. In days gone bye it was expected that teachers would drink. I have a feeling this has something to do with the stress inducing buzz a collection of children produce. The ceaseless whine grates on your nerves but only in a very small way, not enough to even notice at any one time. This stress is cumulative though, it grows steadily like the sand in the bottom half of an egg timer and only alcohol and to some extent cigarettes can break the glass and let the sand spill out. Teachers are trained, get paid and have holidays, parents don’t.

The first time a parent faces a soft play, a child friendly large room full of squealing infants, is interesting because they get to sit down and are not harassed for large periods of time. What a great place; you don’t have to stand and push swings, it is not weather dependent, its exercise for the urchins. In some you can have a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake in peace. However the word peace here is a misnomer as the cacophony of noise, the wall of sound, is ever preset and slowly it wears you down. Every scream could be your child in pain, your child trampled underfoot by marauding hairless apes. A child howls in pain as layers of skin are brushed off by friction on the slide. Another yelps as a coloured ball bounces off their open eye. One knuckle dragging, heavy browed youngster is lugging a fair haired, lightly built infant around like a snivelling rag doll. A frantic air pervades through the room. A child is stuck in the netting, like a fly flailing against its captor’s web. One of the adventurous adults is on route but her girth makes the whole room a little embarrassed when she arrives at an obstacle requiring a lither frame. In short, it is an exhausted and vexed parent that leaves once play is over.

Within a few visits most parents can pick their child’s scream out of the dissonance. Some can fully relax, their brain able to do what many can’t and cut out the white noise. Their offspring gets to know their soft play like a blind man knows his house. Every foot hold, every gap, every obstacle is known intuitively. At this stage some parents relax with a newspaper or a novel and some enter into the colourful cushioned plastic, and rope arena.

Fully grown adults crawl in a way they have not done since they learned to walk; rushing around like enthusiastic gorillas on all fours. Slides strain under the unexpected weight as wide loads whizz down into waiting ball pools. Perspiration appears on the faces of those who have not exercised since leaving school, the alcohol of the night before forming in little beads on their brows. Young men roar mimicking the sound of imaginary monsters and their children squeal with a mixture of delight and fright. A full hour of crawling, sliding, performing monster impressions, leaping and swinging is as tiring as a spinning class or pilates.

Soft play is both a nightmare and a God send in one. Children love it but regularly get injured. Parents embrace the time where they are left alone but become drained psychologically due to the surrounding noise whose frequency vibrates the brain.