I’m with my two-year-old at a playground. As she’s two, I’m keeping pretty close to her, in case she needs anything while she’s running around. 

Another girl, about four, is climbing on the playground equipment nearby. My daughter goes past her to get to the slide — just near her, not touching or cutting in line — and out of the blue, the other girl hits her.

Me: “Don’t hit.”

Girl: “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my mom.”

She moves as if to hit my daughter again.

Me: “DO. NOT. HIT. PEOPLE.”

Girl: “You’re not my mom!”

An older woman comes over, looking tired and distracted.

Older Woman: “Is there a problem?”

Girl: *Pointing to me* “She’s trying to tell me what to do, Grandma!”

Me: “I told her not to hit my daughter after she did so unprovoked.”

Older Woman: *Sounding dazed* “Oh.”

Girl: “But she’s not Mom!”

The older woman shrugs and wanders back to the benches on the side of the playground.

Other Girl: “See?”

Me: *Pointing to my daughter* “I am her mom, and I can tell you not to hit her.”

The other girl pouted and, finally, left to terrorize another part of the playground.

A friend of mine — close enough that we’re both officially “aunties” to each other’s kids — had to leave her house for a month or so while they fixed a mold problem and renovated it. She originally considered renting a place for the time, but I offered to let her and her son stay with me instead.

My daughter and I were showing her the area near her temporary abode, and that meant taking them to the rather small playground area for those staying in the complex I lived in.

Friend: “Oh, look, [Son]! They have a sandbox here, too!”

Son: “There’s no toys?”

Friend: “Not yet, but we can fix that later!”

I didn’t think much of it until I came home later from a shopping trip to find my daughter, whom I’d left with her “auntie” while shopping, running up to me with a few of her old rarely played-with toys.

Daughter: “Mom, can I give these to the kids, too? Auntie says I need to ask you.”

Me: *Confused* “They’re your toys, so you can give them away if you want to, but who are you giving them to?”

Daughter: “We’re picking park toys!”

I followed my daughter to where my friend was sitting on the floor of their guest room with a number of her son’s toys dumped on the ground. She was helping her son pick out which toys he wanted to make “park toys”. They ended up with a larger dump truck, one or two other smaller vehicles, a sand pail and shovel, and a few other odds and ends.

Once they had their selection picked out, along with the few old toys my daughter insisted on adding, we all went on a walk back to our local playground to play with them, and then we left them in the sandbox when we went home.

I was skeptical of this, but my friend assured me it was a good idea to leave everything and to “just watch”. Over the next month, we saw various happy kids playing with the new “park toys”. I expected all the toys to get dragged away to a random kid’s toy chest, but not only did they stay at the park, but they somehow multiplied. New toys appeared out of nowhere until we had a good selection of usually worn but still play-worthy toys for local kids to enjoy at the park.

My daughter was quite proud of her own contribution to the “park toys”. She would run over to me with her little chest puffed out in pride to report when she saw a kid playing with her hand-me-down toys. In fact, she grew so insistent on donating her toys to the park that I ended up having to set limits on what she could take there, but I did start collecting old toys from her to donate to charity, instead.

My friend left the toys when she moved back to her old home, as her local sandbox already had its own toy collection. I lived at that home for almost a decade after that, and the toys persisted over time. Eventually, all the ones we originally added were broken or otherwise disappeared, but new ones kept being added to keep the sandbox stuffed full of fun toys for local kids to play with.

I haven’t thought of those old toys for quite a while now. However, my daughter recently discovered that there is a park with a sandbox not too far from her new rental, and she told me she is plotting a thrift store run in hopes of starting up her own “park toys” tradition where she lives. Hopefully, the tradition stays strong for the next generation.

CONTENT WARNING: Violence Toward Children

This story reminded me of an event in my childhood.

My brother and I both had (and destroyed) a few Super Soakers during our childhood. At one point, my Super Soaker 2000 — AKA that purple cannon thing that could seriously injure eyes — was broken, so we played in the neighborhood with my brother’s double-barrel Super Soaker, one with a lever on top to start spraying.

We were walking on a sidewalk next to a playground when I had the terrific idea to start spraying by pulling this lever. We hit the window of one of the adjacent houses, and we instantly knew that it probably wasn’t appreciated (and might’ve given someone a slight jumpscare). We took a run for it toward a soccer field behind the playground and were pretty confident nothing would come of it.

That was until, suddenly, an elderly guy was standing behind my little brother (who was probably seven years old or so). The guy grabbed his Super Soaker, which was still strapped around his shoulder, and started pulling. He practically strangled my brother for a second before getting the Super Soaker off him and smashing it into pieces on the steel goalposts of the soccer field. He ended his assault with a crazed look in his eyes.

Elderly Guy: “Don’t do that again!”

And he took off.

We were obviously shocked, but as children often do, we pretty much blamed ourselves because we had sprayed his windows, and judging by his reaction, that’s something that adults just get really angry about.

Feeling guilty, we went home and didn’t say anything to our parents, but they read our faces soon enough and got the story out. We feared that we would get a second run of punishment, but instead, they told us to stay at home, assured us that we weren’t in trouble, and went out.

Afterward, they didn’t really share all that much about the aftermath, though we heard enough shouting about how “a lunatic like you can live next to a playground and not expect something like this to happen”. My little brother got a new Super Soaker — a better one — from the crazy neighbour and had a sore neck and bruises from the ordeal.

Years later, however, I stumbled upon some files on my parents’ computer that brought to light that they did file a police report, and the guy was actually fined pretty heavily. The money was put in a savings account for my brother for when he came of age.

I was on a short walk exploring a path I hadn’t gone down yet near the place I recently rented. This one wandered through a few townhouse complexes and past a tiny play area presumably built for the nearby townhouses.

As I was nearing the play area, I could hear the cries of an upset kid, no more than fourteen months old, who was standing in the sandbox crying while her dad was a few feet away at the nearby bench talking on his phone and pointedly ignoring her.

I love kids and volunteer with them pretty extensively. I hate to see a kid upset, so my first instinct was to go right over and comfort her. Unfortunately, I’m male, which means I always need to toe a careful line with kids to avoid being accused of plotting to kidnap or hurt them. I figured just walking over to the kid and comforting her would go past that line, especially since I couldn’t really ask the father for permission to comfort her while he was talking on the phone. Still, I hated just ignoring an upset kid who I knew I could easily comfort.

So, I waved at her as I neared the large bushes that would put me out of the father’s line of sight. Her cries went down an octave as she stared at me in interest. I continued my walk until the bushes made me disappear, then backed up back into her vision and waved again. This worked to distract her enough to stop crying entirely.

I did this once or twice more, and while I didn’t get the full giggles or smiles I would have preferred from the impromptu game of peekaboo, she at least had stopped crying while watching me. With many kids, if you can distract them from crying for a second, they will forget why they were crying and go right back to playing happily afterward, which is what I was hoping to accomplish here.  

I continued on with my walk, giving one more goodbye wave on the opposite side of the bushes, and the toddler watched me like a hawk without crying until I rounded a bend soon after that took me out of her line of sight. Sadly, I heard her start crying again as soon as I was out of sight. Still, I’d done about as much as I could, so I forced myself to ignore the cries and continue on my walk.

It turned out that the trail I was following ended at a school not too far down the road, so I ended up turning around and headed back to my apartment soon afterward. This, of course, took me past the same play area approximately ten minutes later. The girl was now out of her sandbox and pacing around near her dad. She was still crying but at the lower intensity of a child who has realized they aren’t going to get what they want but still feels the need to express their discontent.

I had a few pieces of trash to dispose of and thus detoured closer to the play area to drop it all off at the trash can. The toddler stopped her crying when she saw me round the bend, which I considered a win. However, I was surprised when she walked toward me as I neared the trash can, eventually reaching my leg and lifting her arms in a clear request to be picked up.

Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t pick you up unless your daddy says I can.”

She continued the gesture, getting more insistent as I turned to walk away and then breaking into a wail as she realized I wouldn’t pick her up. The trash can was very close to the bench the girl’s father was sitting on, but just behind it, which put us out of his sight for this exchange.

Father: “What’s wrong? What happened?”

At first, I presumed he was talking to the toddler I’d already started to leave behind, so I ignored it until I heard him raise his voice.

Father: “Hey, don’t ignore me! What did you do to [Girl]?”

Me: “Oh, sorry. She asked me to pick her up. I told her I couldn’t, but I guess she got upset that I wouldn’t hold her.”

Father: “Asked you to pick her up? She can’t talk!”

Me: “Oh, I didn’t mean with words, just the usual ‘pick me up’ gesture.”

Father: “There’s no way she’d want some stranger to pick her up. What did you do to her?”

Me: “Nothing. I told you.”

Father: “Then why did you sneak up to her?”

Me: “I didn’t sneak up. I was throwing out trash, and she walked up to me.”

Father: “She was with me the whole time.”

Me: “Yes, but when she saw me approach the trash can, she came to see me. I refused to pick her up when she did, and I guess she didn’t like that.”

Father: “That’s BS. Stay away from my kid!”

Me: “I am. I was literally walking away from her when she started crying. Don’t get mad at me if she’s so desperate to be held that she has to beg strangers.”

Father: “She’s fine! Leave her alone.”

Me: “That’s exactly what I’m doing. But you know, she’s still crying. If you think someone did something to hurt her, shouldn’t you be comforting her rather than ignoring her?”

I pointedly turned away and kept on walking toward my home. He screamed a few more things at my back as I left, but I learned long ago not to waste time with idiots who refuse to listen, so I just kept walking. But even walking away, I could hear the girl still crying; apparently, shouting at my back was a higher priority than comforting the girl.

My family and I are at a playground. My husband is in one area with our oldest, while I am pushing our youngest on the swings. There are many other parents and kids there, as well.

A woman drives up, and the second she opens her door, two dogs come bolting out and run toward the playground. Both immediately beeline toward my husband and daughter. My husband gets our daughter out of the way before the dogs reach them, but they both start trying to jump on my husband.

Husband: *Firmly* “No. Go away.”

The owner makes no attempt to do anything.

Me: “Leash your dogs!”

The dogs quickly lose interest when they see someone else walking their leashed dogs and charge at them. He tries his best to keep the dogs away from each other, and the first owner finally starts moving. She struggles to get a hold of her dogs and then tries to come back to the park with her kid.

Woman: *Laughing* “Bad dogs!”

Me: *Glaring* “No, bad dog owner.”

They didn’t stay much longer when she saw someone else taking pictures of them and her car and saying they were going to call animal control if she didn’t get a grip on the dogs.