I lost some faith in humanity today.

[Deleted]

A 2 and 3 year old were left alone in the play area of the youth room today for almost an hour. They could not tell us their names, who they were with, or any other pertinent information. The caregiver did not respond to pages such as, "will the adult with the little girl in the purple fleece and the little boy in the orange jacket please come to the youth desk."

My library is huge...102,000 square feet. The youth room is 18,000 square feet. It turns out the caregiver was a babysitter, probably in her 50s, who was on the Internet - in the youth room but the farthest point from the play area. We were exactly 4 minutes away from calling the police.

Who doesn't check on a 2 and 3 year old for an hour??? Or even leaves them alone??? None of us recognized any of them so we can't even notify the parents.

Ok, rant over.

[GailGoldie]

horrible

[Deleted]

Do you have anyway of getting in touch with the parents? They likely don't know this is happening, and I'm sure they would want to.

[hopecounts]

that's awful!
i wonder if the Mom knows what kind of care the kids are getting.

[Deleted]

No, none of us recognized them and the caregiver hustled them out quickly when we tried to talk to her. Trust me, I desperately wanted to notify the parents.

[hannamaren]

My mouth is wide open.
My nanny starts in 2 weeks. Maybe I need a nanny cam attached to my kids clothes?

[pugz]

omg

[6fsn]

Must be the day. I watched the mall cops return a little boy to a woman playing on a gadget in the play area. Not once, but twice.

[mollz007]

Somebody needs to get fired.

[hannamaren]

Oct 15, 2012 19:36:48 GMT -5 mollz007 said:

Somebody needs to get fired.

But how will the parents know?

[Deleted]

Oh that is awful!

[mollz007]

Oct 15, 2012 19:37:39 GMT -5 hannamaren said:

Oct 15, 2012 19:36:48 GMT -5 mollz007 said:

Somebody needs to get fired.

But how will the parents know?

True. I didnt read the part about the parents not knowing. That makes mme sad.

[missajane]

Next time one of the staff needs to hustle out after her and get her license plate number.

When I worked in a large store retail and had a similar incident I was able to call the police, give them the license number and they called the parents and let them know what happened. Luckily the nanny/sitter was driving the parent's car. If not, at least it might be enough to scare the woman into watching the kids in public.

[Deleted]

We can't do that. Patriot Act and all that, policy is we can't record information about patrons unless we are willing to call the police. Unattended kids get 1 hour before that happens.

[Melissa W.]

Did she sign it to use the computer? Our library has a sign up sheet.

[Deleted]

No. Ours uses library card numbers and does not retain the info.

[Deleted]

Omg how awful

[bunnysmom]

Those poor children! if the caregiver behaves like that in public I can't even imagine what she might do at home...

[bronxgirl]

that's so scary. Those poor kids.

[mbcdefg]

Ugh. Someone could've taken them and walked away so easily.

We have friends who do this at parties and family gatherings ... they bring their ill-mannered kids and let them run amok, because the parents know that someone else will inadvertently end up watching them just to keep them from killing themselves/destroying the house. I just pray that they don't also do this in public.

[vanillacourage]

You should modify your policy. 1 hour is ridiculous. A half hour is indicative enough of neglect (i.e. neglecting to pay attention) to call the cops. 30 minutes + 3 pages on your PA system would be enough.

[nonsenseabound]

Oct 16, 2012 9:40:19 GMT -5 vanillacourage said:

You should modify your policy. 1 hour is ridiculous. A half hour is indicative enough of neglect (i.e. neglecting to pay attention) to call the cops. 30 minutes + 3 pages on your PA system would be enough.

AGREED

[whitepicketfence]

Oct 16, 2012 9:40:19 GMT -5 vanillacourage said:

You should modify your policy. 1 hour is ridiculous. A half hour is indicative enough of neglect (i.e. neglecting to pay attention) to call the cops. 30 minutes + 3 pages on your PA system would be enough.

I totally agree with this.

As a parent, I would want to know that this was going on. Livid is not a strong enough word for how upset I'd be at my children's caregiver in this situation.

[Wines Not Whines]

You let people drop off 2 year olds for an hour without notifying the police? Do you actually provide child care? Where is your library, because I would like some free babysitting.

If I couldn't find the parents of a 2-year old after 15 minutes, I'd be calling someone.

[Deleted]

It's really not as simple as me sayng let's change this policy. But thanks for assuming I'm clueless...

[wannabe]

you should see my face right now.

[sapphireblue]

That's terrible.

I also work in a library but we have a zero tolerance policy with this. We would probably spend a few minutes paging and walking around to patrons asking if it was their child (not easy, we are huge also, have four floors).

But after a minimal effort (five minutes) to locate the parents, the police would have been called.

[Deleted]

Oct 16, 2012 13:41:13 GMT -5 sapphireblue said:

That's terrible.

I also work in a library but we have a zero tolerance policy with this. We would probably spend a few minutes paging and walking around to patrons asking if it was their child (not easy, we are huge also, have four floors).

But after a minimal effort (five minutes) to locate the parents, the police would have been called.

Clearly a better policy. In all honesty, this is never an issue for us and one of the reasons I am so upset by it. Unattended youth are usually much older and that is why the 1 hour policy was created.
We will of course revisit the issue with the board probably creating age restrictions but it's not like I can just say, ok, here's our new policy.

[Deleted]

That is awful. I can't imagine. I was actually surprised that it was someone in her 50s. I was exactly teenager or early 20s for that kind of irresponsibilty.

[sapphireblue]

Believe me, I hear you on the virtual impossibility of getting policies modified. Even if they get changed, it takes so long.

It goes to one committee, they vote on it, if they approve, it goes to the board at the next meeting and they can either approve, disapprove, or table it for more discussion.

The part I hate about that is that almost every single board member of the library does not even have a library card. They don't use the library, they just like the prestige of saying they are on the library board. It drives me crazy that they are the ones shaping our policies when they don't even know anything about libraries.