Do you encourage/ allow your children to share and socialise with other children at the park?
The way I parent and the way I was raised was that when we are in a park or another place with other children we always share our toys and be friendly with other children.
Recently my children and I were at the park and I was quite taken aback by another parent’s behaviour. They arrived at the area where all the children were playing together and stood there and lectured the child for like 5 minutes on all the rules on what they were and were not allowed to do. They were telling their children to play in a separate area to all the other children playing together. (They were all mostly toddlers). Then their children were coming towards the other children and picking up my kids toys which was completely fine with me all the children were sharing toys. But the parent was repeatedly telling their children to move away and not touch the toys. I just gave a little friendly “it’s completely fine they can play with the toys” to which the parent turned around and said “no thank you” it was just quite awkward because their children was really wanting to play and you can’t keep toddlers in one place. The parent wouldn’t let the child play and was keeping them confined in one place. Then when other toddlers were approaching the child and touching the toys the parent was saying “ that’s our toy , can you please give it back my baby is getting upset”. Actively encouraging the child not to share when I could tell the child wanted to play with the other children. It was making it difficult for all the other parents ensuring our children didn’t approach their area because they clearly were not happy about it. I just found it quite strange.
The views expressed in community are solely the opinions of participants, and do not reflect those of Peanut.
Learn more about our guidelines.
I wouldn’t say I encourage her to play with others, and I wouldn’t force her to share if she didn’t want to (although she would anyway and I wouldn’t bring toys to park unless she didn’t mind sharing), but she’s very sociable and plays with other kids anyway and of course I let her!
But that sounds like very odd behaviour, maybe they’re germaphobes 🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️

I don't think it should be an all or nothing per say - I think it should kinda be up to the kid. My daughter rarely brings toys to the park, but if she does, I talk about how kind it is to choose to share- but if she says no, I'll back her 100%. If she wants to play with other kids stuff, she has to ask first. If they're fine with it, so am I. I do encourage her to play with other kids, but won't force that either. It is a bit weird how much that mom was trying to force independent play, but maybe she had a good reason. I also don't think the default assumption is that personal toys automatically have to be shared in public

Not sure what happened there, but perhaps they were worried about something else than socialising? Some parents can be overly paranoid about infections or their child was volnurable somehow?