Worthing's skate parks and roller disco – our Sussex columnist tries them out

​For, it would appear, I have become a Skate Park Mum – and I think I’m right that this scans to the track quite nicely?!...

I am a Skate Park Mum;

Kids said ‘See you later Mum’;

Playparks are not good enough for them;

Watching them go round and round;

Freewheeling about the town;

Don’t they know Mum’s freezing half to death?

Yes, you will now often find me sitting at the side of the skate park, shivering away with the other discarded parents while our offspring have the time of their lives on the ramps (is this what they’re called?!).

My children like to take their scooters to the skate park, and go round, and round, and round, and up and down and back again repeatedly until I can no longer feel my toes.

Cold aside, I actually don’t really mind it. I’m always up for them being out in the fresh air, getting exercise and learning new skills. Plus, when they inevitably come home tired and want to watch YouTube for a bit, I feel a lot less guilty if they’ve had a couple of hours out.

So, what does being a Skate Park Mum involve, I don’t hear you ask. Well, it mainly involves some light cheerleading duties and, as with parenting in general, providing a buffet of snacks when required*.

Other than that, you sit around (depending on bench availability) and watch.

In doing so, I’ve found that skate parks are a lot less scary than I had feared.

Before I ever took my children to one, I was wary because they have a bit of a bad rep. Tales of gangs of feral children frequenting them played in my mind, and I wondered if I should be putting my precious pair into such a dangerous environment.

But, in fact, what we’ve always found is that bar one teenager who was unkind when my son fell over, all the children, teens and adults we’ve encountered at the skate parks are friendly and supportive.

I’ve seen plenty of teenagers helping my children up ramps, letting them go first even if it’s not their turn and giving way to my five-year-old, who doesn’t always look as well as he could as he sails across the paths of other skaters. It feels like a little community, and I’ve always found the vibes at skate parks to be good-natured and fun.

Having just got comfortable in my new role, my children decided to switch things up.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about our trip to Alleyoops skate shop, and talked about how my son had bought roller boots.

Well, he was really keen to use them, so I found out there is a roller disco at Davison Leisure Centre every Saturday and at the weekend we tried it out for the first time.

Walking in to see a hard gym floor and disco balls spinning in the darkness instantly took me back to Southwick Leisure Centre in the late 80s/early 90s. My coccyx was positively twitching at the thought of a young Katherine on a pair of roller skates, legs quivering like Bambi, falling backwards, bottom-first over and over again and being left bruised and battered the next day. Thankfully, my two seemed to take to skating like ducks to water and spent much less time on the floor than their mum did when she was young(er).

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They did, however, want me to walk around the gym with them for their first go which did make me a bit dizzy after 45 minutes of literally walking in circles. On the upside, it helped me to get to 9,000 steps on a day where I hadn’t done much else other than pottering.

So, now I’m not just a Skate Park Mum but a Roller Disco Mum, too. Cheerleading and snacks are just as obligatory at the latter.

But the roller disco came with some banging tunes for me to bust out some mum-dancing and singing to – N-Trance’s Set You Free on a Saturday afternoon? Don’t mind if I do!

*Snacks are required A LOT