Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Adult Supervision of Children in the Common House

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Zeke Holland asked about supervision of children in the common house 

My advice is to rather than spend a bunch of time creating some policy based
on fears and projections, to go without one, pay attention to it and see
what happens. If you find unsupervised kids to be a problem, then you will
know exactly what the problem is and have a clear idea of how to adjust.  

At Sharingwood kids are all over the commonhouse all times of day and night.
There is a set especially attracted to the commonhouse computer. Sometimes,
especially in the summer the teens stay out quite late in the commonhouse.
In our community parents set the limits of where their kids can play.
Occaisionally the kids room is left in a mess and the parents deal with it.
Otherwise kids and teens are pretty good about leaving things in good shape,
of course they do need the occaisional reminder. Yesterday the twins, aged 5
spent the better part of 3 hours in the kids room. They were joined by three
other kids. This morning, the kids room is in its normal condition, with
things more or less put away. I have no idea if the kids or their parents
cleaned it up, but the point is, it is not a problem. The basic premise, if
you make a mess, you clean it up, seems to be working.


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood Community
Snohomish Co, WA


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