Like many parents of young children, I spend much of my life in playgrounds. We are lucky in that there are six of them within close walking distance and, because my son loves to be outdoors, some days we will go to two or three different ones. In fact, it’s quite hard to walk past a playground without going in because, as with most of the toddlers we know, he will object in the strongest terms. By which I mean go completely and utterly berserk.
From the moment your child is born, you become grateful for playgrounds. Even before your baby is old enough to play, these spaces can be a refuge: from traffic, drunks and scary dogs. They seem to be the only remaining places outside parks where benches are permitted; in areas without playgrounds, you end up breastfeeding sitting on kerbs or walls. Playgrounds are spaces for children but, to state the obvious, they are also spaces for parents – and sometimes those parents really, really need to sit down.
The state of your playground is a political question, too. Their quality depends on the proper funding and functioning of local government. In England, parks budgets have fallen by £350m in the past 12 years, meaning that playgrounds are falling to pieces, lack crucial bits of equipment, or are simply being locked up. Last year, freedom of information requests conducted by Aggregate Industries, a sustainable construction materials company, revealed that almost 800 playgrounds had closed in the UK in the past decade. The adventure playground boom of the 1970s is in reverse, with the organisation Play England finding that the number has been halved since the 1980s. This is despite play being crucial to children’s mental and physical health, and an obesity crisis with one in three children aged two to 15 being overweight or obese.
One in eight UK children live in a home with no garden, but there are simply not enough playgrounds for the number of children in the country (in some areas, a sole playground can have thousands upon thousands of children in its catchment area). In practical terms, this can mean having to stand while wrangling a heavy, furious child who is desperate to go on the swings and has been waiting a long time for their turn. Thankfully, most parents are kind in this situation, and will say gently to their kid, “It’s time to let the baby have a go.” There is always one, however, who lets their darling offspring hog the equipment and then affects to see right through you, your tantrumming toddler and the queue behind you.
The disappointment of a child who simply wants to play can be a hard thing to bear. I’ve stopped taking my boy to one playground in our area as it’s often been so strewn with rubbish and dog poo that we’ve had to turn away. Which is how I became one of “those mums” who politely points out the “no dogs” sign and makes complaints about vandalism to the local authority. Last summer, I became enraged by the consistent failure of the splashpad sprinklers to work in our local park, despite the weather being fiercely hot. Which is how I ended up in a prolonged email exchange with various councillors and the council’s head of green spaces. To his credit, he sorted the problem out, but there was a part of me that resented undertaking this unpaid labour, though not as much as I resented seeing so many downcast, overheated kids. When you’re six, a non-functioning playground is enough to ruin your day.
It’s not just the space itself that can cause problems, it’s sharing it with other people. It’s been interesting watching other parents and children, and learning the etiquette. Some not entirely serious observations, based wholly on my own subjective experience: dads mostly push their kids on the swings from the rear, while mums do it from the front; when other parents look at their phones, it’s a shame, but when you do it, it’s OK, because you’re just checking your work email. Still, it’s not as bad as loudly narrating your child’s play so that everyone within earshot knows exactly how bright they are, or being really intense and competitive about development with other parents who are just trying to inhale their coffee and croissant during a rare moment of stillness. (“She’s 18 months? Mine was reciting Keats and doing fouettés and pirouettes at that age. She has a full HGV licence, too.”)
It is nice to say hello to other parents and even nicer to have a chat. I’ve had long, personal, wide-ranging conversations with people I’ve never seen again, rooted in that feeling of solidarity that emerges between two women who have both had to get dressed in the dark at 6am so as not to wake their sleeping partners. Which brings me to my final thought, on fashion: everyone looks a mess, and that is fine. Just don’t show the rest of us up by looking like a functional human being.
What’s working
Baby disco! My son got some disco lights for Christmas and now most evenings before bed we have a dance in the living room. He loves music and it burns off his residual energy, but the best thing is looking at his smiling face when I spin him around the room. It’s become our special time, and he gave me such a lovely spontaneous kiss and cuddle the other day that, like the sap that I am, I burst into tears during Katy Perry’s Firework.
What’s not
“Gentle parenting”. We are only at the beginning of the toddler tantrum phase, and thankfully our boy is still easily distracted and comforted (but how long will that last?). I’ve seen enough well-meaning parents trying to negotiate with children melting down on pavements to be a bit sceptical about the trend. As this article in the New Yorker highlights, a backlash seems to be happening.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
