>
>Does anyone have any experience with approaching disruptive people to
>suggest they make use of the alternate facilities?


Rachel's question reminds me of a student - lets call her Flossie - 
I once had. We had a local meeting of breastfeeding counsellors and 
students in the evening in one of the student's homes, and Flossie 
brought her very lively, still freq bf son - lets call him Freddie - 
who was then, I think, about 22 mths (certainly walking well, and 
talking a bit). She was a lovely lady, but was mightily indulgent of 
this little boy's behaviour, and did not stop him going round 
everyone's handbags, tipping the contents out onto the floor, 
deliberately crumbling cake into the carpet and spreading it round 
with his hands and so on. He was already making everyone nervous, but 
the worst moment came when he went to their bookshelves and opened a 
folder of papers and started to tear them....at which point the 
hostess blanched,  and (almost) shouted 'NO!!'

Freddie had managed to get hold of the hostess's husband's prized 
collection of football programmes, which he'd been amassing since he 
was a small boy, and he had torn the cover off the prize specimen 
(something like the programme of the final of the World Cup in 1966). 
Flossie still didn't 'get' it - those of us with sports-mad husbands 
or married to collectors knew something of the enormity of the crime, 
though.

It fell to me as Flossie's tutor to speak to her directly the next 
day, and just say 'sorry, Flossie, Freddie can't come to tutorials or 
meetings held in people's houses any more, because we can't ensure 
the rooms are suitable for toddlers....really sorry.'  She would have 
had to be very brazen to have brought him again, I think.

I think the same approach could be used for 'disruptors' - apologise 
that the venue is not right for them, not that they are not right for 
the venue!

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc, tutor, UK

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