Re: Re: Children (in cohousing and elsewhere)
From: Berrins (Berrinsaol.com)
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 22:44:05 -0700 (MST)

In a message dated 2/20/03 12:09:29 PM, racheli [at] sonoracohousing.com writes:

<< Hi Roger,
I want to address some of what I think your assumptions are:

1-  Noise is bad.   >>

Sorry, this misses the point I was trying to make.  Please allow me to try 
again.

The point is that people have different ranges of acceptable levels of noise 
and it may be that those with very little tolerance no longer want to put up 
with noise may want to avoid it as much as possible, and this is one of the 
several reasons they want a 50+ cohousing community.  Myself, I often like 
the "energy" and life of kids playing exuberantly and have occasionally been 
guilty of riling up the kids myself.  Others have less physical tolerance for 
the sustained volume and pitch that can happen at community gatherings.  This 
tolerance tends to decrease with age, but is hardly limited to 50+ adults.  
One 30-something couple with two young children tend to avoid large meals 
because of the noise.  BTW, the noise and activity "problem" occurs almost e
xclusively indoors, where the sound and brownian scatter of youngins is 
contained by walls and roof.  Outdoor noise is rarely, if ever, a problem.

2)<<In the kibbutz where I grew up there were about 500 members.  All those 
people and their children ate dinner in one huge hall.  The noise was 
probably unbearable (in terms of what I'd see as acceptable now), yet nobody 
seemed to mind.>>

Maybe (I'm just supposin' here) growing up on a kibbutz socialized you and 
your fellow kibbutzniks to the noise (who knows, at some level you might even 
miss the noise).  Kibbutzim, as you know, have been around for many decades, 
long enough for several generations to grow up and have kids and grandkids 
there.  Noisy meals are normal.  However, the vast majority of cohousing 
communities are less than ten years old.  I suspect that most cohousing 
members did not grow up in a kibbutz or any other kind of similar housing 
situation and so were not raised with the crowds of kids we get in cohousing. 
 We're not used to it.  Perhaps in a generation or two cohousing folks will 
develop a tolerance for higher levels of sound.  

3. <<I'd like you and others to consider that while you have a problem with 
the kids making noise,  kids often have a problem with you (and others) 
constantly attempting to control their behavior. They probably won't tell you 
that (they know who has the power), but they resent the interference 
nevertheless.>>

There are several issues in this one paragraph and we could spend hours 
chatting about each one.  I'll try to keep it brief.  
- I myself don't usually have a problem with kids making noise, although I do 
sometimes.  But the real issue was covered in # 1 above.
- As a parent, behaviour control (aka setting limits) is a fact of life.  
Hopefully, if we do our jobs right, we will teach our children how to control 
their own behaviour.  New social settings (re: cohousing) can be considered 
opportunities for teaching children to consider how their behaviour affects 
not just other children, but adults as well.  All this may make me seem like 
a control freak, but that's hardly the case.  I am not "constantly 
attempting" to control kids behaviour.  First of all, it's not a constant 
problem, especially not for me.  Second, on the rare occasion I think it 
necessary (which may have been once or twice in three years we've been here), 
I will ask a parent to step in.   But learning how to live with others is one 
of the major lessons each generation passes on the next.  It puts the "civil" 
in civilization.  It is one of the cohousing lessons we are still trying to 
learn ourselves, never mind teach to the kids.  We're working on it.
- Kids, especially the younger ones, often resent anyone, including their 
parents, attempting to control their behaviour.  That doesn't mean we should 
avoid dealing with the issue at hand.  The level and style of control that 
non-parents may use is still one of the major issues being discussed.

4. <<The more society insists on supervising children all the time, the more 
they'll seem "out of control" at moments when they are left to their own 
devices. My opinion is that if they were allowed MORE unsupervised time, 
rather than less (even though this is obviously age-related), their behavior 
might improve.>>

This is an interesting perspective- I'd like to hear what some of our social 
worker types on this list have to say.

My non-professional take on this is partly covered in the second section of 
#3 above; if we as parents have done our jobs well and taught our children 
how to control their own behaviour, I would wholeheartedly agree with you.  
But all chidren are "works in progress," with only partial controls and 
social tools installed and many life lessons to be learned.  Rather than 
thinking of supervising children as just controlling them, I'd rather 
approach supervision as an opportunity to help them learn to live with 
others.  If they can figure it on their own, great, they'll probably remember 
it better.  We often tell our own kids to work out their issues with their 
friends on their own.  But sometimes they need help, and sometimes they need 
control.  Its up to us as parents and community members to figure out (here 
come those discussions again) when to help, when to control and when to stay 
out of the way.  What say you professionals?

6. <<IMO "admohishing" might work when someone has a real, and a largely 
*positive* relationship with a child, (just like with adults! :)  If you 
don't really know a kid, and the only time she has any  meaningful contact 
with you is when you lecture her about her allegedly inappropriate behavior, 
why should she take you seriously?>>

This, to me, is one of the largest issues we face in cohousing, and I agree 
with you.    Please don't forget the original context of this discussion- 
cohousing for 50+ only.  One of the frustrations older people in cohousing 
have had is lack of opportunity to connect with children and form more 
positive relationships with them.  There may be many possible reasons for 
this, but now we are drifting off-topic.  Let me just say that if we ever 
figure out how to get solve this problem we might have fewer 50+ people 
wanting to leave multi-generational cohousing.

Roger
Pathways
Northampton, MA

(Who lived on Kibbutz Neve Eitan, just south of Beit She'an, for six months 
in the early 70's- a major inspiration for choosing to live in cohousing)
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