Story Time Now

Lulu and I used to love going to story time. I was more obvious about it than Lulu, but we both liked it. This year they've changed it. Apparently our Mother Goose was doing too much or something because now she only does the one story time for kids 3 to 5 without parents, and other people have taken over the rest. The woman who does the 2's? I'm not sure how to put this. I don't want to say she's terrible because I think that's not quite accurate. But she's not good at it. Maybe she'd be better suited for older children. Maybe not, though.

Here's the thing things:

First - she never tells us her name. We know what her name is because we asked Mother Goose after the first time we had story time with the new lady. We commented to MG that we thought the new lady should tell us her name and MG said she'd mention it to her and maybe she just forgot that time. But she never tells us her name. That's not right.

Also - she doesn't read the whole book to us. She skips pages when she reads. I suppose that might be okay. You know, more time for other things, but I'd like to hear the whole book sometime.

And then - she gets visibly stressed when children don't just sit and listen. I do think that parents should take their kids out when they're being disruptive (shrieking, banging on the door, etc.) because it's disrespectful not to, but most 2 year-olds aren't going to sit quietly by their parents and not wiggle (when they're comfortable in a place), and we wouldn't want to go to a story time where that's what's expected. I don't think she expects that, exactly, but it's obvious that she'd be more comfortable if things went that way. And there have been a couple of times when she said something wouldn't happen (special stuffed animal visitor, hand stamps) unless everyone was sitting down. Sorry. Not going to happen.

I guess in general story time isn't very welcoming anymore.

So I've been letting Lulu choose whether we want to go to story time. We still go to the library every week. We even got Lulu a library card of her own. But as to whether we actually go into the story time room and listen to that woman for ½ hour - that's up to Lulu. And I've been relieved that Lulu chose not to go the last 2 weeks. This week, though, that woman was sick and another librarian (not MG) did it in her stead. So we went in and listened. It was sad, really (not the other librarian - he did fine). That room was packed - overloaded, really - when MG did story time each week, but today there were maybe 5 families. It makes me wonder if the new lady has run everyone else off too...