It’s Sunday evening and we’re playing chase. My two-year-old is skimming past the kitchen island with the speed and precision of a Formula One driver. A miniature Oscar Piastri, he knows when to hit the throttle to avoid a narrow collision, even if my nervous system reacts as though he’s heading straight into the safety barrier.
Mini Piastri isn’t circling the kitchen island at home. No, we’re inside a pretend kitchen at Ikea. It’s where we come when every other kid-friendly place has closed and our night owl is still bounding with energy.
We come here so often that he has found the “driver’s line” from the pretend bedrooms through all the child-sized cubbyholes to the living rooms and now the Country Living-style kitchens.
I’d much rather be chasing him in a safer, padded kids’ cafe with painted wooden versions of fruit and veg that he can pretend to chop with a suitably safe wooden knife, but all those places kicked us out already – when they closed at 4pm. Most kids’ places shut even earlier.
And I agree with you, smart and sensible reader – this isn’t the ideal place for a shrieking, giggling, excitable and curious toddler who isn’t going to bed anytime soon. But nowhere is. Sure, we could be at home watching Bluey (we’ll do that too). Or at the playground (been there twice already today).
Structured activities such as swimming lessons, gymnastics and football are always on in the morning, and that’s if you can afford them or have the bandwidth to register your kid in advance. Library rhyme time and storytime are wonderful free events, but they’re usually on at 10.30am. And the dinosaur section at the museum tends to usher us along by 4pm. Supermarkets, Bunnings and (if we’re brave enough) pubs are higher-risk zones where others aren’t nearly as forgiving.
What I dream of is a late-opening soft play centre with a cafe that sells more than chicken nuggets. I’d clock in for my final parenting shift of the day, along with the other bleary-eyed adults and we’d raise a half-drunk apple juice to the joy of watching our wild children rampage around without anyone audibly objecting. If it wasn’t too much to ask, there’d be a soundproofed room for screaming into the void (us and them).
So if you see a speedy toddler zipping between the makeshift kitchens at Ikea this weekend, reserve your judgment please. I know this phase won’t last for ever, but for now it’s the only place open and welcoming between 4pm and 8pm. And the kids’ fish and chips aren’t bad either.
