Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Unseen Bullying Epidemic in Senior Communities - with hot link

[Alan O (adoecos]

Dick - I temper your comment that bullies tend to stay away from cohousing.

I don't know about you, but there are untold stories of cohousing power and 
control conflicts between / among neighbors. The cohousing conferences are rife 
with workshops, retreats and classes on conflict resolution and non-violent 
communication.

Keep in mind that bullying isn't just punching and pushing, it's also emotional 
abuse.

I also would say, that when vetting community members, be aware that as time 
passes, people have learned how to mask their undesirable personality traits. I 
previously worked in domestic violence prevention and can spot a bully a mile 
away.

ThxAlan O.


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Alan O'Hashi 
Have Camera - Will Travel
www.bouldercomedia.com   303-910-5782
www.wyocomedia.com             307-247-1910
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      From: Dick Margulis <dick [at] dmargulis.com>
 To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org; Ann Zabaldo <zabaldo [at] earthlink.net>; 
Alan O'Hashi <adoecos [at] yahoo.com> 
 Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2018 8:53 AM
 Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Unseen Bullying Epidemic in Senior Communities - with hot 
link
   
On 5/16/2018 9:39 AM, Ann Zabaldo wrote:
> What is maybe a surprise is our expectation that people will become sweeter 
> and gentler as they age.

And with this, a story.

Many years ago, I lived in a small town where one of the highlights of 
the year was the firemen's field days, a three-day orgy of beer, greasy 
food, and polka.

One year, when my kids were small, my parents visited that weekend. We 
went to the parade, of course. And afterward, we went into the exhibitor 
tent, where one of the local churches had an ice cream booth. My dad, 
who until he was deep into his dementia could add a column of numbers in 
his head faster than an accountant could with an adding machine, offered 
to treat. The nice church lady had to write down the price of everything 
the six of us ordered and laboriously calculate the sum by hand and 
aloud, thirty-write-down-zero-carry-the-three style. As we walked away, 
my dad shook his head. "It's amazing someone can live to that age and 
never learn to add," he said. "No," I countered. "People don't get 
smarter as they age. What's amazing is that people that slow survive to 
old age at all."

Okay, that was mean, and in retrospect I'm sorry I said it. I'm nicer 
now. But it's just another aspect of Ann's point: people don't change 
much as they age, except physically.

The saving grace of cohousing in this regard is that bullies don't tend 
to be attracted to cohousing in the first place, so dealing with them as 
they age may be less of a problem than in the sorts of institutions 
featured in the article.

Dick Margulis
Rocky Corner
Bethany CT
Construction is underway: rockycorner.org/blog/