My minor gripe: My little one is a night owl. Where are all the kids activities at 5pm? | Australian lifestyle

IIt’s Sunday evening and we’re playing tag. My two-year-old zips across the kitchen island with the speed and precision of a Formula 1 driver. He’s a mini-Oscar Piastri, knowing when to press the accelerator to avoid a tight collision, even if my nervous system is reacting as if he’s heading straight for the safety barrier.

Mini Biastri doesn’t revolve around the kitchen island in the home. No, we’re inside a fake kitchen at IKEA. It’s the place we come to when all the other kid-friendly places are closed and the night owls are still full of energy.

We come here so often that it has found a “driver line” from the mock bedrooms through all the little kids’ closets to the living rooms and now the country style kitchens.

I’d rather chase him down to a safer children’s café lined with painted wooden versions of fruit and veg that he can pretend to slice with a suitably safe wooden knife, but all those places have already kicked us out – when they close at 4pm. Most children’s places close even earlier.

I agree with you, intelligent and sensible reader – this is not the ideal place for a screaming, laughing, irritable, curious toddler who won’t be sleeping anytime soon. But there is no place. Sure, we can be at home watching Bluey (we will, too). Or at the stadium (I was there twice already today).

Organized activities such as swimming, gymnastics and soccer lessons are always available in the morning, if you can afford them or have the bandwidth to register your child in advance. Library Rhyme Time and Story Time are great free events, but are usually at 10:30am. And the dinosaur section of the museum tends to pick us up by 4pm. Supermarkets, Bunnings and pubs (if we’re brave enough) are more risky areas where others don’t tolerate them.

What I dream of is a soft play center that opens late with a café that sells more than chicken nuggets. I was clocking in for my last parenting shift of the day, along with the other bleary-eyed adults, and we were spiking half-drunk apple juice to the joy of watching our feral children go berserk without anyone audibly objecting. If it’s not too much to ask, there will be a soundproof room for shouting into the void (us and them).

So if you see a speedy toddler wandering through the makeshift kitchens at IKEA this weekend, please reserve your judgment. I know this phase won’t last forever, 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.