Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Guidelines on Children

[Mac Thomson (macthomson]

I often tell people that living in cohousing has great benefits for adults and 
also challenges (kind of like marriage on a village scale), but for kids it’s 
pretty idyllic — almost all benefits and not many challenges. My three kids 
grew up here amongst a tribe of about 25 other kids. As far as I’m aware, all 
of the kids have a deep appreciation for having been able to grow up in 
community. They were free range kids with many, many deep relationships with 
other kids and lots of adults. I can’t tell you the number of school teachers 
who told us how kids from Heartwood were so mature and capable of relating to 
adults. My kids are now young adults who remain very close to all the other 
Heartwood kids they grew up with. I am eternally grateful for the village that 
raised our kids.

I don’t remember much angst about parents squabbling about kid behavior, etc. 
There were definitely many incidents that we collaborated around — boys getting 
into a bottle of vodka in the common house, girls being mean to each other, 
kids being excluded — run of the mill kid stuff. But I remember the parents 
mostly sharing the same values of love and accountability and working together 
to help the kids learn the lessons they needed to learn and grow up to be the 
great young adults they’ve become.

And now we have a whole new generation of youngsters running free and squealing 
with delight as only kids can do. And I’m in more of a grandfatherly role and I 
love it.

-- 
Mac Thomson

Heartwood Cohousing
Southwest Colorado
http://www.heartwoodcohousing.com


"You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me."
              - C. S. Lewis
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> On May 2, 2024, at 8:21 PM, Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:
> 
> I can't speak for Sharon's intent, but I read it as "here's how it went in
> my community," not as "this is what you can expect in your community." The
> experience in my community was in fact much more collaborative and
> non-contentious.
> 
> We've always had young children and we've also always had kid norms that
> the parents and the kids (if old enough to participate in such a
> discussion, probably age 5 and up) jointly agreed on. There has always been
> an understanding that the kids, like the adults, will be kind and
> considerate and non-destructive, and when we see them not behaving that
> way, the parents and kids have a meeting and decide what to do differently.
> I can only remember two families who allowed their child to ignore those
> norms, and neither family stayed in the community long-term.
> 
> I don't know whose community's experience is more typical, Sharon's or
> mine, but I don't think that anarchy and/or furious disagreement around kid
> behavior is inevitable.
>   Muriel at Shadowlake Village
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