2 Things...

First, I had a couple of errands to do at the mall, so I told the kiddos that if they were good, we'd play at the play area when we were done.  They did great, so we went.  I saw a little boy get his face pushed around by another little boy and he came crying, deservedly so, over to his mom (who happened to be sitting near me).  She calmed him down and then reminded him to play nicely, even if the other boys weren't.  About 5 minutes later, this same picked-on little boy, was pushing my son out of the tree house RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS MOM who was in a conversation with her friend and didn't notice a thing.  I called my son over, he waited a minute and the other boy got tired of sitting in the tree house alone and moved on.  My son went back to play.

My point is, that I completely support going to the play area (obviously, since we were there).  But it's not a place to go and then forget you have children, letting them run rampant until they need you!  Children do need to learn to interact and socialize, but it's a learning process and you, as the parent, need to be involved to help teach your children proper behavior, not just tell them something and then never help them learn how to behave, or even supervise their learning.  It was good that she told her son to be nice, but not good to not see him push my son out of the tree house, instead of teaching him that "being nice" is sharing the tree house.  I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt, that she was watching one of her other children, but she wasn't!  She was deep in conversation with her friend (I know this since I was sitting right next to them).  My son wasn't hurt.  I bet he doesn't even remember  being pushed out of the tree house.  But it was a good reminder to me to part of my children's play, even on the sidelines.

And now I don't remember the second thing...

But these are our cute bunnies, Fluffy and Puffy! (since I needed a picture)