To The Bully At Soft Play…

To the bully at soft play,

you are young, five or six, it’s very typical behaviour for you to not let an unknown child in to the ‘den’ that you have made at soft play. Pushing and pinning my son to the wall is not!

Our little boy is non-verbal, you may have thought he was ignoring you by not responding, but he could have simply not understood your requests. He also had no way to communicate with you. 

Your mum did not seem bothered when we explained to her what had happened and that our son is autistic/non-verbal. In-fact I don’t think she even spoke to you about the incident.

This five minutes in the soft play, that probably won’t even cross your mind again, has rocked my son’s world.   

It took us over a year to build up our sons confidence so that we didn’t have to hold his hand at soft play. He enjoyed going and would be very happy to run off and play. Our son has always had issues with other children but now he won’t go near anyone and the slightest touch sends him into floods of tears. 

At home he is very emotional, he has wanted full on cuddles on quite a few occasions, something that is very rare for him. He is crying in his sleep and is very unsettled. 

This new anxiety has even moved into nursery, a place that he felt very safe, he now won’t go into the garden with the other children to play. Something he used to enjoy. 

Who knew such a small childish incident could have such massive repercussions, but don’t worry little boy at soft play whose mother didn’t care. I will take the time to build up my sons confidence no matter how long this takes, days, weeks or even years. We will not stop taking our son to places and no matter how hard it will be to not wrap him in cotton wool, we will again start the process of trying to make him as independent as possible.