Another Time-Delayed Big Win.

[silveradept]

This happened Friday last, so I'm my usual amount of late in documenting it, but y'know, better late than not at all.

As we were getting ready to close out for the night at the branch I was stunt librarian-ing at, one of the people looked at me, and I suspect my sartorial choices pinged a memory.

"Did you do story times here at this location a few years ago?" they asked.

"Yes," I said. "I've done some substitute story times here and there over the years."

"I wanted to thank you," this person said. "My son was always making mischief and not paying attention in story time, and then you came and read and did story time, and he paid attention, and it was like you showed him that reading could be something else, and he started paying attention."

And then they added on that this was some years ago, obviously, as the child was in school now, but story time methods success! Weirdly enough, when you make story times that would have been good for you as a child, at some point you're going to encounter children who are good for your story times. I'm glad that someone found a way that worked for them, and that hopefully, having seen what worked, the parent then went forth and did reading and storytelling with their son in that same way. And maybe that their son picked up reading and storytelling in the same way for themselves.

Woo, success. And woo, one of those successes actually getting back to me so that I know it happened.

Comments

[silveradept]

It doesn't happen all that often, but it's really nice when it does.

[jenett]

I was thinking after I replied that in our field, it's rare you get that 'several years later' thing unless you're part of a much smaller community. To have it happen somewhere that's not your primary library and get to hear about it is just so fantastic.

[silveradept]

I was thrilled to get one of them at all, much less at a location that wasn't one of my regular locations at the time (now, it's one of my support locations.) Because, yes, it's rare that anyone comes back and closes the loop on the matter of it turning out that something was particularly helpful for a child or an adult.