Children 101: Adult’s Playground

(Can you image a 100 kilogram father sitting on the other end and happily playing on the see-saw as if this was an adult playground?)

All adults, at one point of their life, will tend live their childhood dreams.

This is the case with me when I venture into the toys section at the local hypermarket with my son. It will be me instead of my son who will be running wild on the new toys on the shelf. It will be me instead of my son who will be trying out the toys on display. It will be time when I became a small kid and my son becomes a serious adult. I am not alone – the other fathers also go wild when they are at the toy section.

There is a children’s playground near my house and almost every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, me and my wife will bring my son to the playground. For my wife, it is a good break from the household work and for me, a good opportunity to teach my son football. As for my son, it is a good chance to be mingling with other children of his age after the whole day cooped up in the house. The playground at the moment is well maintained by the developer and the neighborhood residents help in making sure that it is clean and it is used for the right usage.

The problem with this playground (and I am sure in other places too) is that the adults sometimes tend to enjoy the facilities in the playground more than the children and sometimes this tends to go a bit too far.

We were at the playground afternoon and what we saw displeased us. There was one fat guy (when we say fat, he was really fat) playing the swing with his son. If he had stand at the back and helped to push the swing, that would have been alright for us. But instead, he was sitting on one of the swing whilst his son was sitting on another. There were other kids waiting to play on the swing but when they saw this fat man was playing, they probably got scared and ran away to play other things. Other parents could only watch in anger but did not say anything directly to this man. But after a while, this fat man got the message and stayed away from the things that are meant to be enjoyed by small children.

The fat man is just one of many who abuse the facilities in the playground in the name of having fun with their kids. What they don’t realize is that their act would ultimately damage the facilities. If the children’s playground was meant to be an adult playground, I am sure that the developer would have added more facilities than just couple of brightly colored swing, ladders and see-saws.

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