Cohousing-L Mailing List: the care and handling of Children - long, rambling, and maybe pointless!

[Elizabeth Stevenson (tamgoddess]

Good morning, everyone.

Yesterday, I was thoroughly sick of this whole thread. It seemed like it was
the usual running around the same thing over and over. But I have to hand it
to all of you, it seems to be more a thoughtful discussion than I was giving
you credit for. Kudos on hanging in there. While the philosophical
discussion of discrimination and 50+ etc. is important, I want to
re-emphasize that it is possible to have a community where everyone feels a
balance of needs is met.

One thing that has helped our community is our unending pragmatism. We have
tried to stayed away from generalities and philosophical discussions of
childrearing. Stick to specifics. "Johnny is running around trashing the
gardens" is something that can be addressed. "You aren't supervising your
child well enough" is going to alienate the parents and may solve the Johnny
problem, but the parents will feel judged and unwelcome, and may leave the
community.

This is not to say that we haven't had our fair share of misunderstandings
and, ok, fights about kids and other hot-button issues. But at some point
you have to get the work done of living in community, and it's tiring to be
angry. Eventually you need to address specifics. This is why the children's
inservices have been so successful. A parent has the space to say, "I really
don't want you to intervene when things are bad. I'd appreciate anyone
pointing it out to me so I can deal with my child." Or even, "Feel free to
tell Esmerelda that she is not to pick the flowers. She's been told this
before, and it's good for her to know that people are watching out for both
her and the flowers."

I'd like to stress at this point that one of the reasons that there are
different strategies for every child is that every child is different! You'd
be amazed at the people who don't have more than one child who think there
is only one right way to parent a child. IMO, this is the main reason that
people don't accept individual parenting styles in community. My children
are like night and day. One needs immediate consequences for his behavior,
and the other needs at least 15 minutes to get over her embarrassment first,
in order for consequences to be effective, or she'll just run away.

We have almost no rules that apply to all the children. AS for meals, there
must be a parent in the kids' room if the kids are going to be in there. We
have no formal system; we just try to make sure all the parents take turns.
Some parents take more turns than others. I work evenings, and rarely end up
watching the kids. One dad who is especially salt-of-the-earth type, is in
there a lot. We try not to take advantage of this, and always ask if its
okay if we leave our child there, whomever is watching them.

When people host events, they are clear about what the children are expected
to do. If it's a no-kids event that is sponsored by the community, we are
likely to provide childcare, depending on the number of kids involved. Many
events are two-tiered in nature. A party will have kids there until 9 or so,
and then the adults start getting drunk­ er, having child-free fun.

We have the luxury of being able to eat outdoors much of the year, and kids
outside still have to keep table manners around the picnic tables. If they
want to be loud and obnoxious, they have to go away. There is no rule about
this, it just evolved. Inside, the dining room is not a play area, and
there's no running or yelling. Lots of times, if the adults are sitting
around chatting after dinner, the kids are quietly playing under the tables,
but not being rowdy, or they get sent away.

If I were to try to distill all this into a blueprint for having a
child-friendly but not overly child-centric community, I'd say that everyone
has to feel that they will be safe in airing their concerns. It has to be
okay for people to come to a general meeting and say they feel like everyone
is in their child's face about his/her behavior, or that it seems like there
isn't enough space for adults to have their own social life. People will
need to be brave about looking within to see how they can change or
contribute to a solution. It all goes back to having processes that are
working. If your process is working, there is nothing that can't be
resolved.

I wrote this a few hours ago and put it aside, because I couldn't seem to
reconcile it with all the general statements being made about
discrimination, etc. I guess my point would have to be that (forgive me!)
all that talk is somewhat irrelevant. Every person, child, community,
cohousing group is different. Trying to impose our opinions about how things
*should* be on each other seems pointless to me. I'm not telling anyone to
stop discussing it, just that it seems like tilting at windmills. Reality is
utterly subjective.

Boy, I'm really wacko today.

Liz

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