McDonald’s Playland – Blessing or Curse

Cheryl Ann aka Sissy at McDonald's Play Land

As a work from home single parent I have found McDonald’s play area to be both a blessing and a curse.  My daughter is full of energy when I pick her up from her morning pre-k class and if I just take her home there is no getting anything done because she demands constant attention, which she deserves, making it hard to accomplish anything especially something that requires even the slightest ability to think.

Think – in a room full of kids?  Yeah, ok – this does sound hard to believe but I can handle the roar of children playing as long as I’m lucky enough to be among other parents that also do not allow their children to scream.  Even though this is a place where children are expected to be noisy there is no reason for them to be screaming indoors and my daughter knows if she participates in the screaming that we will go home.

The blessing part is that my daughter gets to run off some energy with other kids to keep her occupied and I get use of McDonald’s free wi-fi to blog or work on my other online projects.

The curse: eating fast food and screaming children.  To keep calories down and finances under control I just pick a McDouble and a side salad and my daughter gets the chicken nugget kids meal.  We do this about three times a week.

We learned to hard way to not sit under the play area – the first time we came to this particular McDonald’s my daughter (just had to be MY daughter) had an accident and pee ran through the net and down onto the table right behind where I was sitting.  I was so embarrassed but couldn’t help laughing (inside of course) because the woman who was sitting behind me – who barely escaped the mess – was one of the mothers who just sits and allows her daughter to scream – I’m not talking about just playing loud – I’m talking screaming at the top of her lungs and mom didn’t do or say anything.  Some may think I’m not being unreasonable but I believe we need to teach our children appropriate public behaviors and especially indoors.

So, if you want to get some blogging done when the preschooler wants to play just grab your laptop and head on over to your nearest McDonald’s play land and remember to not sit under the play area.  And please don’t let your children scream.