Rules for kids at common dinners
From: Joani Blank (joaniswansway.com)
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 14:48:02 -0700 (MST)
I lived at Doyle Street Cohousing for 8 years and I've been in Swan's Market Cohousing for 2 years now. We have so few kids where I live now (one preschooler, one toddller and one infant) that we don't yet need rules of this sort, but here's what I remember from Doyle Street and some "rules" I've observed from the many other cohousing communities I've visited, some of which I've eaten common dinners at.

Your questions/my responses

Questions regarding children at common meals:

1. What have communities done about mitigating children's noise during
meals?

Acoustic treatment of your common house ceiling! But behaviorally, a common rule is no running and no shouting (preferably no "outside voices" in the common dining room. Send noisy kids outside or to the kid's room

2. Are there expectations about children leaving and returning to the
table?

Typically it is up to the child's parent whether they are allowed to leave early and whether they are allowed to come back if they do leave early. At Doyle St. there was a rule that if a kid was excused early, he or she was not permitted to walk up to another kid whose parent wanted him or her to stay at the table and entice them to leave the table to play.

Parents who have strict rules about when it's okay to leave the table at home, may well find that after a while they will relax their standard for common meals. The same goes for what your kids eat--or don't eat--during common meals. If a parent is anxious that his her child may not eat enough or a balanced enough meal, it's probably better to make sure that all the meals they eat at home are balanced, and just let them practice lousy nutrition at the few meals a week they eat in the common house. It is not unusual for kids to go off to the kids room between dinner and desert, but probably a good idea to require that they sit down at the table to eat that dessert rather than run around with it, which they'd much rather do, resulting in sticky fingers and cookie crumbs all over the kid's room and the sitting room furniture and the floor.

3. What are your rules and expectations for children's behavior during
meals?

Again, usually the responsibility of the parent or other supervising adult to monitor.

4. Is there an adult in the kids' room during meals?

Rarely, unless the child is little and there are no older children in there at the same time. Even then, it is the little kid's parent call whether and to what extent the child needs supervision.

5. Is there a special seating arrangement for children? They almost always sit with their parent(s), or with a particular friend and his/her parent. Depending on how they bond with each other, a bunch of kids may from time to time want to sit at table with just other kids and IMO they should be allowed--perhaps even encouraged--to do so. Kids have a lot to teach us grownups about flexibility.

A question not related to children:
When working people and/or parents are working on common meals, do you have
any special techniques to help them get dinner on the table on time? Do you
have any time-saving techniques?

Yeah. Have common dinner on Sundays! And save those Sunday cooking slots for the people who find it hardest to cook after a long workday. Also, learn recipes that can be prepared ahead.

One thing to do is to serve dinner pretty late on workdays, like 7:00. This can be a problem for parents of young kids who are used to having dinner much earlier. But some communities decide they can live with that. Also, surprisingly young kids can learn to eat later because they so enjoy the social aspects of the common meal. And a healthy snack at 4:30 or 5:00 can stave off those hunger pangs until dinner comes around.



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