IT is one of the most popular places to go with children during the school holidays.
But there are also drawbacks to taking kids to the playground, as Jessie Cave recently discovered.
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The former Harry Potter actress, who is a mother of four, took it upon herself TikTok to express her disgust after seeing “hairy fungus balls” at her local cafe.
“I want to talk about soft play for a moment,” she said.
“We go there because we want our children to be happy, that’s for sure.
“But we also know that we get sick almost immediately as soon as we leave the playground.”
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Jessie, who played Lavender Brown in the Potter films, said the idea that mothers can “just sit there and look at their phones while they go out and play and explore” is never true.
She went out with her children and suddenly saw dirt.
“As soon as I sit on top of something, like a trampoline or something spinning, I peer into the cracks between the slides,” she says.
“And all I see are these big balls of hair, like hairy mold – huge balls of just mold and dirt that have clearly collected over the years.
“And then you think: why? Why?”
“Why are we even playing?” Jessie, 37, wondered in the caption of the video, which shows her braiding her long hair.
Other mothers were quick to respond in the comments, admitting that they take steps to prevent their children from getting sick when they return from the playground.
“We always do a Dettol bath after playing in the soft room…”, someone wrote.
“Saved us a few times… including when bugs were circulating around the school!”
“After playing in the soft room, Dettol baths are a must,” added another.
“The kids love the soft play, I hate the soft play.”
“Soft play is THE worst thing ever,” a third commented.
“Nobody can change my mind!”
“That’s absolutely true,” wrote someone else.
“The teenagers who work there are definitely not cleaning.”
Others reported that they and their children had been bothered by insects after recent visits to the playground.
“I took my one-year-old son to the playground on Sunday,” one person wrote.
“I already had the flu on Tuesday. I couldn’t even keep water down!”
“Those places are the worst and we always get a mutated virus that hangs around for three weeks,” sighed another.
“I’ve decided that the happiness that gentle play brings doesn’t outweigh the sadness that an insect brings, so we’re not going,” added another.
“We’ve had 7 illnesses in 4 months and I actually have PTSD.”
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