Crying Room

The photograph below shows the crying room of St Anthony Church. This room is actually St Peter’s room. It was a ‘converted’ room. In the past, there is no such thing as the crying room. I had forgotten when they started to have a crying room. However, during that time, I do not have baby yet. So I thought it was very good to have a crying room. In fact, it is really good to have a special room for babies and toddlers…

Before I have baby, the only thing I know about the crying room is that it is for little kids who are noisy and so this room is for the parents and the kids. People are not supposed to stand in front of the glass panel of this room at the back of the church, otherwise they would be blocking these people’s view. Everytime, I can see people sitting inside and this is really what I know about the crying room.

However, now that I have a baby and I had ever used the room before, I was very disappointed with the room. I was very upset that I felt very unwelcome on the second week of lent at the church… This, I do not blame the church wardens, but it is really a issue to be addressed for concern…

As I have said earlier, it is really good to have a crying room. Before my conversion, during my younger days, I had been to some christian church. One of them I went, had a big crying room. It was really spacious and their sound system was good. Though there was partition (the glass panel), you can still hear everything spoken and said in the church clearly. It was really a crying room, spacious with seats all arranged properly. Even though it is a crying room, still discipline must be observed.

At St Anthony Church, the crying room’s seats are movable ‘on demand’. After the church session, the seats would be stacked back. This I would not mind (it’s not a problem at all since this is an old church already… perhaps new church would have taken this into consideration). The real problem of this crying room is the noise level and ‘everything’ that is going on in this ‘secret room’.

Church of St Anthony showing The Crying Room (St Peter‘s Room) on the left.

Inside the church, you can see wardens ‘patrolling’, and during the mass readings, especially during the Gospel readings, you can see the church wardens lined side by side to form a horizontal row across the church entrance, forbidding parishioners from entering the church entrance. (This is a waste of human labour/productivity.) But inside the crying room, you would not get to see any church wardens coming in. The only time they come into this room is to get somethings out of this room. Otherwise, the next warden that you can see is really one who come in to get donations/offerings only — carrying a bag with them of course (for donations).

What is happening in this room?
On the second week of Lent, as usual, I went in, I could not hear the readings clearly. The hymns were not as fantastic. After Holy Communion, the adults and children are eating cookies. Parents passed the cookies around…. The church has not even ended. I do not know if these people are listening to the mass or what are they doing in the church. On the third week of Lent, Richard and I went into the crying room to change Isaac’s diaper. Inside the room, there are as many as seven or eight prams. Children crawling, playing and lots of sound of course… very messy. Yet, there is no ‘policemen’ around… Not a single warden inside this room…

That explains why not everybody(those with babies) wants to use this room… as can be seen in the church.

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