My teen programs have a very clear age posted on the sign, which is then put on the door of the meeting room: Ages 13-19. That’s what I’ve always intended for my programming’s audience to be, but the reality of doing programming in a branch with very few parents and a lot of teens watching younger kids has left the age make up of my programs very different from the ideal my signs communicate.
A case study: Anime Club at a mid-sized urban library in a low-SES area.
At first, Anime Club was a small group of teens in our computer lab, playing video games and reading fanfiction while a show we all (mostly) agreed on played on the projector. I was pretty lax with noise and cursing as long as there was no hate speech and the upstairs library couldn’t hear us. Here’s the thing: it turns out at a branch where kids and teens are constantly being told to quiet down with their video games and to stop cursing, I had fulfilled a need. Word spread, and eventually all 18 computers were taken by teens a half hour before club started.
And then the younger kids wanted some of this action, because they want to play Roblox noisily too. I started fielding requests from 10-12 year-olds to come to Anime Club, which I allowed with parental permission after I explained that we watch PG-13 shows (invariably the parents told me they watch R-rated stuff at home) and that the older teens will likely be cursing around them (I was also often told that it was no worse than what the kids hear from them).
Then I was confronted with an older teen who wanted to bring his young (just barely walking) son to club. I also allowed this, reasoning that the parent is obviously allowing it and this allows the teen to socialize with kids his age, something he didn’t get as much since becoming a father at such a young age. Also, the baby was super cute and was doted upon by the (now large) group of teen boys I had coming to club.
Another dilemma: a family of 8 siblings, ages ranging from 18 to 8 months. The eldest siblings, an 18-year-old older brother and 15 and 16-year old sisters are often at the library watching the younger children for hours on end. I have only ever spoken to their mother once, but got the impression from her that she works long hours as a single mother, relies on the library to keep her kids safe, and is very, very grateful to us. If I allow only the eldest siblings to the program, the 8-year-old will be watching her baby siblings upstairs alone, and the teenagers will be getting food while the young kids go hungry, but getting ahold of their mother for permission probably isn’t going to happen.
Fast forward a couple years. We’ve moved out of the computer lab and into the meeting room, with two video game consoles, anime playing on a projector, a craft cart and a bunch of board games all out at once. I regularly have young middle-schoolers coming to Anime Club, and some young adults that rightly should have aged out but started working right out of high school and are still hanging out with their old friends who are still teenagers. The youngest regular attendee to Anime Club is 7 years old (she’s here with her older siblings, aged 11, 14, and 16.) The 13-19 age range on the door hides an actual age range of 7-21 (7-60ish if you count my Friends of the Library volunteer that the kids call “Granny”).
The Rules
This might sound like chaos, and to some degree, it is, but by sticking to a couple rules I’ve kept things running smoothly (or as smoothly as things can get at a teen program that averages 30 attendees on the regular).
- Attendees outside the 13-19 age range are guests of the teens.
This means if you’re over the age of 19 I have the expectation that you are going to act like an adult volunteer, not a teenager. I have had some trouble with aged-out teens that don’t get this, and have had to unfortunately ask them not to come back to teen programming.
For 11 and 12-year-olds by themselves, I require a parent or guardian’s permission and I will revoke their privileges if they can’t handle being around the older teens (this usually rears its head as the younger kids cursing and screaming performatively because they want the teens to accept them as mature.)
10 and under, they have to be here with a guardian that is also a teen (usually an older sibling or cousin, though obviously sometimes that teen is a parent) that I trust to be responsible for them. These younger kids also have to show that they can handle being in club (currently I only have that one 7-year-old in this range). I flex whether I need parental permission for this group depending on the situation. A lot of kids that ask for their younger siblings to tag along are in precarious situations where their ability to get their parent to talk to me might be hindered.
- If Anime Club has food, the food goes to attendees first, but anyone in the library can stop in and get something to eat.
Lots of very young kids are at our library for a very long time, especially during the summer. If I have food to give, I absolutely will not deny it to them, although it does go to the program’s purpose first.
The Takeaway
I would argue that this level of flexibility is not just ideal for teen programming, but necessary, especially in impoverished areas. Teenagers in my community are not just teens, they are caregivers. To disallow younger siblings would disallow a large portion of my community, arguably the portion that needs socialization with peers the most.
This set up has come with a lot of trial and error, and through a lot of communication and compromise with my managers. If I had started on my first day telling my manager I would let a preschooler come to a teen club, I doubt that would have flown. If you work in an area with a higher socio-economic status than I do, you may never be confronted with the question of young children coming to your program, but I urge you to be flexible and really suss out the family situation of the teen that asks. If you absolutely can’t let a younger child into your program, maybe you can ask a children’s programmer to hold a program at the same time as yours that allows the unattended siblings of the teens at your program (I’m happy to say we will be experimenting with a set up like this very soon!)
What age ranges do you allow at your teen programs? Have you had any age-related problems at your programming? Let us know in the comments below!
