Parents & the Teen Librarian

Parents can be a tricky issue when working with teens.  They run the gamut from completely absent to helicopter parents.  The trick is to figure out what kind of parent you are dealing with and address that issue individually.

The Cling-Ons
These parents are incapable of leaving their "child" alone; they keep their offspring within sight at all times and often seem to overpower them to a certain extent.  While this can be very frustrating for a YA Librarian you need to remember that you don't necessarily know the motivation behind the parent's actions.  There could be a background reason why the parents feels they need to be present.  There could be medical, legal or safety reasons.  Your job is to provide the best YA programming/library experience possible - even if it means a parent is in the room.

Now, there are clingy parents who don't present much of a problem to the running of the event.  I've got one mother who never leaves her daughter alone at a program, but will bring her laptop and set up in a corner of the room to work.  She doesn't try to participate in the program and I sometimes actually forget she is present.  There have also been times when an extra adult has come in handy and she's helped out.

Then there is the opposite.  The parent who stays in the program and tries to be an active participant.  What do you do then?  The best approach I've found is to just talk to them.  Explain to them that the program is for teens and having an adult try to actively participate has a negative impact on the teens' experience.  Most of the time the parent is willing to move off to the side.  You can also try distracting them by starting a conversation and letting them talk to you rather than pay attention to their teen (of course, this only works if you aren't having to provide a lot of instruction in your program).

The Extremely Conservative
If you work with teens chances are you've come into contact with the uber-conservative parent.  They are the ones that won't allow their teen to attend any program featuring zombies or vampires, who ask for "clean" books for their teens and forbid their children from having anything to do with Harry Potter.  You job is to provide for EVERY teen, this means dealing with both liberal and conservative extremes.  Try to keep this in mind when you are planning programs and teen events.  By "keep in mind" I don't mean cater to a specific family's needs, but make sure to offer some programming that ANY teen can attend.  I've found the best way to deal with the conservative parents is to just talk to them.  Once they know that you aren't out to subvert the values they are trying to instill in their child they are far more likely to allow their teens to attend most programs.

The Absent
I find this group of parents to be the most difficult simply because I never see them!  The Absent parent is one whose teen always shows up at the library by themselves and often for the majority of the day.  One trick I've found for actually meeting the parents of my teens to to host several after-hours programs throughout the year.  Teens who participate are required to be signed in and out by an adult and have a permission form, so I get to actually talk to a parent I might not otherwise see.

Truthfully, the best thing you can do as a YA Librarian is try to get to know the parents of your teens as much as possible.  When the parents know you and know what you have to offer their teen they are far more likely to encourage their teen to participate in library programs.

The "Positively-Negative Parenting" Phenomenon: Part 1

I've been a Young Adult Librarian for more than five years now and have noticed a concerning trend that I'm calling the "Positively-Negative Parenting" Phenomenon.

Every parent wants their children to read.  Reading goes hand in hand with education and all parents want their children to succeed in school, get educated and acquire the tools they need to do well in life. To that end, parents encourage children to read.  Which is a wonderful goal.  But what happens when parents sabotage their childrens' literary efforts without realizing the damage being committed.  What happens when the parent is "positively-negative"?

The Wake-Up Call

(Names in this story have been changed to protect customer identities.)

Last week, I had a mother, Rose, and her teenage daughter, Sasha, come to the reference desk.  The first words out of the mother's mouth was about how her daughter didn't like to read.  The mother had tried giving her daughter all kinds of books to read and she didn't like any of them.  Therefore Sasha didn't like to read.  She was a smart girl, her mother assured me, Sasha just didn't like to read.

I started talking to Sasha, asking the normal librarian questions to try and narrow down a genre or title that might appeal to her. (i.e. "What kind of TV shows/movies do you like?  What kind of video games? etc.)  After discovering that Sasha enjoyed the new Teen Wolf show on MTV as well as Vampire Diaries on CW, I took her into our YA Area to see what titles were actually on the shelf that might have appeal.  While I was talking to Sasha, Rose often interjected - she had given Sasha Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, but Sasha didn't read it.

Now, my style of "lets find book suggestions" goes something like this: I walk around my YA Area with the teen pulling books off the shelf for the teen to look over.  By the time we finish walking the area I will have pulled between five and ten possible titles.  I then leave the teen to peruse the selections to see if any have appeal (there is usually at least one title in the stack that the teen picks up).  As we walked around the section I executed my usual process, talking to Sasha, pulling titles off the shelf, giving a brief description and letting her make a split-second decision to take another look at the title or move on to the next.  As we did this, Rose continued to make comments about how she had given her daughter this title or that title that Sasha wouldn't read.

My wake-up call came when I pulled Andrea Cremer's Nightshade off the shelf for Sasha to consider.  Sasha showed intense interest as I described the plot and actually reached out to take the book, when her mother grabbed the book out of my hand and told me that there was no way her daughter would read that book.  It was too long.  Now, Nightshade is a little over 450 pages in length, so it isn't a skinny read, but Sasha had showed interest.  Inside, I was outraged; how dare Rose take away a book that her daughter actually expressed interest in!  I managed to keep an outer cool and simply took the book back from Rose and handed to Sasha saying, "If she likes it, she will read it." After pulling several more titles I left Sasha (and her mother) in the YA Area to take a look through the books we'd pulled as possible titles of interest.

Several minutes later I noticed Sasha walking out with a book tucked under her arm.  Nightshade was the book she picked.

The Realization

As I thought over my encounter with Sasha and Rose, I realized that Rose's behavior, which I have dubbed "positively-negative parenting" was something that I'd seen over and over again.  This phenomenon is when a parent, with the best intentions, tries to encourage their teen to read, but in the process constantly references failed former attempts at reading.  One minute the parent is encouraging reading then, the next minute, the parent is bringing to mind failure, humiliation and disappointment in their teen.  While I am not a psychologist, I cannot help but wonder what kind of negative impact this kind of parenting has on teen readers.  It is an issue I plan to explore.

Now, I don't know if Sasha will make it through that book.  She may decide it isn't for her.  I told her that she couldn't hurt my feelings by telling me she didn't like a book.  If I know what she doesn't like I have a better chance of finding something she does like.  All I asked of her was that she make a real effort to read the book.  (That's one of the main purposes of YA Librarianship, to foster a love of reading in teens.)  I don't care what a teen reads as long as they are reading.

Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?  I'd love to hear how you address it.