160/365 Utah Vesti-friggin-bule

The law of unintended consequences is at play here.

One thing, a minor thing, but still a thing that I always liked at our parish is that we didn't have a cry room. We didn't have a glass-walled piped-in-sound enclosure for mothers and infants to sit and sort of be a part of things. And because we didn't have that, babies were a part of our community just like everyone else. Yes, an unruly toddler would be taken to the back, and a crying baby would be handled out in the vestibules. But there was no assumption that children would be neither seen nor heard.

As time went by, though, and more children did appear in our church, the Utah Vestibule was set aside as a place for a mother to sit with a tired crying baby. A place for toddlers to look around for a moment as a distraction. Still a part of the community, still seen and heard, but a nice place, cleaner than before, without dangerous mechanical objects or giant statues or dead plants in the way.

Then a member of parish council made the suggestion that the room be made into an even more child-friendly space, with gates at the two doorways and a rug covering the tile floor. I saw this and thought, that is really smart. That way, a wriggling toddler could be placed on the floor a minute to walk around but not be able to run up the aisles and disturb everyone else. I thought it was so nice that we had this spot, not a cry room but still a place to go. It seemed brilliant.

But like all technical and scientific advances, there were unintended consequences. Through the winter and spring, it became a place for the choir to dump their children--with spouses or babysitters, but there were too many older kids. Kids brought toys and threw them around or fought over them. Cabinets got opened and the contents dumped. Food came and got ground into the rug. Children hung on the gates and squealed.

I began to notice more and more mothers of small babies, the ones who used to go back to that room and nurse or rock, were standing in back instead. I wouldn't go in with Leo unless it were empty. Fathers took their young toddlers out onto the front porch, or downstairs to the basement.

I walked in today, and there were four kids already there, before mass began. One was the wife of the parish council member. The other was the choir babysitter with two children of one of the choir members and one from another (the "babysitter" is actually the wife of one of the singers--not like a teenaged girl or something). Two of the kids, though, were 5, and had taken the furniture apart to build a fort.

I'm a teacher and am not afraid to call out errant children, even in front of their caretakers. This does not make me popular, but it keeps me sane. I told them they weren't doing the right thing, and I rearranged things so that this wasn't her playroom. They had brought lots of toys, and the babysitter explained to me that she had brought even more to leave here in the room for future children. So the floor resembled a sloppy daycare room and Leo proceeded to fight over a puzzle piece with one of the other toddlers. But that didn't bother me as much as the 9 year old who just walked in and started playing alongside the other school aged children, or the two boys who just showed up, with no parents, and started climbing on the gate.

I shooed them away, but they came back after I'd had enough. The family whose baby was baptized today showed up in back with their older child, and a few other children from their entourage. Adults sat around and chatted. There was no connection at all to being at mass. A traditional cry room with piped in sound would have been better. The kids reached critical mass, and I walked out with Leo to pace in back instead.

Gone was the distraction and in its place was a noisy mess. My father commented to me on his way out after mass that he probably could find a cheap swingset to stick in there if we wanted to. He had been sitting about 6 pews from the front and could hear it all the way up there.

When you create an attractive nuisance, children are drawn to it. Children weren't drawn to the Utah Vestibule before--it was a place to sit quietly for a moment before moving on to some other distraction. Now Maeve asks me why she can't "go back and play in the playroom" since she has age-peers sitting back there doing that very thing.

Maybe the families of some of those toddlers wouldn't feel welcome if we didn't have a cry room. That's what Astrid suggested to me. But maybe if the whole community realized that children are part of the Kingdom of God, we wouldn't feel like we had to be necessarily separate from the childless adults in the congregation. And maybe there's a way to make a room like that work--maybe limit it to toddlers and babies and their parents only. Maybe take away the gates, or the rug, or both. Make it less like a family room in your basement and more like church.

I walked up to Fr. Miguel after mass and expressed my annoyance. He put it back on me (fairly): how do we make the change, how do we educate or dictate or whatever needs to be done to make the place welcoming to parents of somewhat unruly children without creating a loud and obnoxious nuisance that draws in older children and parentless children to come play?

I'm thinking about it. I think taking the gates away would be a good start--as nice as they were when Leo was by himself or with one other child back there, they make the room an easy place to dump your kid and stand around and chat. Simply taking the gates away would make it far less attractive, and maybe make parents realize they need to do more with their kids at church than just bring a bunch of toys and let them jump on the furniture.

It's like free parking. Everybody likes free parking. Can't get enough of that free parking, and so there's never enough. But if you charge people to park, then some people will walk or ride a bike. If we build a room designed like a nursery that takes away all adult responsibility, tired parents are going to drop that responsibility like a hot potato. But the room pre-gates was never treated like that. You could nurse a baby back then without being disturbed. A parent and toddler might wander back for a minute to sit and look at a book, but parents had to be engaged because they were, essentially, paying for parking--it wasn't a free ride. Parents of seriously unruly children would have to take them outside or hold them in back like I had to with Leo today. Parents won't see those gates and think "I'll just let my kids wander back there and play."

Because this was, yikes, totally over the top. And I know the child-free amongst the congregation heard all that noise and were not impressed. Critical mass, like I said. We need a better way.