I work evenings in the children's room of a public library. I'm part time and am here two nights a week from 3pm - 8pm. These are weeknights, so the children's room is generally pretty quiet after 5:30pm when the last of our programming wraps up and everyone goes home for dinner.
There's a woman who will bring her son in with her, and they'll just hang out until closing time. She'll either be on her laptop or on her phone, and the kid will play with the trainset that we have. I think the kid is five. Generally, this isn't a problem because the children's room is usually deserted.
However, if another child wants to play with the trainset, this little boy will pitch an epic fit. I'm talking screaming, grabbing train tracks, yelling at the other child to go away -- the whole nine yards. So far, nothing has turned violent. His mom will step in and try to calm him down.
My supervisor works on weekends and she says that this is a huge problem for her because this woman and her kid will stay all day long, so multiple meltdowns usually ensue. According to my supervisor, the mother would just zone out and ignore her kid, but this changed recently because my supervisor went over to the train table and made an "everybody needs to share in the library" announcement, and we think that prompted the mother to get involved.
For the past two nights, though, another child has come in and wanted to play with the trainset, and this kid has had a meltdown. The children's room has a door that's usually closed to muffle the sound of kids playing, but my coworkers at the front desk could hear him shrieking.
I did go over to the train table and gently remind everyone to share; both parents were involved at this point and I didn't want to override anyone or anything like that. I also didn't want to badger anyone who was already trying their hardest to get their kid under control (I have a kid, and I know how embarrassing it is when she has fits in public and some well-meaning busybody barges in to tell me to calm her down).
My supervisor thinks that the kid might be on the spectrum (I'm not a psychiatrist, so I'm not going to diagnose him). He does frequently make a humming sound, but that could be him making train noises while he plays. He also occasionally watches some sort of train video on his mother's phone (usually at full volume). Based on the noises, I think it's just a loop of trains. I've asked them to lower the volume a handful of times. He is verbal and usually says "hi" to me or waves when his mother brings him into the library.
When one of these meltdowns is happening, when is an appropriate time to intervene? Again, both sets of parents were intervening tonight and trying to calm their respective kids down. It seemed like the mother had a harder time calming her son down, and he was thrashing and kicking on the floor at one point (but not behaving violently towards anyone). He did calm down after about 10 minutes and the two kids shared the trainset (although did not play together).
I can't advise when is the appropriate time to intervene. However, if you want a friendlier intervention option for kids on the spectrum, your supervisor may want to look into purchasing a visual timer. You could have that in the room with a sign, "If others want to play and it's too hard to share, please wrap up your play time in five minutes" or something like that. The timers are designed to work for all ages helpful for transitions. A new family comes in the room, starts the timer, and that gives the kid a firm five minutes to wrap up.
I love that idea! It puts the stimulus control on the timer and moves it off the person. It’s more rigid, but predictable. Though it may cause an intense tantrum the first few times it goes off from this particular child, I think it’s a great idea!
That’s a really great suggestion.
I don’t think you should “intervene” with the child, it’s not your job to parent him. But you can give the mother your behavior guidelines which should have something about parents’ responsibilities. For example, our policy states, “Parents are expected to enforce our policies with their children. Unruly children may be asked to leave if they can’t obey the rules.”
Ultimately, kids are going to have tantrums in the children’s room. When it is a repeated thing and the parent seems incapable of parenting, that is an issue. In general, if a parent can’t calm their child while in the room, they should take the child out until they can be calm, for other kids’ sake. But some parents don’t get that.
We once had an awful situation where a boy came up into the adult section, hid under a table, and was having a tantrum — I was also pretty sure he was on the spectrum. He was with his grandmother who was physically incapable of handling him. All she could do was speak to him calmly and he would just scream back. We realized there was nothing we could do — we can’t touch a child and she wasn’t able to. It took a long time for her to coax him out and even longer to get them out of the library. Just a bad day all around.
Oof, sounds like a rough day.
Could you put a piece of masking tape in the center of the table and gently suggest that, in the future when another child wants to play, the train table can be shared using the specific boundary? Split the train parts into two bins, too? Often, for young kids, parallel play is common for a while and kids do have to be taught to share and play together.
Generally speaking, if the parent is already intervening then there's nothing for me to intervene with. The parent is already trying to do their job. If the parent is zoned out or just ignoring the kid, then I'll pop out and ask the parent if everything is ok or if they need some assistance, which usually gets them to pay attention to their child.
I usually don't directly intervene unless the child is at risk of damaging library property/toys/books/etc or if they're at risk of damaging themselves (we don't jump off tables, mm'kay?). We tend to keep the doors of the kids room shut to minimize the noise carrying, but I have had discussions with adult patrons that the library isn't a completely quiet space anymore. We have a quiet room on the opposite end of the library from the kids room and shutting both sets of doors helps a lot, but that's the best we can offer.
At some point something has to be done though. There was an incident in my library's commons area recently where a mother was trying to calm down a 3 year old who was screaming at the top of his lungs for literally 30 minutes. Not just crying and stuff but like full on wailing and shrieking. Most staff were afraid to say anything, just about all other patrons got up from their tables and left. Some of them yelled at staff on their way out. Unfortunately things like this happen frequently in my library.
There needs to be a point where a parent just has to pick up their child and physically remove them from the area so they don't disturb the rest of the people using the library.
Our library requires headphones on all electronics devices, so that could be an easy place to start.
What do your policies say? Ours says children under 8 need to be supervised by an adult. So we would say something like we are so glad you are here, our policy states that children under eight need to be supervised so we would appreciate it if you could be more hands on and go from there.
It is also easier to broach a conversation if others (non library staff) have made a complaint. You can then go back to your policy where it probably says something about behavior not disrupting normal library use/activities.
If you do not have relevant policies then you have a bigger problem.
I don't think we have a policy for headphones and electronics, but I can check.
The kid is always supervised. I don't think anyone has complained, but I'd have to ask my supervisor.
For that conversation I would define it as active supervision until child develops the skills to be more independent.
I have had these conversations, they are awkward but usually go well if you are neutral in explaining what is required while also listening. Most people just want to be heard/seen in these types of conversations.
If the parent is intervening I do nothing. If the parent is not, I will say something to the parent like, “Everything ok? Looks like we are having a rough day.” Then I’ll make sure they know we have a supervision policy to make sure that kids are able to follow the code of conduct.
If an adult is engaged and actively trying to control the situation, I do nothing because I am not the parent. If the caregiver is ignoring a situation or thinks it's cute or acceptable, I will say to the kids things like, "Please stop shouting, please don't bang on the keyboard, it might break, Please stop chasing each other through the aisles." I do this only when it is at the point that it really annoys me or when another patron complains. Then the adult usually steps up. Also, for your own sanity, why not take the train away for a while like someone else suggested. Replace it with soft blocks or small stuffed animals or felt shapes or perhaps nothing.
For the record, autism shows in a lot of different ways. It doesn’t always mean being nonverbal and lack of socializing. Whether that means anything about this kid is unclear and above our pay grades, but just thought I’d mention it. It would be good to approach situations with the assumption that he may be autistic in case he actually is.
I'm sorry if I misread something, but I'm having trouble understanding the problem here. Why would you intervene if the parent is already trying to calm him down? Is he damaging something or hurting other kids? I work full time in children's and we see multiple tantrums every day. It's not appropriate to correct their behavior unless they are actually violating a policy.
I agree, but I might pull that train back while it remains a problem. Maybe the table stays and a box of animals and blocks replaces it for awhile. The behavior is the problem but the train set is something under your control.
My issue is that his shrieking could be heard from our front lobby.
is there anything about volume in your patron code of conduct? big or small, the patron code of conduct applies to everyone. my library has a point about excess volume that negatively affects the experience of others, so a nice reminder to Mom about "inside voices" could help
Do you have parenting resources you can offer to the mother? She may be disinterested in doing better or she may not know how.
FYI, this is a terrible assumption to make, not your place as library staff, and a really great way to have a parent blow up at you.