Effing kids in the library

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Hypercoaster,

I agree. I don't mind normal hustle and bustle and conversation, but the screaming, running around and other behaviors just drive me nuts. I also have a problem with adults who come in the library having loud, nasty fights. People curse at each other and call each other nasty names and act as if they are going to get into a knockdown, drag out physical fight as well.

What ever happened to silence in the library?
Should not the libraries become very strict?
Even if it is a kid, anything louder than a whisper,
anything other than walking softly in single file,
then the librarians put you outside the door.

Or maybe lock the kid in a separate room, like
happens to people in a clinic during flu season.

Many parents feel virtuous dropping their kids
off at the library. Maybe big signs: "Children
unaccompanied by parents..." um ... will be
given a kitten.

When I was a child it was the time when silence was the rule in a library, and even very young I managed to comply with that. It became almost a game to be sure to stay quiet and only speak in whispers. Even a young child can be taught this basic behavior and fulfill it.

It makes me sad that today no such requirement exists and parents don't expect that of their kids anymore.

lol...this would actually probably be quite an effective threat. If you leave your child here, you will have to either adopt a kitten or make your child upset that he/she can't keep the kitten.


btw, I would be opposed to hard and fast policies banning unaccompanied children from libraries. If the child is mature enough to treat the library as a library, I think it would be very bad to forbid the child from entering without parents. There's a big difference between a two year old screaming and a 10 year old quietly reading.

Given a kitten . . . or, a monitor lizard!

Luckily the libraries here are very strict. As for school ones, I remember being silly and giggling like crazy when one of the kids kept making these loud farting and burping noises and we were told to leave. That kind of stuff is hilarious when you're a kid. But yeh, we weren't that loud.

They have kid groups in my local libraries, but not screaming kids. Sorry you have to deal with that.

I know how the OP feels. At one time the rule was "children should be seen and not heard". Now it's like every public place has to be a day-care center. You'd think they'd set limits at a library. I haven't been to my city's library in a long time, so I don't know.

When I went to junior high I spent a lot of my time in the school's library. Of course we didn't have to worry about toddlers and infants there. But people don't have to be noisy and disruptive to make you miserable. They can just leave you notes that say "You're ugly and you can't draw" or "You do drugs".

Seems that our glorious leaders first pushed to abandon library quiet rules a long time ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ndyburnham
Each library is governed by its local area bye-laws, so maybe your locale is still holding out against the rot, but I don't hold out much hope. A glance around the web shows a lot of more recent articles expressing fury at the situation, but no sign of anybody turning the situation around, as far as I can see. Damn you to hell, government.

Babies, toddlers and kids screaming drives me up the wall to no end, and I agree with most of what everyone says; but it's probably not fair to suggest parents be kicked out of places. Parents have lives and need to do stuff and even the most well behaved child will have their moments. You can't honestly expect parents to never go out in public for the first five years of their kids life.

If anything tweens are a bigger hassle. You've got no idea how many times I've needed to use the library PC's for something important and they're all being used by 12-13 year olds watching Minecraft videos.

Salient points IMO. I'd accept a compromise, such as libraries keeping the silence rule and applying it with sensitivity to both sides, perhaps by allowing one or two shrieks per child per visit and reserving a day or two as "noisy" days. I think that's pretty generous considering that in the old days, with the silence thing, parents just had to work around the rule yet the world didn't collapse. And architecture can play a part, with soundproofing and segregation. I remember a separate childrens' library back in the 1960s, but it got shut down, to save money I guess. My main fear is that the world seems to be moving towards totally abolishing the right to peace and quiet, without consultation.

I've seen some humorous signs on Google that say things like "Children unaccompanied by adults will be sold to the circus" or "given coffee and taught to swear". I don't about that last one though, like we need them to be more hyper and obnoxious than they are already.

And most kids these days already know how to swear, they just stop when they see an adult coming.

How about "Future Mods in training". That's what the kids in the libraries act like. Little Mods.

All the libraries around here are also day care centers, noisy as f*ck. And it's not just the toddlers, either. The teens are noisy, too. As a matter of fact, adults speaking on their cell phones doesn't help matters either.

Why do I go?

To use the internet and to have someplace to write. I've been homeless for years and it's easier for me to sit at a desk than haunched over my laptop in a park somewhere, plus there's the internet - necessary for the books I write.

Wearing headphones do work, but it's distracting to listen to music. Headphones can be a bit bothersome after a few hours, but they are better than nothing. I do forget to bring them sometimes, though, so that's my fault.

Yeah, I hate how every place these days have to be part daycare center. It was far better in the time only a few decades ago when parents were expected to keep their kids in check. If they can't (let's face it, kids have minds of their own and won't always obey even when the parents are there), then they should be made to leave. There should be no diplomacy in that. Libraries are meant to be quiet. It doesn't matter that the parents have lives too; other library users should not suffer because someone have kids.
And as someone pointed out, it can be teens on phones and adults too, and they should be shown the door as well. Quiet shouldn't be restricted to age groups in either dirention. If you can't be quiet while there, goodbye. Easy-peasy.

To be fair, that's not new at all. I picked up two strong swear words from other kids in my daycare before the age of 3 and used it to get a rise out of adults because I saw the reaction it got in daycare.
In elementary school we used the S word a lot among ourselves. And teens have certainly not had a problem with swearing since my time in the 90's.

Ha, I went to "library school", and one of the first things we were told was that "Public Libraries are not Quiet Places Whatsoever!!" lol Public libraries can be zoo's.