Cheating on My Library
I took the kids to another children’s time at a library yesterday. I want to attend one of these sessions every week as a way to prepare her for preschool next year. The cluster of similarly aged children should help build her social skills, and the crowded indoor environment should help build her immune skills. I wanted to go to the library near our house, but I missed their children’s time this week. With yesterday being Friday, I had to scramble to fit any children’s time into the week.
After a little Internet searching, I found the web pages for all the area libraries as well as several offers for free dinner at the Olive Garden. One of the suburban libraries had a children’s time Friday morning, so I called to register. I’m not sure why these libraries want us to register; the urban library didn’t seem to know what I was talking about when I said I wanted to register, and this suburban library seemed a little surprised that someone was following their directions.
I knew the suburban library experience would be different from my previous experience as soon as I noticed the presence of “W” stickers on the cars in the lot. Everything about the session was more reserved, more conservative if you will, than the urban library.
I arrived 5 minutes early for both children’s times. In the urban library, I easily found the reading room by listening for the screaming children gathered inside. In the suburban library, I poked into a few rooms before finding the correct one. We were the first family to enter the room; the rest of the families were outside quietly looking at books on the racks and enjoying their brunches from the library’s coffee shoppe. As soon as I entered the room, the rest of the families followed me, possibly because they assumed I knew what I was doing. Suckers. Unlike the urban library, everyone in the group appeared to be a stay-at-home mom; no dads or grandparents acting as caregivers here.
The librarian entered shortly after we staked out our carpet turf. The librarians at both libraries looked like they had been working there since the building first opened. Of course in the urban library, this meant the librarian had 20+ years of experience working with children; in the suburban library, she had closer to 20+ months of experience. The urban librarian seemed more comfortable leading the children through their natural state, which is noisy and unfocused. The suburban librarian seemed to be calming the children with hushed tones and limited audience interaction.
I preferred the more boisterous approach, especially since I didn’t feel like we were disturbing the entire room every time someone squawked, which was quite often yesterday. Their colds/ear infections didn’t help their attitude. Neither did the unfamiliar surroundings. The deportment death knell was a game they played early that involved passing a ball around a circle. Abbie loves balls, and was happy passing the ball, or at least tolerated me ripping it from her hands and giving it to the adjacent child, because she knew the ball would return. When the game ended, the librarian collected the balls and set them on a cart behind her. Abbie could see the balls taunting her from the cart, and spent the rest of the session trying to steal it. I tried to hold her near me, but I was too busy keeping the boys from melting down and wiping their spit-up from the nice suburban carpet.
Eventually Abbie hit total meltdown from my repeated efforts to thwart her from grabbing the ball. Just as we were about to prematurely leave, the librarian played a music CD that brought her back to the group while drowning out her complaining. We limped to the end without further incident, and I packed up everyone to leave. Since we were the only family prolific enough and foolish enough to have three children in attendance, the other families had mostly left by the time we were ready. This gave us a chance to talk to the librarian, especially since I had to return the ball after Abbie stole it while I was strapping the boys into the stroller. She thanked us for coming, gave us a handout, and never once asked us never to return, so I guess the visit couldn’t have gone too badly.
After a little Internet searching, I found the web pages for all the area libraries as well as several offers for free dinner at the Olive Garden. One of the suburban libraries had a children’s time Friday morning, so I called to register. I’m not sure why these libraries want us to register; the urban library didn’t seem to know what I was talking about when I said I wanted to register, and this suburban library seemed a little surprised that someone was following their directions.
I knew the suburban library experience would be different from my previous experience as soon as I noticed the presence of “W” stickers on the cars in the lot. Everything about the session was more reserved, more conservative if you will, than the urban library.
I arrived 5 minutes early for both children’s times. In the urban library, I easily found the reading room by listening for the screaming children gathered inside. In the suburban library, I poked into a few rooms before finding the correct one. We were the first family to enter the room; the rest of the families were outside quietly looking at books on the racks and enjoying their brunches from the library’s coffee shoppe. As soon as I entered the room, the rest of the families followed me, possibly because they assumed I knew what I was doing. Suckers. Unlike the urban library, everyone in the group appeared to be a stay-at-home mom; no dads or grandparents acting as caregivers here.
The librarian entered shortly after we staked out our carpet turf. The librarians at both libraries looked like they had been working there since the building first opened. Of course in the urban library, this meant the librarian had 20+ years of experience working with children; in the suburban library, she had closer to 20+ months of experience. The urban librarian seemed more comfortable leading the children through their natural state, which is noisy and unfocused. The suburban librarian seemed to be calming the children with hushed tones and limited audience interaction.
I preferred the more boisterous approach, especially since I didn’t feel like we were disturbing the entire room every time someone squawked, which was quite often yesterday. Their colds/ear infections didn’t help their attitude. Neither did the unfamiliar surroundings. The deportment death knell was a game they played early that involved passing a ball around a circle. Abbie loves balls, and was happy passing the ball, or at least tolerated me ripping it from her hands and giving it to the adjacent child, because she knew the ball would return. When the game ended, the librarian collected the balls and set them on a cart behind her. Abbie could see the balls taunting her from the cart, and spent the rest of the session trying to steal it. I tried to hold her near me, but I was too busy keeping the boys from melting down and wiping their spit-up from the nice suburban carpet.
Eventually Abbie hit total meltdown from my repeated efforts to thwart her from grabbing the ball. Just as we were about to prematurely leave, the librarian played a music CD that brought her back to the group while drowning out her complaining. We limped to the end without further incident, and I packed up everyone to leave. Since we were the only family prolific enough and foolish enough to have three children in attendance, the other families had mostly left by the time we were ready. This gave us a chance to talk to the librarian, especially since I had to return the ball after Abbie stole it while I was strapping the boys into the stroller. She thanked us for coming, gave us a handout, and never once asked us never to return, so I guess the visit couldn’t have gone too badly.
posted by Matt at
11:25 PM
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