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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]Perhaps museums just aren't the best place for kids under 5 or 6.[/b]

I do think if you're going to have a "kid-friendly" scavenger hunt, you don't hold it so kids come near display cases that can't even be touched. [/quote]

I disagree entirely!  My three-year-old loves museums.  We live downtown and frequent many of them.  She learns so much and always begs to go to more.  She has never had any difficulty with any guards because she knows how to behave in museums.  If it looks like she won't be able to manage at that time, I wouldn't keep her there - I think at that age, in particular, you need to read your child and make sure that you aren't trying to make them do things that they aren't able to at the time, but if you pay attention to their needs, museums present so many wonderful opportunities at that age.

More specifically, she has done many of the scavenger hunts at the Portrait Gallery (the kids' room there really is a wonderful and underused resource for our children), and there has been no problem with her getting too close to the cases or paintings.  I tell her not to go too close and then I use my language and body posture to enforce that.  One day, she spent 15 minutes identifying differences in portraits of Pocahontas and never did anyone have to come up to her because I made sure that she was a safe distance from the art.  She loves it, but she can only do so because she has the proper discipline to know the boundaries.

Although the Building Museum has a lot of unique aspects of free play, it is still a public space, and there are still rules.  It is important to teach children that they can only play within the available space.  And, it is the parent's responsibility to make sure that occurs when the child is too young to recognize those boundaries without help.  Stopping your child before they do something that is not allowed is a foundation of discipline.  If you do so consistently when they are young, then they will trust you and learn the boundaries themselves.  If you allow them too much freedom when they can't yet control themselves, then they will have to rely on the guards to enforce the rules, which as has been noted by the OP and several other PPs, can be confusing.  Obviously, nobody is perfect and having a child go past the door at the building zone is not the end of the world, but it is not proper behavior, and thus it will be corrected, and maybe not in the way the you would most prefer.  So, next time, be a little more careful, and there shouldn't be a problem.[/quote]

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