How To Use the Library With Small Children: 8 Simple Tips

This post encourages parents that yes, they CAN take their small children to library, and shares 8 simple tips for library visits with children.

They say that you never really appreciate something until it is gone, and when the world shut down in the spring of 2020 it became painfully clear how much we relied upon our friendly neighborhood library. We missed it so much! Homeschooling definitely exacerbates the situation, and I suddenly realized how frequently we would normally check the library for books that relate to topics we were studying.

We look for books related to school subjects or current random interests or places we might be visiting or seasons of the year or upcoming holidays or people we have heard about or projects we want to try… and the list goes on! We were thankful that it was just a short-lived closure, and ever since then we’ve been back in our normal routine of frequent library visits with children in tow.

But if you have multiple (small/loud/messy/active/destructive) children like I do, you might be apprehensive about taking them to the library.

Is it really worth the trouble? Will they get anything out of it? Will you get anything out of it? And how can they learn to use it well and respectfully?

First of all, if you have a posse of short noisy people with you at all times, you do not have to take them all to the library! Maybe the mere thought of bringing them all to a place where they are supposed to be quiet and where they are supposed to walk sedately and where your toddler is not supposed to pull great armfuls of novels off the shelves is enough to cause you to break out in a cold sweat. If that is true, you can choose not to do it!

Find a time when someone else can watch the kids and do all your book-choosing alone. You will be much happier and your kids will be just fine. Learning to use the library is not difficult, and you’ll have plenty of calmer and easier stages ahead of you in which you can introduce your children to the joys of the library. I am often amazed by how quickly various seasons pass, and how outings or events that once seemed impossibly difficult are now, actually, fairly easy. This may not be the right season for frequent library visits with children, and that’s okay.

However, having said that, I will also say that we have chosen to visit the library approximately every other week for the last ten years without fail (barring that Unprecedented Spring of 2020). We’ve brought newborns, crawling babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. Granted, some visits look different than others, depending on the ages and stages we are in, but overall I have chosen to take the attitude of “this is what we do, we visit the library all together, and you can learn to participate too even though you are little.”

I want the library to become a normal lifestyle habit for them and a place of joyful memories.

And truly, one of the perks to these frequent visits is that all our kids now love to go there! They cheer when I announce that we’re going to the library and I have to give them a limit of how many books they can check out (“Aw, Mom, can’t I just get twooooo more books? There’s some I reeeeeeally want!”). Yes, their nerd level is quite high, and yes, it makes me extremely happy.

They’ve learned which sections their favorite books are in and how to check them out with their very own library cards at the self-checkout. We are a family of introverts so we are still working on the skill of asking a librarian for help when needed, but I know it will come in time.

So then – if we do indeed want to venture out with small children (and again, you may not want to), the question is how to do it? How can we take children of all ages to this “quiet” place and make it out again without destroying books, offending the other patrons, or hating each other?

This is not to say we’ve never done those things (yes, we have!), but thankfully it is the exception rather than the norm. Here are a few ways we have done it – maybe something here will work for you, too.

1. Keep it short. Often we are in and out in 15 minutes or less; I will grab my books on hold at the “reserved” shelf, each older child will pick ONE AND ONLY ONE favorite book from the children’s section, we check out and are back to our van before the toddler has a chance to empty a shelf or tear a page or throw a tantrum. Sometimes, yes, we try to stay longer and I let the older kids enjoy browsing while I follow Baby Brother around on his Mission of Destruction – but you don’t have to! Short and sweet is just fine, and one of the keys to a trip like that is…

2. Put books on hold in advance. I am still not yet at the stage where I can plan to browse adult books in a leisurely manner with my children along. Depending on the day, Baby Brother is either in the “pull every book off the shelf” stage or the “trot off by myself into some random corner where mom will never find me” stage, both of which require my attention so that he is not lost and we are not expelled. If I want to browse, I go alone.

BUT – the hold service is amazing! Because our library is part of a large network, I can go online and request almost any book ever written and there’s a good chance it will be somewhere in our system. If there’s anything I really want, whether for the kids or for me, I try hard to request it in advance so that I don’t have to spend time searching for it while also keeping track of the minions in my care – which is much easier if I can…

3. Keep baby in a stroller or carrier. I think one of the sweet spots for library visits is when your baby is old enough to stay awake happily for a bit, but isn’t yet crawling/walking/demanding their freedom. If they will sit happily in a baby carrier or stroller, use it! Sadly, they will one day reach a point where the stroller is not a happy place and they will demand the use of their legs – at which point your visits become more difficult. Then, you might want to…

4. Involve the toddler. Besides finding a couple board books which he might like, I will also let the toddler pull some books off the shelves himself. As long as he’s not in Full Destructive Mode and throwing them around, I think it’s good for him to “pick out” some books too, just like his siblings. He generally flips through them for 2.3 seconds and then leaves them on the floor for mom to put away, but hey, we have to start somewhere! When he gets older, we will…

5. Teach children where to put discarded books. At least half of our time at the library consists of “Mom, actually I don’t want this book anymore and I thought of a better one to get!” which can be a little frustrating – “Can’t you just make up your mind?!” – but it’s actually a difficult skill that they are practicing and honing. How do you choose a good book that you will enjoy and be satisfied with? There are many adults who cannot answer this question; perhaps they didn’t get enough practice choosing books as a child!

Let them practice – and teach them where to put all the books that they “actually don’t want anymore.” And, they will be forced to choose more carefully if you…

6. Set limits for the number of books per child. This started for purely practical reasons – because we can only transport so many books back to the van without dropping them all over the parking lot (“Let’s see, if you each pick 5 books that will be 25 total plus the ones I want to get and I don’t think we can carry more than that because I forgot to bring bags and it’s almost nap time and the toddler will not leave willingly which means I’ll be hauling him under one arm and I’m sweating already so we’d better stop there”) – but now I think it’s a good thing, because it forces them to be more selective and think about which books would be best, rather than grabbing anything and everything off the shelves.

Plus, having too many library books at home can be difficult for me to keep track of! Although I am pleased to say that in all our many years of using the library we have only lost two (2!) books. Not bad at all. You’ll have to decide what is best for your own family, but our limit is usually 3-4 per child – perhaps more if I actually remembered to bring a couple bags to put the books in. But either way, we need to…

7. Be patient and keep trying. Consistency and practice are the keys for so many parenting challenges. Kids will generally adapt and learn and even exceed your expectations if you will consistently, without anger or frustration, remind them of what you expect and then simply give them many opportunities to practice.

I can’t even count how many times we’ve been there, yet I still begin every visit with: “This is the library. It’s a quiet place and we are going to walk and use our quiet voices. We want to be considerate of the other people who might be reading or studying! You can choose two books. Come tell me if you see your little brother pulling books off the shelf.” Repetition helps immensely.

Over time, as you show them where to find certain books and how to look at the name of the author on the spine, they will naturally start to understand that there is a system of organization and soon they’ll be searching out books on their own. They’ll watch you look up a book on the computer in the library to find its catalog number and soon they’ll be doing it themselves. Finally, and most importantly, don’t forget to…

8. Sit down and read the books you have chosen. We try very hard to do this, ideally on the same day or the day after our visit. This way the children (especially the non-readers) experience the real, tangible pleasure of a story that came from the library – and they are eager to go back for more. We don’t always get to every single book before the due date, and that’s okay too – they’ll still be in the library, waiting for us to choose and read on another visit, another day.

Unless you lose the book and it is sitting behind a dresser in your child’s room, in which case you won’t find it until you rearrange the bedroom five years later. This may or may not have happened to us.

I hope this is helpful to you. Library visits with children in tow can still be a great experience. Libraries are fabulous resources and I could rave for days about their bountiful benefits. They also have audio books! And movies and music! And fun programs for kids! And toys and games! And a children’s section where people are generally more forgiving of noise and running feet! And if you go on a weekday morning during the school year you might meet another homeschooling family cause that’s where the cool ones hang out! And did I mention that everything is FREE?

Happy reading to you all!