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Monday, July 11, 2011

Is a quiet library a relic?

I spent some time working in our local library today (gassed the house for summer insects and had to vacate for a couple hours). Here I thought it'd be a nice, quiet place to concentrate.

Wrong.

Now, I understand kids are a huge portion of the patrons, and I'm all for that. But what I don't get is, don't moms teach their kids to be quiet in the library anymore? It's not a playland. I know the children's section has some neat things for toddlers to get their hands on, but that isn't an open license to run screaming throughout the building, or throw things, or tumble, or... Hey. I remember what it's like to have energetic little ones, and there's no way you can predict what they're going to do next. But when they do something entirely too loud or out of appropriate norms in a given setting (church, library, etc), the mom should it at least give them a "Shhh!" How else are they going to learn?

And I'm used to working around activity--old episodes of Seinfeld, teen kids fighting, cats begging to go in or out, incoming texts and calls... I don't need total peace. But sheesh.

Heading home to work on the back porch outside. Where it's semi-quiet.

Autumn Piper
Got quiet?

2 comments:

Amanda said...

Not a fan of the letting your kid run wild in places like the library or restaurants either. Ya'd think they could shut the kids in that awesome storytime room & let them run around & keep the peace for others. Just a heads up, you might avoid the place Friday @ 1pm, the Zoo will be there!

Sutton Fox said...

The nicest thing I can say is, I'm not sure some parents teach their kids anything these days. They just expect them to know, and if they unknowingly behave inappropriately, we're all just supposed to ignore it.

Kids are great, but I'm from that antiquated time when kids had limits. Imagine. :)