Show Me the Awesome: Iron Fist 3: Adult Management

This week I'm glad to join the many awesome people posting for Show Me the Awesome: 30 Days of Self-Promotion, started and curated by Liz Burns, Sophie Brookover, and Kelly Jensen. Here's a post at Stacked explaining the project, and All the Awesome is collected here.

Artwork by John LeMasney, lemasney.com

I'm writing this post jointly with my new coworker, Brooke, who writes about her adventures in librarianship at Reading with Red.

As a former educator and classroom management survivor, I've written a few times about managing our Children's Department, complete with a to-scale boat and a life-size giraffe (here and here, respectively). It's been a trip, and we're finally getting to a place where our space is used by children mostly as it is intended.

I realized, though, that now we've gotten a handle on the kids, we're experiencing something that I haven't written about before:

The Return of the Iron Fist: Child Management Part 2

Lately I've noticed a discussion on a list-serv I follow about child management in the library. I wrote a successful post last summer that has been helpful to many, but this debate made me realize I didn't go far into the use of the negative in rule-making in the children's area.

Mainly because our problem was bribery of children to behave.

But truly, on the other end of the spectrum, there is a matter of writing rules for children and tweens that are inviting rather than negative.

The entirety of what I'm about to write will probably sound overly fluffy. You may dismiss it, as some might, assuming that by omitting the word "No" only feeds the fire of Precious Snowflake Culture.

But I assure you, this is anything but. This is years of trying and failing and trying again and failing and crying in the bathroom and then trying again because me and kids were stuck together.

Child Management. With an Iron Fist.

In the middle of the children's department at my library, there is a boat.

Yup. A boat.

Wall of a library that is a replica of the side of a steamboat.

This monstrosity lines the entire right (erm, starboard) side of the room with bright colors, steps and a facade that clearly screams: PLAY ON ME!

I hear it used to be worse. It used to have a steering wheel and I think paddles, and like, cannons, or something. Its safety has increased (there is now vinyl lining the steel sides, and the wheel was taken down after only two kids' heads got stuck and started bleeding). 

But the worst part about it, is it's a memorial. So that means, no matter how many times the staff can be like, "seriously, there's a boat in our library" it cannot be taken down.

I wish I was kidding or even remotely hyperbolic about any of this. Maybe there weren't any cannons, but really, that's it.