Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Sharing Children

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Sharingwood has 35 resident kids, 49 resident adults. 7 of the adults have
not been parents, and three of those people are on the least involved side
of community participation. So the vast majority of us are currently, or
have been parents in the past. Kids are one of the primary filters for
people joining Sharingwood. Positive side, there are lots of kids scampering
around here. Negative side, there are lots of kids scampering around here.
We have certainly gotten feedback from retirement aged folks that they would
like to live here, except for all the kids. And of course if you ask just
about any of the parents  here  why they came, a great place to raise kids
will be on their list.

One of the things I personally think our community should be doing again is
the parent meetings. We used to get together and talk about our kids, what
our expectations were, how to support each other, trips and fun ideas, and
also lots of time about parenting challenges. Now this is done informally
between parents and there is a loss of opportunity for others to learn.

It is quite taxing to raise kids in community, and it is a very common
conflict issue.  My own community had a family leave our community because
their parenting issues were not supported, However, in all honesty, some of
their issues could not be supported and they were smart enough to figure
that out, and reasonable  enough not to try to demand everybody change just
for them. (No bike riding for instance, and they were uncomfortable with
unsupervised  kids at any age).

We have a intra-community email list serve, and several parents have posted
guidelines for their kids there. Occasionally the kids team works out some
issues with parents, but their focus is more towards designing kids events.

Although it is not currently practiced in my own community, I heartily
recommend parents holding  gatherings about parenting in community. It
really makes it easier to work together, even when you are different.
Obviously inviting all interested adults whether they are parents or not can
help.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood


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